Does a Builder Have to Give You a Seller's Disclosure in Georgia?
No. Georgia has no statute requiring any seller, including a homebuilder, to complete a property disclosure form, and new-construction purchase contracts typically do not use the standard resale disclosure form at all. That does not leave you unprotected: Georgia's common-law fraud rule still punishes a builder who hides a known, undiscoverable defect, state law requires a written builder warranty on the work, and a separate pre-suit repair process kicks in if something goes wrong later. Your closing attorney can tell you exactly which protections are built into your specific builder contract.
TL;DR
- Georgia has no law requiring any seller, builder included, to fill out a disclosure form. The disclosure paperwork resale buyers are used to seeing is a contract add-on, not a legal requirement, and new-construction contracts typically skip it entirely.
- A builder can still be held liable for fraud if they actively conceal a known defect you could not have found through a normal walk-through, under the Georgia Supreme Court's 1976 ruling in Wilhite v. Mays.
- Georgia's New Home Warranty Act (O.C.G.A. § 43-41-7) requires a licensed residential contractor to offer you a written warranty on any job over $2,500, and state regulations spell out what that warranty has to cover.
- Before you can sue a builder over a construction defect, Georgia's Right to Repair Act (O.C.G.A. §§ 8-2-35 through 8-2-43) requires 90 days' written notice and gives the builder a chance to inspect and offer repairs first.
- Georgia also limits how long you have to act: 6 years for a written-contract claim, 4 years for a negligent-construction or property-damage claim, and an outer limit of 8 years from substantial completion no matter when you discover the problem.
New construction is everywhere right now in Kennesaw, Acworth, and Marietta, and I get some version of this question from almost every buyer who tours a builder's model home: "Wait, where's the disclosure form?" They've either sold a house before or helped a friend through one, and they remember filling out or reading a seller's disclosure statement. On a brand-new home, that form often just isn't part of the package, and buyers understandably wonder what that means for them.
Here's what I tell every one of them: the absence of that form doesn't mean the absence of protection. It means the protection comes from a different set of rules.
Why New Construction Skips the Usual Disclosure Form
Georgia doesn't actually require a disclosure form for any home sale, new or resale. What most Cobb County resale buyers are used to seeing is the Georgia Association of Realtors' standard seller disclosure form, and that form is a contract requirement, not a statutory one. It becomes part of a deal because the GAR purchase agreement both sides sign references it, not because a state law demands it.
New-construction contracts are usually written by the builder's own attorney, not a GAR resale contract, and they typically don't pull in that resale disclosure form. The thinking makes some sense: the form asks about things like past leaks, past repairs, and known problems with systems that have actually been lived with, and a home that has never been occupied doesn't have that kind of history to report.
That doesn't mean Georgia law has nothing to say about a builder who knows about a real problem and stays quiet. It just means the legal theory is different from a disclosure-form violation.
What Actually Protects You Buying New Construction in Cobb County
Three separate legal tools do the work that a disclosure form does on a resale.
Fraud and Concealment: What Wilhite v. Mays Still Means Today
Georgia follows a "buyer beware" default for real estate, but that default has a hard limit. In Wilhite v. Mays, the Georgia Supreme Court held that a seller who knows about a hidden, serious defect that a buyer could not discover through reasonable diligence, and stays silent about it, commits fraud by suppressing a material fact. The case involved a sewage and water-ponding problem the seller knew about and never mentioned.
That rule applies to a builder the same way it applies to any other seller. If your builder knows about a real defect, standing water under the slab or a grading problem that will flood your crawl space, for example, and actively hides it from you, you have a fraud claim regardless of whether any disclosure form was ever involved.
If you're working with a real estate licensee on the purchase, there's a second layer. Georgia's brokerage relationships statute, O.C.G.A. § 10-6A-5(b)(1), requires a broker working with the seller to tell every party they're working with about adverse, material facts affecting the property's physical condition, when the broker actually knows about them and a buyer's reasonable inspection would not turn them up. That duty only applies to what the broker actually knows. It doesn't require the broker to go looking for problems.
Your Builder's Written Warranty Is Required by Law
Separate from disclosure, Georgia's New Home Warranty Act requires something more concrete. Under O.C.G.A. § 43-41-7, a licensed residential contractor has to offer a written warranty on any contract to build, or manage the building of, a single-family home where the work or the contractor's pay comes to more than $2,500. In practice, that covers essentially every new-home contract in Kennesaw and Acworth.
State regulations (Ga. Comp. R. & Regs. 553-7-.01) set the floor for what that warranty has to spell out:
- How long the warranty lasts, and when the clock starts
- What work and systems it actually covers, measured against the National Association of Home Builders' Residential Construction Performance Guidelines
- What's excluded
- How you file a claim, and what the builder's options are for responding, such as repair, replacement, or payment
Read your builder's warranty before you're under contract, not after you move in. Builders differ widely in how generous the covered items and timeframes are beyond this floor.
Before You Can Sue: Georgia's Right to Repair Act
If a defect shows up and the builder's warranty doesn't resolve it, you can't just file a lawsuit. Georgia's Right to Repair Act, O.C.G.A. §§ 8-2-35 through 8-2-43, requires a specific notice-and-cure process first (this requirement doesn't apply if the defective construction caused a personal injury or death):
- You send the builder written notice, by certified mail or overnight delivery with a return receipt, describing each defect and its results, at least 90 days before you can file suit.
- The builder has 30 days to respond in writing, either proposing an inspection or offering to settle without one.
- If the builder inspects, you have to give access within 30 days, and the builder then has 14 days after the inspection to make a written offer to repair, pay, or both.
- You have 30 days to respond to that offer. Staying silent counts as acceptance.
- You can reject the offer in writing with a detailed explanation, and the builder gets one more chance at a supplemental offer within 15 days.
You're only cleared to sue if the builder refuses to respond, refuses to repair, or fails to follow through on an accepted offer. A court can also limit your remedies later if it finds you rejected a reasonable offer, so this isn't a step to skip or rush through without your own documentation in order.
How Long You Have to Act If a Defect Shows Up Later
Georgia also puts outside limits on how long you have to bring any of these claims, and the clock doesn't always start when you notice the problem.
- A claim for breach of a written contract, like your builder's warranty agreement, generally has to be filed within 6 years of when the obligation became due (O.C.G.A. § 9-3-24).
- A claim for negligent construction or property damage generally has to be filed within 4 years of when your right to sue arose (O.C.G.A. § 9-3-30).
- Separately, Georgia caps construction-defect claims at 8 years from substantial completion of the home, period, under O.C.G.A. § 9-3-51. Georgia courts have enforced this outer limit even in cases where the builder's own actions kept the problem hidden, so it is not a deadline to assume you can extend.
These deadlines interact in ways that depend on the facts of your situation; a construction defect lawyer or your closing attorney can tell you exactly which clock applies and when it started running.
What This Means If You're Buying New Construction in Kennesaw, Acworth, or Marietta
With as much new construction as we have moving through West Cobb right now, this question comes up constantly, and it should. The right takeaway isn't that new construction is riskier than resale. It's that the protections look different, and knowing which ones apply to your contract before you sign is worth the time.
Before you go under contract on a new build, I walk my buyers through exactly what their specific builder's warranty does and doesn't cover, and where the gaps are relative to what a resale disclosure would have told them. That's a conversation worth having before, not after, your closing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a builder required to give me a seller's property disclosure statement in Georgia?
No. Georgia has no statute requiring a disclosure form for any home sale. The disclosure paperwork common in resale deals exists because the purchase contract requires it, and most new-construction contracts are written separately from that resale contract. Ask your closing attorney to confirm what your specific builder contract requires.
Can I sue a builder for hiding a defect in my new Kennesaw home?
You can bring a fraud claim if the builder actually knew about a serious, hidden defect you couldn't have found through a normal walk-through and stayed quiet about it, under the standard Georgia courts have applied since Wilhite v. Mays. You'll generally need to go through the Right to Repair Act's notice process first before filing suit. Document everything and loop in an attorney early if you think this applies to your situation.
What does my builder's warranty have to cover?
Georgia's New Home Warranty Act requires a written warranty on any new-home contract over $2,500, and state rules require it to state its duration, what it covers, what's excluded, and how to file a claim. It does not set a single statewide list of covered items beyond that floor, so builders vary. Read the actual warranty document, not just a sales brochure, before you're under contract.
How long do I have to bring a construction defect claim in Georgia?
It depends on the type of claim: generally 6 years for a written-contract claim and 4 years for a negligent-construction or property-damage claim, with an outside limit of 8 years from substantial completion regardless of when you discovered the issue. These rules have real nuance in how courts apply them, so don't rely on a rough memory of the deadline if you're facing an actual defect; confirm the specific timeline with an attorney.
Does buying new construction in Marietta or Acworth come with different disclosure rules than Kennesaw?
No, these statutes apply statewide, so the same rules cover new construction in Marietta, Acworth, and anywhere else in Georgia. What changes city to city is the volume of new construction and the builders active in that market. You can see more on current build activity on the Kennesaw community page, and the full picture of how new construction compares to resale is worth exploring further on Path2Sold.com.
Buying new construction without the disclosure paperwork you may be expecting from a past resale purchase can feel like you're missing something, but the real protections are just sitting in a different set of documents. Before you sign a builder contract in Kennesaw, it's worth having someone who knows these forms walk through your specific warranty and contract terms with you.
Schedule a consultation with me, Robert Masoudpour, Associate Broker in Atlanta, GA, and I'll walk you through exactly what your builder contract does and doesn't promise before you're locked in. Schedule a 15-minute consultation
