GA Real Estate common mistakes
GA Real Estate · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
On a property tax item, multiplies the millage rate by the property's full market value, or treats one mill as 1% of value.
Georgia assesses most property at 40% of fair market value, and a mill is $1 of tax per $1,000 of assessed value - not a percentage. Candidates trained on other states' ratios or on percent math skip the 40% step or slide the decimal one place.
What to do instead
Run the same three-step chain every time: market value → assessed value (× 0.40) → tax (assessed value ÷ 1,000 × millage). Subtract homestead or other exemptions from assessed value, not from the final tax bill. Sanity check: 30 mills should land near 3% of assessed value.
Answers that a borrower keeps title through foreclosure and has a statutory redemption period after the sale, or calls the borrower's security instrument a mortgage.
Georgia is a title-theory state: the borrower signs a security deed that conveys legal title to the lender while the borrower keeps equitable title. Candidates import redemption-period rules from judicial-foreclosure states that do not exist here.
What to do instead
Default is enforced by a nonjudicial power of sale: advertise once a week for four weeks in the county's legal organ and sell on the courthouse steps on the first Tuesday of the month. A completed sale extinguishes the borrower's equity of redemption; a confirmation order is needed only if the lender wants to pursue a deficiency.
Lists confidentiality, obedience, and full disclosure as duties owed to a 'customer,' or says a dual agent may proceed once the seller has consented.
Georgia's brokerage statute sets up a two-tier structure. Fiduciary duties run only to the client; a customer is owed honesty, fair dealing, and the statutory disclosures. Candidates blur the tiers and forget that dual agency needs everyone's informed written consent.
What to do instead
Before answering, ask 'who is my principal in this scenario?' Only the client gets fiduciary duties. For dual or designated agency, look for written consent from both sides - one party's signature or a brokerage's internal policy is never enough.
Tells a buyer they can cancel a Georgia resale contract within three days of signing, or that the contract is not binding until an attorney reviews it.
Candidates import other states' attorney-review and cooling-off rules. Georgia has neither for a typical resale purchase, and the federal three-day right of rescission applies to certain refinances and home-equity loans, not to purchase-money loans.
What to do instead
Termination rights live in the four corners of the contract: the due diligence/termination option period, financing and appraisal contingencies, and the earnest-money forfeiture clause. Identify which contingency the question turns on and who is holding the earnest money.
Says the buyer signs the deed at closing, or that recording the deed is what transfers title.
The contract, the deed, and the record book get collapsed into one step. The deed is the grantor's instrument, and recording is about notice and priority, not about passing ownership.
What to do instead
Keep three steps separate: the contract creates the right to a deed; the grantor signs and delivers the deed, which is what passes title; recording gives constructive notice and protects priority. Also use Georgia deed names - general warranty, limited warranty (not 'special warranty'), and quitclaim, which carries no warranties at all.
Adjusts a comparable sale in the wrong direction - adds value when the comparable is superior to the subject, or adjusts the subject property instead of the comparable.
The comparison logic gets reversed under time pressure, and candidates forget that the subject's price is the unknown being solved for.
What to do instead
Always move the comparable toward the subject: superior feature → subtract from the comparable's price; inferior feature → add. Never adjust the subject, and never adjust the sale price for the property's own features. If gross adjustments are large relative to the sale price, the comparable should be discarded, not stretched.
States that Georgia statute requires a standardized seller's property disclosure form in every resale, and that a silent seller is automatically liable for any defect.
Other states mandate a statutory disclosure form, so candidates assume Georgia does too. Georgia starts from caveat emptor and layers on a common-law duty to disclose latent material defects the seller actually knows about.
What to do instead
Analyze on two questions: did the seller know, and could the buyer have discovered it? The customary seller's disclosure statement is a contract form, not a statutory mandate; the hard statutory and federal items to memorize are lead-based paint for pre-1978 housing, HOA/condominium documents, and known material adverse facts the buyer cannot reasonably find.
Splits a commission directly with a licensee at another firm, pays a finder's fee to an unlicensed investor, or lets earnest money sit in the broker's business operating account.
Normal business practice gets confused with license law. Candidates forget that compensation runs broker-to-broker and that client money is segregated money.
What to do instead
Trace the money in every fact pattern: who holds a license, whose broker employs them, and whose account holds the funds. Compensation flows through the employing broker; paying an unlicensed person for brokerage activity is a violation; trust funds belong in a broker's escrow account, never an operating or personal account, and commingling or conversion is grounds for discipline.
Approves or writes an ad or yard sign that shows only the salesperson's name and phone number, with no brokerage firm name.
Candidates focus on the marketing message and skip the compliance caption. They also forget that promoting another firm's listing without permission is itself a problem.
What to do instead
Every advertisement and sign must carry the firm name as registered with the Commission; the salesperson's name may appear only with it, not alone. Check for misleading or unsubstantiated claims, and confirm written permission before advertising another broker's listing.
Says the landlord may change the locks, cut off utilities, or set the tenant's belongings on the curb when rent is unpaid.
Candidates carry over a vague notion of landlord rights and do not know Georgia's procedural sequence, which is entirely court-based for residential evictions.
What to do instead
Georgia eviction is a dispossessory action filed in magistrate court; the tenant has seven days from service to answer, and only a marshal or sheriff executing a writ of possession may remove the tenant. Self-help lockouts and utility shutoffs create tort liability. Pair this with the fair housing deadlines: one year to file a HUD complaint, two years to sue in federal court.