The Georgia records that decide what a home really costs and what the seller has to tell you: disclosure law, property-tax reset, the official registry, and the FEMA flood map — sourced, with the county offices that hold the files.
Check the records behind the address before you offer.
Check any address — free previewThe legal standard: Seller must disclose known latent (hidden) material defects a buyer could not discover by reasonable inspection and must answer direct questions honestly, but no state law requires completing a disclosure form; the GAR F301 form is customary, not mandatory.
Georgia is buyer-beware: the familiar F301 disclosure is voluntary as a matter of state law, so insist on it in your contract and use the due diligence period to inspect. CONFLICT NOTE: some secondary sites claim HB 618 created a mandatory flood disclosure effective in 2025 or 2026, but the legislative tracker shows HB 618 passed the House, was tabled in the Senate on March 31, 2026 and died in chamber, so no enacted Georgia flood-disclosure statute was verified.
Sources: homelight.com · rlkglaw.com · legiscan.com · movewithmomentum.com · ownwell.com · robinlancerealty.com
The seller's floating homestead benefit does not transfer: a new owner's base-year value resets, so your taxable value can start at current value even though the underlying assessment system is annual. File your own homestead (you must own and occupy on January 1, application by April 1 in sources reviewed) to start the inflation cap.
Homestead: A primary residence may claim a standard homestead exemption of $2,000 off the 40 percent assessed value for county and school taxes, plus the statewide floating homestead exemption (HB 581, from 2025) that caps a homesteaded property's annual assessed-value growth at the inflation rate for levies that did not opt out.
Georgia Sex Offender Registry is run by Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI). Search it by the home's address before you offer — and search again before closing, because registry data changes as people move.
Open the official Georgia registry
You can also search every state at once through the federal National Sex Offender Public Website (NSOPW). A CurbFacts report shows the registry count for the home's ZIP — the same public data, organized for the decision.
The only flood map that decides a lender's insurance requirement is FEMA's — the National Flood Hazard Layer behind the official FEMA flood map viewer. Listing sites license private models that can and do disagree with it; when they conflict, the FEMA map is the one your lender and insurer use.
Check the exact parcel, not the ZIP code: flood-zone boundaries cut through streets, and two houses side by side can sit in different zones.
Georgia homestead exemptions do not transfer at sale and the HB 581 floating exemption base resets for a new owner to the prior year's actual value, so a listing's tax figure can badly understate what a buyer will pay.
Georgia sellers need not complete any disclosure form and need not mention defects a reasonable inspection would reveal; the duty covers only known hidden defects, active concealment and dishonest answers, which makes the negotiated due diligence period the buyer's main protection.
What the Georgia disclosure does and does not cover, section by section, and the questions it never answers.
Read the guideHow to run an address through the official Georgia registry, and how to read what comes back.
Read the guideRecords live at the county level — assessor, recorder, permits. Pick the county for its records checklist.
Every CurbFacts report pulls the public records behind an address — flood determination, registry, tax reset, price history, permits, and what's planned nearby — and shows its sources.
Check any address — free preview