Does Georgia HB 399 require out-of-state landlords in the CSRA to have a local representative? Yes. Georgia HB 399, which amends O.C.G.A. § 44-7-25 and took effect July 1, 2025, requires every non-resident owner of a single-family home or duplex in Georgia to engage a Georgia-licensed real estate broker as a local representative. The representative's contact information must be provided to tenants in writing. This applies to every out-of-state landlord in Augusta, Evans, Grovetown, Martinez, and across the Central Savannah River Area.
A service member got PCS orders in the spring, found a good tenant by June, and has been managing the property remotely from Joint Base Lewis-McChord ever since. Maintenance calls go to a neighbor who has a key. Rent comes in by ACH. Everything runs quietly until the tenant files a maintenance complaint with the Richmond County magistrate court — and the clerk asks for the name and Georgia address of the landlord's licensed in-state representative.
There isn't one.
That's not a hypothetical edge case. It's the situation hundreds of CSRA landlords find themselves in without knowing it. Georgia HB 399 has been law since July 1, 2025. Governor Kemp signed it on May 14, 2025, with bipartisan support in both chambers of the General Assembly. The bill passed as part of a broader wave of Georgia landlord-tenant legislation that included the Safe at Home Act — and like that law, HB 399 has been quietly creating compliance exposure for landlords who didn't know to look for it.
If you own a single-family home or duplex in the CSRA from out of state — a former Fort Gordon soldier now stationed in the Pacific Northwest, a Savannah River Site contractor who took a position in Houston, a New Jersey investor who bought in Evans two years ago for the cash flow — this requirement applies to you now.
HB 399 amends O.C.G.A. § 44-7-25, the Georgia statute governing landlord representation in residential rental relationships. Before HB 399, Georgia law had no specific requirement that non-resident landlords maintain an in-state contact. The amendment changed that.
The law has two primary components:
Component 1 — The broker requirement. Any non-resident owner of a single-family home or duplex in Georgia must engage a Georgia-licensed real estate broker to manage the property. The broker must be licensed in Georgia under O.C.G.A. Title 43, Chapter 40, the state's real estate licensing statute.
Component 2 — The cascade rule. If the broker you hire is also a non-resident of Georgia — say, an Atlanta-based property management company that relocated its principals to Florida — that broker must employ at least one Georgia-resident licensee who is responsible for tenant communications and property oversight. The in-state presence cannot be eliminated by routing it through an out-of-state management firm.
Both requirements flow from the same policy intent: tenants in Georgia should have a locally reachable, legally accountable representative they can contact for urgent issues. The bill's legislative record described this as a consumer protection measure following a pattern of complaints from renters unable to reach absentee landlords.
The statute also requires that tenants receive the local representative's name and current contact information in writing. This is not an implied obligation — it's a specific disclosure requirement built into the law.
The statute targets landlords who do not reside in Georgia. In practice, this means your primary domicile — the state where you live, vote, and file income taxes — is not Georgia.
Some scenarios that clearly trigger HB 399:
The military question. Active-duty service members present a more complicated scenario. If your Home of Record (HOR) is Georgia, you're stationed at Fort Campbell, and you're renting a home in Augusta, the statute's application to your situation may not be clear-cut. The bill does not define "non-resident" with reference to military domicile rules under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. This is general guidance from a property manager, not legal advice — consult a Georgia-licensed attorney for your specific situation.
LLCs and corporate entities. The law's application to entities (rather than individual owners) is consistent with how similar Georgia landlord requirements have been applied: if the entity controlling the property has its principal place of business outside Georgia, treat it as a non-resident owner for purposes of HB 399 compliance.
What HB 399 does NOT cover. The bill's plain text applies to single-family homes and duplexes. Properties with three or more units — triplexes, quadplexes, apartment buildings — are not within the stated scope. Owners of larger multifamily properties in Georgia still have separate obligations under broker-of-record and agency rules; the specific HB 399 mandate simply doesn't extend to them.
Non-resident CSRA landlords have three realistic paths:
Option 1 — Hire a Georgia-licensed property management company. This is the cleanest, most complete solution. A licensed PM firm is, by definition, the local representative the statute requires. The management agreement documents the relationship, the PM firm's Georgia licensure satisfies the broker requirement, the firm's in-state staff satisfies the in-state-presence requirement, and the PM provides the tenant with the firm's contact information as part of standard lease execution. One signed agreement satisfies every element of HB 399. This is how most out-of-state CSRA landlords are coming into compliance.
Option 2 — Engage a Georgia-licensed broker as a non-management agent. If you want to retain some self-management functions but need a compliant local representative, you can hire a Georgia-licensed real estate broker to serve specifically as your statutory representative — providing their contact information to tenants and being reachable for communications. This is a less common arrangement and may require the broker to take on more active responsibilities than a simple referral or advisory role. Confirm the scope of engagement in writing.
Option 3 — Ignore it. This is not a real option, though some landlords are taking it by default. Operating without a local representative exposes you to enforcement actions, civil penalties, and restrictions on your ability to rent the property. More practically, it creates a significant legal disadvantage in any tenant dispute: a magistrate court proceeding where the landlord cannot produce evidence of a compliant local representative is a proceeding where the landlord's credibility starts below zero.
For CSRA landlords who inherited properties and are managing from out of state, our accidental landlord guide covers the full picture of what you need to get right from day one. HB 399 compliance is one of the first items on that list.
This is the operational detail most out-of-state landlords miss even when they've hired a PM. HB 399's written disclosure requirement is not satisfied by the PM simply existing. The tenant must be told, in a documented and signed writing, who their local representative is and how to reach them.
Best practice is to include this disclosure in one of two places:
If the property management company changes — which can happen during a management transition — the tenant must receive an updated disclosure with the new representative's information. This is a live, ongoing obligation, not a one-time checkbox.
When McBride Property Management manages a CSRA property for an out-of-state owner, this disclosure is built into our standard lease package. Every tenant signs an addendum that identifies McBride PM as the landlord's authorized representative under O.C.G.A. § 44-7-25, names Amber McBride as the primary point of contact, and provides our Evans office address at 609 Ponder Place Drive, Suite B. There is no ambiguity about who to call, where to send legal notices, or who has authority to authorize repairs.
Fort Gordon is home to approximately 15,900 active-duty service members, making it one of the largest military installations in the Southeast by headcount. A significant share of those service members have bought homes in Columbia County — Evans, Grovetown, and Harlem in particular — and many of them will PCS at some point without selling.
The math explains why: Columbia County single-family homes have appreciated steadily while the rental market has remained strong. According to the Defense Travel Management Office's 2026 BAH rate tables, Fort Gordon rates increased approximately 6 percent from the prior year, with an E-5 with dependents receiving roughly $1,890 per month. A well-maintained three-bedroom in Evans rents in the $1,450–$1,600 range. For a homeowner with a mortgage at a rate locked in before 2022, those numbers often work better than selling.
What that math doesn't account for is the legal compliance layer. A soldier who PCS'd to Fort Bliss in 2024 and has been managing their Evans home remotely is, almost certainly, a non-resident landlord of a single-family home in Georgia who is not in compliance with HB 399 — and doesn't know it.
The compliance fix is straightforward: hire a CSRA-based property manager before the PCS happens, or immediately if it already has. The 60-day PCS landlord timeline we published covers the full process for converting your Fort Gordon home to a rental. Getting the PM agreement signed is step one.
For investors who purchased CSRA rentals from other states, HB 399 is a compliance requirement that was already in force on the day you closed — if you closed after July 1, 2025.
The CSRA's investment fundamentals haven't changed the picture. According to ApartmentList's June 2026 rent report for Augusta, median rents in the metro are up 0.4 percent year-over-year, with overall median rent around $1,216 per month. Columbia County, where most investor-grade single-family inventory sits, runs higher: average rents in the county are in the $1,312 range, with well-maintained three-bedrooms in Evans and Grovetown consistently renting in the $1,450–$1,600 corridor. The structural demand anchors — Fort Gordon, the Savannah River Site, Wellstar MCG and Augusta University Medical Center, and Plant Vogtle's now-operational dual-reactor complex employing a large skilled workforce in Burke County — are intact.
What HB 399 changes is not whether CSRA is worth investing in. It's whether you can operate legally without a Georgia-based licensed representative. The answer is no.
For investors who haven't done the due diligence side of their CSRA acquisition yet, our out-of-state investor guide for Augusta-area rentals covers submarket selection, remote due diligence, inspection protocols, and how to verify market rents independently. HB 399 compliance is the operating-day-one item that investment guides don't always surface clearly enough — consider this post your HB 399 supplement.
The short version: hire your CSRA property manager before you close, not after. Doing so gives you a compliant local representative from day one of ownership, verified rent comps from someone who knows the actual market, and an operator who has eyes on the property while you're somewhere else entirely.
The most common question McBride PM gets from out-of-state owners who've heard about HB 399 is a variation of: "Does signing a management agreement actually cover all of this?"
Yes — a properly structured management agreement with a Georgia-licensed property management firm covers every element of the statute. Here's what that looks like in practice with McBride Property Management:
The broker of record. Noah McBride holds an active Georgia real estate broker license. The management agreement names McBride Property Management, LLC as the managing broker for your property, satisfying the licensed broker requirement of HB 399.
The in-state operational presence. Amber McBride, our Operations Manager, is Georgia-domiciled and manages day-to-day tenant communications, maintenance coordination, lease execution, and owner reporting from our Evans office. She is the practical in-state presence the statute envisions — reachable, responsive, and accountable.
The tenant disclosure. Every McBride PM lease addendum includes a written disclosure that identifies McBride Property Management as the landlord's authorized representative under Georgia law, provides our physical office address in Evans, and gives tenants the direct contact information for Amber and the main office at (706) 420-4883. Tenants sign this addendum, creating a documented record of the disclosure.
The technology layer. Out-of-state owners receive access to an AppFolio owner portal with real-time visibility into lease status, maintenance history, financial statements, and inspection reports. You have complete oversight of the property from anywhere in the country without needing to be the local point of contact for anything.
There is nothing exotic about satisfying HB 399. The law was written around a common-sense business practice that a qualified CSRA property manager already follows. The issue is not complexity — it's awareness. Most non-compliant out-of-state landlords simply don't know the law exists.
If you own a single-family rental or duplex in the CSRA and your primary residence is outside Georgia, the compliance path is clear:
This is general guidance from a property manager — not legal or tax advice. Consult a Georgia-licensed real estate attorney to review your specific lease and management arrangement for full compliance.
You can review the full text of HB 399 as signed by Georgia Governor Kemp in the official 2025 signed legislation archive. The CSRA Landlord Field Guide is also a useful companion reference, covering the broader Georgia landlord-tenant framework including security deposit rules under the Safe at Home Act, the dispossessory process, and operating expense benchmarks for CSRA rentals.
If you own a CSRA rental property from out of state — or you're approaching a PCS and considering renting your home instead of selling — contact McBride Property Management for a free rental analysis. We'll tell you what your property should rent for in the current market, how quickly it should lease, and what a management agreement actually costs. You'll also have a Georgia-licensed broker as your HB 399-compliant local representative from day one.
You can reach us at (706) 420-4883 or download the CSRA Landlord Field Guide for a comprehensive reference on Georgia landlord-tenant law, market benchmarks, and operating expense norms. PCS homeowners will also find the PCS Quick-Start Guide useful — it walks through the full process of converting your Fort Gordon home to a rental.
Our office is at 609 Ponder Place Drive, Suite B, Evans, GA 30809. We serve Augusta, Evans, Martinez, Grovetown, North Augusta, and the surrounding CSRA. Learn more about our services or see why local owners hire us.
Noah McBride, Broker McBride Property Management 706.701.5940 Guiding you home.
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