Georgia exempts the deed into your LLC, and separately refuses to tax the mortgage that comes with it

Why the Deed Into Your LLC Is Exempt in Georgia

Two provisions do the work here and it is worth knowing both, because they fail in different circumstances.

The first is the entity exemption at O.C.G.A. § 48-6-2(a)(11)(A). Read its terms carefully rather than as "transfers to your own LLC are exempt." It runs from "one or more individual owners" to an entity, and it requires that those same individual owners "have a majority ownership interest" in the entity receiving the property. Sole owner to single-member LLC clears it easily. Two co-owners deeding jointly to an LLC they hold between them clears it as long as their combined interest is a majority.

What is outside it is a transfer from an entity to another entity, or a transfer to an LLC in which the property's owners end up holding a minority, bringing an investor in with the controlling share as part of the same transaction is the version of this that goes wrong. Subparagraph (B) exempts the reverse direction, so the route back out is provided for. There is also a separate exemption at § 48-6-2(a)(2) for "any deed of gift."

The second is the parenthetical in the imposition section itself. Section 48-6-1 taxes a deed "when the consideration or value of the interest or property conveyed (exclusive of the value of any lien or encumbrance existing prior to the sale and not removed by the sale)" exceeds a small statutory figure. Two conditions inside those brackets matter: the lien has to exist before the transfer, and it has to survive it. A mortgage the LLC takes the property subject to satisfies both. The practical effect is that a Georgia landlord who somehow falls outside the entity exemption still would not be taxed on the mortgage, the carve-out is in the imposition section itself and does not depend on any exemption being claimed.

Georgia collects this tax through the clerk of superior court in the county where the property lies, and the Department of Revenue notes that "the seller is liable for the real estate transfer tax, though frequently the parties agree in the sales contract that the buyer will pay the tax", on a transfer to your own LLC that distinction is academic, but it explains why the form is drafted the way it is. Claiming an exemption does not mean filing nothing: the parties still complete the PT-61 real estate transfer tax form and disclose the consideration on it. That form goes to the clerk with the deed.

A sourcing note. Georgia does not publish its code on a host that automated tools can read, the General Assembly's site serves the code only through a session-based search application, and the state's designated free access point redirects into a JavaScript container. The Department of Revenue's own page confirms the rate and the seller's liability but does not restate the exemptions or the lien carve-out, so the statutory text above came from a permitted legal mirror. We also did not read the whole of chapter 48-6, so while we found no county or municipal transfer tax authority in it, treat that negative as good rather than exhaustive.

Authority: O.C.G.A. § 48-6-2(a)(11)(A). dor.georgia.gov

Does the Transfer Reset Your Property Tax in Georgia?

No. Georgia does not cap a property’s assessed value at what you paid for it, assessments track market value on the assessor’s own cycle regardless of who holds title. A deed from you to an LLC you own does not change the assessment, because there was never an acquisition-date value locked in to lose. This is the part of the California story that gets copied onto pages about states where it simply does not apply.

Georgia gets to that answer by revaluing everything every year rather than by having no cap. The Department of Revenue states the rule in its own words, "all property is to be returned and assessed at fair market value every year" under O.C.G.A. § 48-5-6, and "in Georgia property is required to be assessed at 40% of the fair market value unless otherwise specified by law," the same ratio the statute carries at § 48-5-7(a). Value is redetermined against the market annually, so there is no acquisition-value base for a deed to reset and no accumulated cap benefit to lose.

There is one place a sale price does bite, and it is worth knowing precisely because it does not apply to you. O.C.G.A. § 48-5-2(3) provides that "the transaction amount of the most recent arm's length, bona fide sale in any year shall be the maximum allowable fair market value for the next taxable year", a ceiling that a buyer who overpaid nobody would want, and a floor nobody wants either.

An LLC deed cannot trigger it, because the same section defines an arm's length, bona fide sale as "a transaction which has occurred in good faith without fraud or deceit carried out by unrelated or unaffiliated parties, as by a willing buyer and a willing seller, each acting in his or her own self-interest." You and your own LLC are affiliated parties. The deed neither raises your assessment nor buys you a ceiling.

Two honest limits on this block. That arm's-length ceiling sub-point is supported by a legal mirror only. We tried the Department's valuation page and its local government services digest-compliance material, and neither addresses what a sale price does to the next year's value, so a reader who wants it on an official source will need the Georgia assessors' handbook or a Local Government Services bulletin. And we did not verify the statewide floating homestead exemption enacted by HB 581 in 2024 at O.C.G.A. § 48-5-44.2, which caps homestead assessed-value growth in jurisdictions that did not opt out of it. That exemption is homestead-only, so it changes nothing for a property that has always been a rental, but an owner converting a former residence would lose it along with the ordinary homestead exemption, and this record does not source it.

Separately, and this catches people converting a former home into a rental: the benefits that turn on owning and occupying the property as your residence, a homestead exemption, an owner-occupancy credit, a residential assessment rate, are not things an LLC occupies a home to earn. Where the property still carries one, the deed puts it at risk, and the bill goes up whether or not the assessment itself moves. Which benefit is at stake, and on what terms, is a question for the assessor in the county the property sits in.

Authority: O.C.G.A. § 48-5-6; § 48-5-7(a); § 48-5-2(3); § 48-5-40, dor.georgia.gov

Moving a Property You Already Own Into the LLC in Georgia

1. 1

   Check that the owners will hold a majority of the LLC

   The exemption at § 48-6-2(a)(11)(A) runs from individual owners to an entity in which those same owners have "a majority ownership interest." Sole owner to single-member LLC is clear. If someone else is coming into the LLC as part of the same arrangement, work out the percentages before the deed rather than after, because a minority position takes the transfer outside the exemption.

2. 2

   Form the LLC with the Secretary of State and get it operational

   File the articles of organization with the Corporations Division, adopt a written operating agreement, and open the bank account before the deed is drawn. In Georgia the operating agreement carries extra weight, because § 14-11-504(b)'s creditor protections apply "except as otherwise provided in the articles of organization or a written operating agreement". What your documents say is capable of changing the analysis.

3. 3

   Ask your lender in writing before recording

   Georgia's transfer tax exemption has nothing to do with your loan. Deeding to an LLC is a transfer of title, which is what a due-on-sale clause is written to catch, and that's a federal and contractual question rather than a Georgia one. Get the servicer's position in writing first. The fact that the state doesn't tax the mortgage doesn't mean the lender is indifferent to it.

4. 4

   Have the deed and the PT-61 prepared together

   The PT-61 real estate transfer tax form is filed with the clerk of superior court alongside the deed, and it's where the consideration is disclosed and the exemption identified. An exempt transfer is still a filed transfer. Ask the clerk's office in that county what it expects to see supporting a § 48-6-2(a)(11)(A) claim.

5. 5

   Deal with the homestead exemption before January 1

   If the property was your residence, the homestead exemption depends on the home being "owned by the homeowner and ... their legal residence as of January 1 of the taxable year" and on the person actually occupying it. Both fail once it becomes a rental in an LLC. Talk to the county board of tax assessors about the timing rather than discovering the change on a bill.

One LLC Per Property, or One for the Portfolio?

Georgia has no series LLC statute, so separating properties means a separate LLC for each one.

The Georgia negative was established by enumeration rather than by assumption. The Georgia Limited Liability Company Act is O.C.G.A. title 14, chapter 11, organised into eleven articles, general provisions, formation, agency and management, finance, LLC interests and admission of members, dissociation and dissolution, foreign LLCs, derivative actions, merger, dissenters' rights and miscellaneous. We pulled the section list for every one of the eleven and searched each for "series." Zero matches in all eleven. There is no series section, no provision limiting the debts of one series to the assets of that series, and no protected or registered series regime.

That answer carries a caveat we would rather state than bury. No official Georgia host was reachable for the code: the General Assembly's site returned an authentication error from its API, the designated free access point redirects to a JavaScript container, and the Secretary of State's site refused every request. The mirror we used carries a "last modified" date of October 2016 on its face, which means a post-2016 amendment adding series would not necessarily be reflected in what we read. Nothing suggests one exists. If a series structure is central to your plan rather than incidental, confirm the current position with the Corporations Division of the Secretary of State before you build around it.

The practical Georgia consequence of separate LLCs is at least cheap on the conveyancing side. Each property is its own deed and its own PT-61, but the entity exemption applies to each of them, and the lien carve-out means a financed property is no more expensive to move than an unencumbered one. The recurring cost of running several entities is where the money actually goes.

Practically, that leaves the familiar trade-off. Separate LLCs mean separate filing fees, separate annual reports, separate registered agents and separate bank accounts, every year, for as long as you hold the properties. One LLC holding several properties means one set of costs and one pool of assets exposed to a claim arising at any of them. Which side of that you land on is a function of how much equity is in the portfolio, and it is worth pricing the recurring cost before deciding, our Georgia LLC cost breakdown has the per-entity figures.

What Creditors Can Reach, What the Georgia Statute Says

The reason to hold a rental in an LLC is usually to keep a claim arising at the property from reaching everything else you own. The reverse question matters just as much and gets far less attention: if someone wins a judgment against you personally, can they reach the rental inside the LLC? That is what a state’s charging-order provision decides.

Georgia's LLC act contains no exclusive-remedy provision.

Georgia's section is unusual in the other direction from most asset-protection marketing, and it says so in terms. O.C.G.A. § 14-11-504(b) provides that "the remedy conferred by this Code section shall not be deemed exclusive of others which may exist, including, without limitation, the right of a judgment creditor to reach the limited liability company interest of the member by process of garnishment served on the limited liability company." Most states' LLC acts declare the charging order the exclusive remedy. Georgia's declares the opposite and names an alternative route.

The same subsection then restricts what a creditor can do once it gets there: "provided that, except as otherwise provided in the articles of organization or a written operating agreement, a judgment creditor shall have no right under this chapter or any other state law to interfere with the management or force dissolution of a limited liability company or to seek an order of the court requiring a foreclosure sale of the limited liability company interest."

Foreclosure of the interest is off the table, forced dissolution is off the table, and interference with management is off the table. Note the opening words of the proviso, because they cut the other way: those protections apply "except as otherwise provided in the articles of organization or a written operating agreement." What your own documents say is capable of mattering here in a way it does not in states where the statute is unconditional.

Subsection (a) is conventional: on application by a judgment creditor "the court may charge the limited liability company interest of the member or such assignee with payment of the unsatisfied amount of the judgment with interest," and "to the extent so charged, the judgment creditor has only the rights of an assignee of the limited liability company interest." The section makes no distinction based on the number of members, no form of "single member," "one member" or "sole member" appears in it, so a one-owner rental LLC and a multi-owner one read the same. Two independent legal mirrors carried this text word for word; as noted above, no official Georgia host was reachable, so a Georgia attorney working from the current official code is the right check before anything turns on it.

We are reporting what the section says, not what a court would do with your facts. Outcomes turn on how the LLC was capitalised, how it has been operated and what the creditor is owed, and none of that is something a page can assess. If the answer above is load-bearing for you, it is a question for a Georgia attorney.

Authority: O.C.G.A. § 14-11-504, law.onecle.com

Three Problems No State Transfer Rule Solves

These land the same way in Georgia as everywhere else. One because it is federal law, two because they are contracts you signed. Which is exactly why they get left off state pages. They are also the three most likely to actually cost a landlord money, so they are here rather than buried.

The due-on-sale point is the one that generates the most bad advice. The Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act, at 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3(d), bars a lender from enforcing a due-on-sale clause on nine categories of transfer of residential property of fewer than five dwelling units. The one people cite is the eighth: a transfer into an inter vivos trust in which the borrower is and remains a beneficiary and which does not relate to a transfer of rights of occupancy in the property. Neither that paragraph nor any of the other eight names a transfer to a limited liability company. The protection quoted for an LLC transfer is written for trusts, and the occupancy qualifier is the limb that matters most to a landlord, because a rental is occupied by someone else.

One honest caveat on that list. The ninth category is open-ended. It reaches any other transfer described in regulations issued under the Act, at 12 C.F.R. § 591.5(b), so it is a list that can be extended by regulation rather than a closed set fixed by the statute. We have not read those regulations end to end, and say so rather than describing the statute as more settled than we checked.

In practice lenders often do not call a loan when payments keep arriving, and that is genuinely what usually happens, but “usually not enforced” is a different thing from “not permitted,” and only one of them is a plan. The way to find out is to ask your servicer for written consent before you record, not after.

Which deed you use is a decision, not a formality. A quitclaim deed transfers whatever interest you happen to have and warrants nothing, which is why it is the cheap default for a transfer between yourself and your own company, and why title professionals warn against it. It can leave a gap in the chain of title that surfaces years later when you sell or refinance, and because it warrants nothing it gives the LLC no recourse against you if a defect turns up. A warranty deed carries the covenants across. Which one is appropriate depends on how the property was acquired and what your title history looks like, and it is a question worth asking before the deed is drafted rather than after it is recorded.

Tell your title insurer before you record. An owner’s title policy insures the person named in it. Convey the property to an LLC and the insured owner and the record owner are no longer the same. Which is the fact pattern in which coverage gets argued about at the worst possible moment, when a claim is already live. Some insurers will endorse an existing policy across to the entity, sometimes for a modest fee; some will not, and a new policy means a new premium on the current value. Either way it is a phone call before the deed rather than a discovery afterwards, and it belongs in the same budget as the tax above.

On the fourth thing people ask about: beneficial ownership reporting. Under 31 C.F.R. § 1010.380, a “reporting company” is an entity formed outside the United States and registered to do business in a State, and paragraph (c)(2)(xxiv) separately exempts any entity created by filing with a Secretary of State. A rental LLC you form in Georgia is therefore exempt and files no beneficial ownership report. Pages telling you to file within 30 days of formation are describing the rule as it stood before March 2025. The exception runs the other way: an LLC formed in another country and registered to do business in Georgia does still report. More on what compliance actually requires →

Does Georgia Make You Register the Rental?

Not at the state level. Georgia runs no statewide rental registry, so registration is a municipal question, and what a municipality may require varies, in some states a city can impose an annual licence with an inspection, and in others state law caps or forbids local registries outright. The LLC does not change the answer either way: the duty attaches to the rental unit, not to the form of the owner. Check with the city or county the property sits in.

Georgia's position is an absence rather than a statement, and we want to be precise about which one it is. The Georgia Landlord-Tenant Handbook, published jointly by the Department of Community Affairs and the Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division, sets out what governs the relationship, "federal and state legislatures create laws that affect landlord-tenant relationships. Local counties and cities may also enact housing codes that affect rental property", and the list that follows is the Georgia Landlord-Tenant Act, the Georgia Fair Housing Law and the federal fair housing statutes. Neither that list nor the handbook's treatment of leases, deposits, repairs, access and eviction contains a registration or licensing step, and Georgia has no state housing agency running a rental registry. So the negative rests on a comprehensive state publication not mentioning a duty, which is strong but is not the same as a state agency affirmatively saying none exists. What is common in Georgia is local: city and county rental registration schemes, occupational tax certificates and short-term rental permits are widespread and are entirely the local government's own.

consumer.georgia.gov

If You Rent Short-Term in Georgia

A short-term let is a different tax animal from a twelve-month tenancy, and the LLC has nothing to do with it. The lodging tax follows the stay, not the owner.

Georgia stacks two different state charges on a short-term stay, and they stop at different points. Which is the trap, because a reader who learns one threshold assumes it governs both. The percentage sales tax on accommodations comes from O.C.G.A. § 48-8-2(31)(B), which brings into "retail sale" the charges for "any room, lodging, or accommodation furnished to transients" and then switches it off for accommodations "supplied for a period of" the run of continuous days shown in the table above "or more."

The flat state hotel-motel fee is separate, imposed by § 48-13-50.3(b) on "each innkeeper in this state" per calendar day a room is rented, and the Department of Revenue defines its cutoff much earlier: "an extended stay rental is the rental of a hotel room for 31 or more consecutive days to the same customer." A booking that runs six weeks has passed the flat fee's cutoff and is still inside the sales tax.

Both reach short-term rentals, not just hotels. The Department describes the flat fee as covering "hotels, motels, inns, cabins, and other short-term rentals managed through online marketplaces," and states that "marketplace innkeepers (online platforms facilitating bookings) must collect and remit the fee rather than individual property owners", a duty that came in with HB 317 in 2021. Local hotel-motel excise taxes and county and city sales taxes stack on top of the state figures shown above.

A platform collecting the state tax does not always cover every local tax on the same booking, and it never covers a booking taken directly. If you take reservations off-platform as well, that is where the exposure sits.

Authority: O.C.G.A. §§ 48-8-2(31)(B), 48-8-30(b)(1), 48-13-50.3, dor.georgia.gov

Who to Ask in Georgia

The clerk of superior court in the county where the property sits records the deed and takes the PT-61, and is the office to ask how it wants an exemption under § 48-6-2(a)(11)(A) presented. The county board of tax assessors handles the annual fair market valuation and the homestead exemption, and is the right call before converting a former residence into a rental. The Georgia Department of Revenue publishes the real estate transfer tax guidance, the state hotel-motel fee FAQ and the sales tax rate charts at dor.georgia.gov.

Entity filings go to the Corporations Division of the Secretary of State, worth contacting directly on any series question, given that we couldn't reach an official copy of the Georgia Code. For the landlord-tenant relationship itself, the Georgia Landlord-Tenant Handbook is hosted by the Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division and linked from the Department of Community Affairs. One limitation to carry with everything above, stated plainly because it applies to the page as a whole rather than to any one paragraph: not every claim here rests on an official Georgia source.

The Department of Revenue's own pages carry the transfer tax rate, the seller's liability, the annual fair-market-value standard and the homestead occupancy test, but the statutory text of the Georgia Code quoted on this page came from permitted legal mirrors, because no state-published copy of the Code was reachable to us. Two mirrors agreeing word for word is good evidence and it's not the same thing as the official current code, so anything you're about to act on should be confirmed against the Code itself or with a Georgia attorney.

Forming the LLC Itself

Nothing about the formation process changes because the LLC will hold rental property, the articles, the registered agent requirement and the annual filing are the same as for any other Georgia LLC. The walkthrough lives in the formation guide rather than being repeated here.

How to start an LLC in Georgia →

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