Landlord Atlas

What does Georgia law require a landlord to repair?

Verified August 29, 2026 All Georgia topics →

Georgia law requires a landlord to keep a rented home in repair, and since July 1, 2024 every residential rental agreement is deemed to include a provision that the premises is fit for human habitation.

Cited to O.C.G.A. § 44-7-13 (landlord's duties as to repairs and improvements; the 2024 fit-for-human-habitation term) (a), (b) and 12 more cited sources · Verified August 29, 2026

The statute stops there — it defines nothing, sets no deadline and gives the tenant no remedy — so what a tenant can actually do comes from court decisions running back to 1881. After giving notice and a reasonable chance to repair, a tenant may make the repair and sue the landlord for the cost, or stay put and claim damages, including as a set-off when the landlord sues for rent. Georgia has no repair-and-deduct right, no rent withholding, no escrow program, and no way to get a court order forcing the landlord to fix the problem. The duty cannot be waived in a dwelling lease. Retaliating against a tenant who complains about conditions is barred for three months after the protected act, with a penalty of one month's rent plus $500 — reduced by anything the tenant owes.

Georgia habitability & repairs at a glance

Where the duty comes from Statute — no independent court-created warranty operates alongside it
Duty source details The duty is statutory and the remedies are not — an unusual combination, and the single most important thing to know about Georgia. O.C.G.A. § 44-7-13(a) requires the landlord to keep the premises in repair, and subsection (b), added by the Safe at Home Act and effective July 1, 2024, deems every agreement for the rental of real property as a dwelling place to include a provision that the premises is fit for human habitation. That one sentence is the whole of it: the statute carries no definition of habitability, no notice form, no cure period and no remedy of its own. Everything a Georgia tenant can actually do about an unrepaired home comes from court decisions — the repair-and-reimburse claim stated in Lewis & Company v. Chisholm (1881), restated by the Supreme Court of Georgia in Borochoff Properties v. Creative Printing Enterprises (1974), and anchored to the statute in Colquitt v. Rowland (1995), which reads § 44-7-13 as imposing contractual, but not tort, liability on a landlord. Langley v. MP Spring Lake put it the same way in 2019: the duties § 44-7-13 imposes sound only in contract. No Georgia court has ever adopted an implied warranty of habitability.
Who is covered Statewide — no coverage split
Where the repair standards live A general fit-for-habitation standard with no statutory list
What must be kept in repair Georgia enumerates nothing. The statute states a general duty to keep the premises in repair — a duty that is not limited to homes, since subsection (a) says simply "the landlord" and applies to commercial leases too — plus the residential habitability term added in 2024, which reaches only agreements for the rental of property as a dwelling place. There is no definition of "fit for human habitation," no list of covered conditions, no heat, water, plumbing or electrical specification, no notice form and no code-incorporation clause anywhere in the chapter. Local building and housing codes carry the operative standards in practice: under Thompson v. Crownover a landlord can be liable in tort for physical harm from a dangerous condition where the condition violates a duty created by a statute or administrative regulation, and Bastien v. Metropolitan Park Lake Associates applies that principle to a building-code violation, holding that an obvious defect at move-in is not necessarily a bar to recovery when the defect breaches such a duty.
Heat standard type No heat-specific standard beyond the general duty
Heat standard details No heat-specific figures or season stated
Headline repair day count No statutory day count — the notice and repair rules below govern
Notice and repair-window rules No Georgia statute states a repair deadline, a cure period or a notice form. The nearest thing in the chapter is the retaliation section's reference to a tenant who "gave a landlord a notice to repair," and that prescribes no writing, no delivery method, no content and no day count. The timing rule comes from the case law: the tenant must give the landlord notice of the defect and a reasonable opportunity to repair, and only after the landlord fails to repair does the reimbursement or damages claim arise. What counts as a reasonable opportunity depends on the condition and the circumstances. One number belongs nowhere near this question: the three business days in § 44-7-50(c) is the tenant's window to pay before a nonpayment eviction can be filed, not a period for the landlord to make repairs.
Repair and deduct No — no statute or decision authorizes it — No Georgia statute or decision lets a tenant take repair costs off the rent. What the case law gives is a claim, not an offset: after notice to the landlord and a reasonable opportunity to repair, and the landlord's failure to repair, the tenant may make the repairs and look to the landlord for reimbursement, or occupy the premises unrepaired and hold the landlord responsible for damages by action, or by recoupment when the landlord sues for the rent. The covenant to pay rent and the covenant to repair are independent, so a failure to repair does not forfeit the rent and paying less is simply nonpayment, which grounds an eviction filing. Georgia case law also puts a ceiling on what the claim can obtain: in Borochoff Properties the Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed dismissal of a suit seeking to make the landlord repair, precisely because the repair-and-reimburse route is an adequate remedy at law. The widely repeated "$500 or one month's rent, whichever is greater" figure is not Georgia law — it comes from a 2025 bill that never passed.
Rent withholding or escrow No — no statute or decision provides a path — No Georgia statute authorizes rent withholding, and there is no court or agency escrow program for repairs. A tenant who withholds is in nonpayment and can be evicted for it, whatever the condition of the home. Georgia does have a rent-into-court mechanism, but it belongs to the eviction case and it decides possession, not the merits: the answer in a dispossessory proceeding may contain any legal or equitable defense or counterclaim, with no payment condition attached, so a tenant pays nothing to raise a habitability defense or counterclaim. Payment into the court registry is what buys the right to stay in the home while the case is decided, and only where the right of possession cannot be finally determined within two weeks from the date of service. Missing a registry payment produces a writ of possession — it never waives the defense, which is what separates Georgia from the states that make payment the price of being heard. Money the tenant claims back, such as a repair-cost or diminution claim, stays in the registry until the judge decides: the clerk pays the landlord only the portion the tenant has made no claim to.
Termination over habitability failures Yes — supplied by court decisions — No Georgia statute gives a tenant the right to end a lease over the condition of the home. The chapter contains exactly two statutory termination rights, and neither is about repairs: one for service members and one for a tenant with a family-violence or stalking order. The exit route is the common-law doctrine of constructive eviction, which Lewis & Company v. Chisholm states in the same passage as the reimbursement rule — a failure to repair is no eviction and no bar to the claim for rent unless the premises become untenantable for want of repairs, in which case the law treats it as a constructive eviction. That is a demanding standard and it has never been applied by a Georgia appellate court to the habitability term added in 2024.
Essential-service remedies No distinct treatment beyond the general duty — Heat, water, electricity and gas get no separate treatment in Georgia's repair law: there is no procure-and-deduct right, no substitute-housing remedy, no rent abatement and no faster clock for an essential failure. A landlord who deliberately cuts off utilities is a different subject, covered with the eviction rules.
Retaliation protection Protected by a general retaliation statute — The statute counts three months, not a number of days: a residential tenant makes out a case by showing that the landlord acted within three months after the tenant's protected act. Georgia is at the short end of the national range — California runs 180 days, Arizona and Connecticut six months. — O.C.G.A. § 44-7-24 works as a statutory case, not a presumption: the tenant establishes a prima-facie case by demonstrating a protected act and a listed landlord action within the three months. The landlord actions that count are filing a dispossessory action, depriving the tenant of the use of the premises other than as the law allows, decreasing services, increasing the rent or terminating the lease, and materially interfering with the tenant's rights under the lease. Retaliation is both a defense to a dispossessory action and a claim: the tenant may recover a civil penalty of one month's rent plus $500, court costs, reasonable attorney fees where the conduct is willful, wanton or malicious, and declaratory relief — less any delinquent rent or other sums the tenant owes the landlord, so a tenant in arrears can win and still recover nothing. The statute lists what is not retaliation even inside the window: rent increases under an escalation clause for utilities, taxes or insurance; increases or service reductions applied as a pattern across a whole building or complex; increases required by a state or federal program; and evictions or terminations for rent delinquency, intentional property damage or threats to safety, serious lease breaches or criminal acts, or a holdover. Georgia adds a defense found in no other state's repair law: it is a rebuttable defense that the property was inspected within the prior 12 months under a federal, state or local program certifying code compliance, or by a code-enforcement officer or licensed building inspector who certifies compliance. The section applies to residential tenants only, and the anti-waiver list does not cover it. — Exercising or attempting in good faith to exercise a right or remedy granted by contract or law; giving the landlord a notice to repair or to exercise a remedy under the chapter; complaining to a government entity responsible for enforcing building or housing codes, or to a public utility, about a code violation or utility problem that is the landlord's duty to repair, where a reasonable person would believe the complaint valid; and establishing, attempting to establish, or participating in a tenant organization formed to address habitability problems such as life, health or safety concerns.
Damages, penalties, and defenses The measure for a repair claim is the cost of the repairs the tenant made, or the damages caused by the landlord's failure to repair, which the tenant may claim by suit or raise as a recoupment against a claim for rent. There is no statutory penalty, no multiplier and no fee-shifting for a habitability claim: the only attorney-fee provisions in the chapter are the retaliation section's conduct-gated award and the rule voiding a one-way landlord fee clause. Personal injury runs on a separate track. Colquitt v. Rowland holds that § 44-7-13 imposes contractual, but not tort, liability, and that a landlord's liability to an injured third person is decided under § 44-7-14, which makes an out-of-possession landlord answerable for damages arising from defective construction or from the failure to keep the premises in repair; Thompson v. Crownover allows tort liability where the condition violates a duty created by a statute, building code or administrative regulation. Georgia codifies no defenses to a habitability claim — a condition caused by the tenant, lack of notice and refusal of access are all common-law arguments — and it codifies one defense to retaliation, the 12-month inspection certification. Two related statutory rules cut against tenants: the destruction of a rented building by fire, or loss of possession by a casualty the landlord did not cause, does not abate the rent, and a tenant who wins a dispossessory case may stay in the premises with the landlord liable for all foreseeable damages caused by the landlord's wrongful conduct.
Can the duty be waived or shifted Not waivable — any qualifier is stated on this page
Waiver and delegation rules A dwelling lease cannot waive the repair duty. O.C.G.A. § 44-7-2(b) provides that in any contract, lease, license agreement or similar agreement, oral or written, for the use or rental of real property as a dwelling place, neither side may waive, assign, transfer or otherwise avoid the rights, duties or remedies in § 44-7-13 (the landlord's duties as to repairs), § 44-7-14 (liability for failure to repair), ordinances adopted under § 36-61-11, the holdover article, the distress-warrant article, the security-deposit article, or the civil-practice provisions the chapter has not superseded. Two precision points. The bar is scoped by tenancy type, not by building type: there is no owner-occupied, single-family, duplex or small-property exception anywhere in the section, so the duty is unqualified as to what kind of building the home sits in. And the list is closed at seven items — the utility provision, the retaliation section and the two-month deposit cap sit outside it. Georgia has no provision letting a landlord and tenant reassign repair duties to the tenant. One related lease-drafting rule: a clause making the tenant pay the landlord's attorney fees is void unless it also gives the tenant fees when the landlord breaches.
Leading court decisions Lewis & Company v. Chisholm, 68 Ga. 40 (1881) — Where the landlord must keep the premises in repair, a failure to do so does not forfeit the rent, because the covenant to pay rent and the covenant to repair are independent. After notice to the landlord and a reasonable opportunity to repair, the tenant may make the repairs and look to the landlord for reimbursement, or occupy the premises without repair and hold the landlord responsible for damages by action or by recoupment against the claim for rent — unless the premises become untenantable for want of repairs, which the law treats as a constructive eviction. • Borochoff Properties, Inc. v. Creative Printing Enterprises, Inc., 233 Ga. 279, 210 S.E.2d 809 (1974) — Restated the Chisholm rule word for word as long-settled Georgia law and affirmed dismissal of a tenant's suit to compel the landlord to repair: because repair-and-reimbursement, damages and recoupment are available, the remedy at law is adequate and specific performance of a repair covenant will not be ordered. • Colquitt v. Rowland, 265 Ga. 905, 463 S.E.2d 491 (1995) — Read O.C.G.A. § 44-7-13 as making the landlord liable for the cost of repairs or improvements the tenant makes to the property, and held that the section "imposes contractual, but not tort, liability on a landlord." A landlord's liability to a third person injured on rented property is decided under § 44-7-14 instead, and any case implying that § 44-7-13 creates tort liability to a third person was disapproved. • Thompson v. Crownover, 259 Ga. 126, 377 S.E.2d 660 (1989) — Adopting Restatement (Second) of Property § 17.6, held that a landlord may be liable in tort for physical harm from a dangerous condition where the landlord failed to exercise reasonable care to repair it and the condition violated a duty created by statute or administrative regulation — the limb the Court applied was the local housing code, not an implied warranty. Assumption of risk and the obviousness of the defect were jury questions, not grounds for summary judgment. • Bastien v. Metropolitan Park Lake Associates, L.P., 209 Ga. App. 881, 434 S.E.2d 736 (1993) — A defect obvious to the tenant when she took possession — a stairway with no handrail, stipulated to violate the building code — is not necessarily a bar to recovery when the defect violates a duty created by an applicable statute or administrative regulation, and the principle that a landlord cannot avoid duties created by housing codes applies equally to a building code or other regulation affecting the safety of the premises. • Langley v. MP Spring Lake, LLC, 307 Ga. 321, 834 S.E.2d 800 (2019) — The most recent statement of the doctrine by Georgia's highest court: the duties O.C.G.A. § 44-7-13 imposes, including the contractual duty to keep the premises in repair, sound only in contract and not in tort, and a contract claim under the lease and that section is separate from a premises-liability claim against the owner. Tort and contract are alternate vehicles, with different remedies, for a landlord's failure to keep property in repair.
Local rules Local codes do the standard-setting Georgia's statute skips. Because the state duty is a single undefined sentence, the operative requirements a landlord can be held to are usually the city or county building and housing codes, and a landlord who violates a duty created by such a code can be liable in tort for injuries that result — that is how Thompson v. Crownover and Bastien v. Metropolitan Park Lake Associates work. Local law is inside the anti-waiver rule too: a dwelling lease cannot waive rights under ordinances adopted under O.C.G.A. § 36-61-11. Read the code of the city or county where the property sits alongside the state rules on this page.

Cite this page: "Landlord Atlas, Georgia Habitability & Repair Laws (verified August 29, 2026), landlordatlas.com/laws/habitability/georgia/" — free to cite and quote with a link (how these records are verified). Everything above is cited in the citations section below.

Notes and caveats

Common questions: Georgia habitability & repairs

Each answer is the verified value from the table above, restated as a direct answer. Free to quote with a link to this page.

Does Georgia have an implied warranty of habitability?
Statute — no independent court-created warranty operates alongside it. The duty is statutory and the remedies are not — an unusual combination, and the single most important thing to know about Georgia. O.C.G.A. § 44-7-13(a) requires the landlord to keep the premises in repair, and subsection (b), added by the Safe at Home Act and effective July 1, 2024, deems every agreement for the rental of real property as a dwelling place to include a provision that the premises is fit for human habitation.
How long does a landlord have to make repairs in Georgia?
No statutory day count — the notice and repair rules below govern. No Georgia statute states a repair deadline, a cure period or a notice form. The nearest thing in the chapter is the retaliation section's reference to a tenant who "gave a landlord a notice to repair," and that prescribes no writing, no delivery method, no content and no day count.
Can a tenant repair and deduct in Georgia?
No — no statute or decision authorizes it — No Georgia statute or decision lets a tenant take repair costs off the rent. What the case law gives is a claim, not an offset: after notice to the landlord and a reasonable opportunity to repair, and the landlord's failure to repair, the tenant may make the repairs and look to the landlord for reimbursement, or occupy the premises unrepaired and hold the landlord responsible for damages by action, or by recoupment when the landlord sues for the rent.
Can a tenant withhold rent for repair problems in Georgia?
No — no statute or decision provides a path — No Georgia statute authorizes rent withholding, and there is no court or agency escrow program for repairs. A tenant who withholds is in nonpayment and can be evicted for it, whatever the condition of the home.
Can a landlord retaliate against a tenant who complains about repairs in Georgia?
Protected by a general retaliation statute — The statute counts three months, not a number of days: a residential tenant makes out a case by showing that the landlord acted within three months after the tenant's protected act. Georgia is at the short end of the national range — California runs 180 days, Arizona and Connecticut six months. — O.C.G.A. § 44-7-24 works as a statutory case, not a presumption: the tenant establishes a prima-facie case by demonstrating a protected act and a listed landlord action within the three months.
Can a lease make the tenant responsible for repairs in Georgia?
Not waivable — any qualifier is stated on this page. A dwelling lease cannot waive the repair duty. O.C.G.A. § 44-7-2(b) provides that in any contract, lease, license agreement or similar agreement, oral or written, for the use or rental of real property as a dwelling place, neither side may waive, assign, transfer or otherwise avoid the rights, duties or remedies in § 44-7-13 (the landlord's duties as to repairs), § 44-7-14 (liability for failure to repair), ordinances adopted under § 36-61-11, the holdover article, the distress-warrant article, the security-deposit article, or the civil-practice provisions the chapter has not superseded.

Citations

How this record was verified: Direct reading of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, Title 44, Chapter 7, section by section across all six articles in the Code Revision Commission's official code text, current through the 2026 Special Session of the General Assembly, with every History line read; the Governor of Georgia's own signed-act texts of House Bill 404 (2024), House Bill 399 (2025), House Bill 270 (2025), Senate Bill 406 (2026) and House Bill 1268 (2026); and the official reporter texts of Lewis & Company v. Chisholm, Borochoff Properties v. Creative Printing Enterprises, Thompson v. Crownover, Colquitt v. Rowland and Bastien v. Metropolitan Park Lake Associates, each read in full, together with the opinion text of Langley v. MP Spring Lake.