Real estate practice in Georgia, the largest section

Incorrect: Even without rule enforcement, collecting assessments and managing for a fee are licensed activities.

Incorrect: Being an outside contractor is exactly why no employee exemption applies.

Incorrect: Management for compensation needs a license on its own; selling property is not what triggers it.

Correct: O.C.G.A. 43-40-1 counts community association management services and collecting assessments for a fee as acts of a broker, so a paid outside manager must be licensed.

Incorrect: The association's nonprofit status does not exempt the company it hires; the exemption in 43-40-29(a)(8.1) covers the association's own full-time employees.

Incorrect: A retainer does not replace the compensation terms a brokerage engagement must state, and the missing expiration date is a separate defect.

Incorrect: Signatures do not cure terms the rules require the agreement to contain.

Correct: Rule 520-1-.06(1)(a) requires every exclusive brokerage agreement to have a definite expiration date, and O.C.G.A. 10-6A-3(4) defines a brokerage engagement by its promise of compensation; without both the agreement fails.

Incorrect: Agency in Georgia arises from a written brokerage engagement; an implied contract cannot create the representation.

Incorrect: An open-ended exclusive agreement is exactly what the definite-expiration rule forbids.

Correct: Under O.C.G.A. 10-6A-3 a client relationship needs a written brokerage engagement; a seller's broker may help a buyer with ministerial acts without forming one (10-6A-5(c)).

Incorrect: BRRETA (10-6A-4) says a broker is not a fiduciary of any party, and a customer is owed only the duties the chapter lists.

Incorrect: A transaction broker has no client in the deal; this agent already represents the seller.

Incorrect: Dual agency requires a client relationship with both parties and their written consent (10-6A-12); nothing like that exists here.

Incorrect: Help alone does not make a client; Georgia ties client status to a written brokerage engagement.

Incorrect: The rule requires an effective date and a termination date, not an automatic renewal clause.

Correct: Rule 520-1-.06(2)(a) lists what every written management agreement must contain, including the terms and conditions for termination by the broker or the owner.

Incorrect: The rule requires the agreement to state the fee or commission and when it is paid; a net arrangement is not a required clause.

Incorrect: No minimum term is required; the parties set the term.

Incorrect: Promising an occupancy rate is not a required term, and it would be a promise no manager can safely make.

Incorrect: A transaction broker has no clients in the deal; here each party is a client of its own designated agent.

Incorrect: An improper disclosure does not end the brokerage engagements; both parties remain clients.

Incorrect: The buyer also has a brokerage engagement with the firm, through B.

Incorrect: Appointing designated agents is the alternative to dual agency under BRRETA, so no dual-agency consent is needed.

Correct: O.C.G.A. 10-6A-13(b): when a broker appoints different designated agents, neither the firm nor its licensees are dual agents; A's slip is a confidentiality breach, not a change of relationship.

Incorrect: Nothing needs amending; a late deposit is a performance question under the contract, not a reason to rewrite the binding date.

Incorrect: The contract date does not replace the trust record; the rule requires the amount and date of every escrow deposit.

Incorrect: Clearing the bank does not excuse the record: the trust ledger must show the deposit and its date, and contract deposit deadlines can run from receipt.

Correct: Rule 520-1-.08(2)(a) requires the trust accounting to show the amount and date of each deposit, while the contract's deadlines keep running from the binding agreement date it defines.

Incorrect: When the money arrived does not move the date on which the parties' final acceptance became binding.

Correct: Rule 520-1-.06(4)(b) requires the written disclosure to be timely and, in any event, made no later than the time any party first makes an offer.

Incorrect: First substantive contact is the trigger in some states' laws; the GREC rule's outer limit is the first offer, with timeliness judged by the circumstances.

Incorrect: A signed contract comes after the offer, so disclosure at that point is already late.

Incorrect: The rule does not require disclosure before any talk about a property; it fixes the first offer as the latest point.

Incorrect: Handing over contact details triggers nothing under the rule; the deadline is tied to the first offer.

Correct: Rule 520-1-.06(3)(a) requires coverage of the most association money the broker controls at any time, never less than three months of assessments plus required reserves, with the association as an additional named insured.

Incorrect: The rule's floor adds the required reserves to three months of assessments, and coverage must reach the full $80,000 controlled anyway.

Incorrect: One month's assessment is far below both the funds controlled and the rule's three-month floor.

Incorrect: The association has to be named as an additional named insured so that the coverage protects its money.

Incorrect: $60,000 is the threshold above which a bond is required, not the amount of coverage.

Correct: Rule 520-1-.06(1)(b): at the time a brokerage engagement is secured, the licensee must give each person who signs it a true copy.

Incorrect: The duty runs from the seller's signature, not from a later countersignature by the broker.

Incorrect: Waiting for a contract would leave the seller without the terms they signed for weeks or months.

Incorrect: The rule sets no grace period; the copy is due when the agreement is signed.

Incorrect: Handing over the copy is mandatory, not something the seller has to request.

Incorrect: Monthly statements are common and can be agreed in the contract, but the rule's minimum is annual.

Correct: Rule 520-1-.06(2)(a)3 requires the agreement to specify the periodic statements and says they must be given to the owner at least annually.

Incorrect: The rule makes periodic statements a required term, not a service on request.

Incorrect: Quarterly reporting is a contract choice; the rule only requires at least one statement a year.

Incorrect: A final accounting at termination is a separate duty; periodic statements are due during the agreement too.

Correct: O.C.G.A. 43-40-25(b)(34) makes it an unfair trade practice to fail to deliver the records, documents and funds within 30 days of termination, unless the contract sets another period.

Incorrect: The deadline runs from the termination of the management agreement, not from the end of a lease.

Incorrect: The statute does not let the broker hold the owner's records and funds as leverage for a fee dispute.

Incorrect: Sixty days is double the statutory period.

Incorrect: Ten days appears elsewhere in the statute (removing signs after a listing expires), not here.

Incorrect: BRRETA says the opposite: a dual agent represents two clients whose interests are or could be adverse, and brokers are not fiduciaries (10-6A-4).

Correct: O.C.G.A. 10-6A-12(a)(5) lists, among the required contents, a statement that the client does not have to consent to the dual agency.

Incorrect: No such statement is required, and the statute even lets the broker withdraw before a dual agency exists.

Incorrect: Compensation is not among the required contents of the dual agency consent.

Incorrect: The consent must say the dual agent discloses adverse material facts, except information a client has made confidential.

Incorrect: The statute imposes no reporting duty for dual agency transactions.

Incorrect: The Commission does not approve individual dual agencies; written client consent is what the statute requires.

Incorrect: Customers are not represented, so a deal with two customers is not a dual agency at all.

Incorrect: A firm is free to reject dual agency altogether through its office policy.

Correct: O.C.G.A. 10-6A-12(f) requires every broker to develop and enforce an office brokerage relationship policy that either permits or rejects disclosed dual agency, and to disclose it to clients.

Correct: O.C.G.A. 10-6A-5(b)(2) requires a seller's broker to timely disclose known adverse physical conditions within one mile of the property that a diligent inspection or a review of public records would not reveal.

Incorrect: Disclosure after the contract is not timely; the buyer needs it before deciding.

Incorrect: The duty to disclose is affirmative and timely; it does not wait for the right question.

Incorrect: BRRETA gives a seller's broker specific disclosure duties to all parties it works with, not only to the seller.

Incorrect: The statute expressly covers adverse conditions in the immediate neighborhood within one mile.

Incorrect: The buyer has no say over what the seller's broker presents to the seller.

Incorrect: The statute requires presenting all offers even when the property is under contract.

Incorrect: A signed contract is not a closing; the engagement continues until it ends by its terms.

Correct: O.C.G.A. 10-6A-5(a)(2)(A)-(B): the broker is not obligated to seek additional offers while the property is under contract unless the engagement says so, yet must timely present all offers, even then.

Incorrect: Continued marketing is required only if the brokerage engagement provides for it.

Incorrect: Choosing protective terms for the buyer is advocacy, not a ministerial act.

Incorrect: Judging an offer's strength exercises professional judgment for one side.

Incorrect: Pricing advice calls for the broker's professional judgment, which makes it more than a ministerial act.

Incorrect: Negotiating on the buyer's behalf is representation, which a transaction broker does not provide.

Correct: O.C.G.A. 10-6A-14(a)(4) lists acting as a scribe in preparing form contracts among the ministerial acts a transaction broker may perform.

Incorrect: A personal account mixes the tenant's money with her own; the rule calls for a trust account.

Incorrect: The rule addresses exactly this case: a licensee managing her own rental.

Incorrect: An operating account is not a trust account; the deposit would be commingled with firm money.

Correct: Rule 520-1-.08(4)(c): a licensee who manages rental property she owns must keep the security deposits in a designated trust account and may not post a bond instead.

Incorrect: The rule expressly forbids a bond in lieu of keeping the deposits in a trust account.

Correct: Rule 520-1-.08(4)(a): before paying a bill for an owner from a rental trust account, enough money must be credited and deposited to that owner's account to cover it.

Incorrect: Security deposits must stay credited to the tenants, and the balance must always equal their total.

Incorrect: Using other owners' money for Lee's bill is a misuse of trust funds, however brief.

Incorrect: The test is Lee's own credited balance, not the total in the account.

Incorrect: A negative owner balance means another owner's funds paid the bill.

Incorrect: The board's written request lets the licensee propose while the current agreement is in force.

Incorrect: Price has nothing to do with it; the written board request is what allows the proposal.

Correct: O.C.G.A. 43-40-25(b)(26) bars seeking an agreement from a party under another broker's exclusive, but expressly permits a community association management proposal when the board requests it in writing.

Incorrect: Permission from the first broker is the general rule, but the statute makes an exception for a written request from the board.

Incorrect: The exception requires a written request from the association's board of directors, not from an owner.

Incorrect: Telling buyers does not replace the consent the association must give.

Incorrect: The Commission does not approve individual listings; the consent comes from the association.

Incorrect: A listing is needed, but the statute adds the association's written consent for a firm that manages it.

Incorrect: The statute asks for the association's consent, not a vote of the membership.

Correct: O.C.G.A. 43-40-25(b)(32) makes it an unfair trade practice to try to sell a member's property, while providing management services to that association, without the association's express written consent.