If you are buying or selling a home inside the city limits of Atlanta, the Atlanta tree ordinance is one of the least understood rules that can quietly change what a property is worth. It governs whether you can take down the leaning water oak over the driveway in Grant Park, what a builder can clear on an infill lot near the Westside Beltline Trail, and how much a renovation in Virginia-Highland will cost before a single wall comes down. As of 2026, it also costs considerably more money than it used to.
Atlanta City Council approved the first significant rewrite of the Tree Protection Ordinance since 2001 in June 2025, and the biggest financial change took effect on January 1, 2026. If you are shopping intown neighborhoods like Kirkwood, Ormewood Park, Candler Park, Old Fourth Ward, or Buckhead, this is worth twenty minutes of your attention before you write an offer.
What the Atlanta tree ordinance actually requires
On private property inside Atlanta city limits, you need a permit to remove, destroy, or injure any tree measuring six inches or greater in diameter at breast height, commonly written as dbh. The Atlanta Tree Conservation Commission is blunt about the scope: there are no exceptions by species or by present condition. A dead pine still requires a permit. A dying hackberry still requires a permit. On city-owned property, including the street right-of-way, a permit is required regardless of size.
Six inches of diameter is smaller than most people picture. That is a trunk roughly nineteen inches around, about the size of a healthy dogwood or a fifteen-year-old maple. Plenty of trees in an average Kirkwood or East Atlanta Village backyard clear that bar.
Two tracks exist. Removals connected to a building permit are reviewed by the Arborist Division as part of construction plan review. Removals of a dead, dying, diseased, or hazardous tree, which the city abbreviates as DDH, go through a separate application and an inspection by a city forester or arborist.
The 2026 recompense increase and why it changes renovation math
Recompense is the fee the city assesses when a protected tree is removed. Under the old rules the calculation involved a base fee plus a per-inch charge. According to the City of Atlanta statement issued when the ordinance passed, recompense increased to 140 dollars per diameter inch of trunk, effective January 1, 2026. Beginning January 1, 2027 and annually thereafter, that figure adjusts for inflation using the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers for the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell metropolitan statistical area.
Run the math on a real intown lot. A single 24-inch oak carries roughly 3,360 dollars in recompense before you pay a nickel to the tree company for the actual removal and stump grinding. Two mature hardwoods sitting where a new addition or a detached garage needs to go can add five figures to a project budget. On a 50-foot-wide lot in Ormewood Park or Reynoldstown, that is not a rounding error.
The ordinance does offer an alternative. The city credits planting at 1.25 times the number of caliper inches planted, so replanting can offset some or all of what you would otherwise pay. The practical catch intown is space. On a narrow lot with an existing house, a driveway, and setbacks, there may be nowhere to put replacement trees, which means you write the check instead.
Penalties went up too. The city raised the fine for illegal tree removal measured in acres from 100,000 dollars per acre to 200,000 dollars per acre. On the support side, the ordinance increased funding for the low-income senior assistance program to 400,000 dollars a year and added arborist staffing at the Department of City Planning and Parks and Recreation.
News coverage of the ordinance also described per-acre caps on recompense that vary by zoning district, and the city has said additional tree ordinance legislation will come in phases as it works through the Zoning 2.0 rewrite. If you are working on a project where those caps matter, confirm the current figures directly with the Arborist Division rather than relying on any article, including this one.
Dead, dying, diseased, and hazardous trees
This is where most intown homeowners actually interact with the ordinance. A DDH permit is issued free of charge, but it is not automatic. The application is approved or denied based on an inspection by a city forester or arborist. Denied applications may be appealed. Approved permits may not be appealed by neighbors, which is worth knowing if you are the one removing the tree.
Anyone doing the removal must have the permit in hand while the work is happening. Do not let a crew start on a Saturday morning on a verbal assurance that paperwork is coming.
There is a narrow path for genuine emergencies. Per the Tree Conservation Commission, if a tree presents an imminent hazard and the situation occurs outside working hours, you may remove it, but you must leave a message describing the circumstances, take two photographs documenting the condition of the tree, and follow up to obtain a permit within five working days. If the evidence you submit does not support that the tree presented an imminent hazard, the city arborist can still assess recompense and a fine.
Practical advice after a Georgia thunderstorm drops a limb on your roof in Candler Park: photograph the tree from three angles before anything is cut, photograph it during, photograph the stump and root plate after, and get a written assessment from a certified arborist. That file is what protects you.
What the Atlanta tree ordinance means when you are buying intown
Buyers should treat the tree situation as part of due diligence, not landscaping. A few specific things to check:
- If you are buying a teardown or an infill lot, the tree budget is part of the land cost. Walk the lot with a tape measure and a calculator before you commit to a price. Count every trunk at six inches or larger and understand which ones sit inside the future building footprint.
- If you are buying a house with mature trees close to the structure, ask what the owner already knows. A large declining hardwood twelve feet from the foundation is a future permit application, a future removal invoice, and possibly future recompense.
- If you see an orange or a yellow sign posted on a lot near a home you are considering, pay attention. An orange sign means a construction plan has been submitted that may affect trees. A yellow sign means the city arborist has given preliminary approval for removal. The appeal windows attached to those postings are short, measured in days rather than weeks, and published descriptions of the exact durations are not consistent. If you intend to appeal, call the Arborist Division the day you see the sign.
- Ask whether prior tree work was permitted. Enforcement and recompense obligations attach to the property, not to a person who has already moved to Florida.
- Hire from the city's Tree Professional Registry. The Arborist Division maintains a registry of tree professionals, and using a company that knows the permitting process is meaningfully cheaper than using one that does not.
What intown sellers should do before listing
The instinct to tidy up the lot before photos is the single most expensive mistake sellers make here. Do not drop a tree to open up the front elevation. Inside city limits, that is a permit violation waiting to be reported by a neighbor, and the fines under the current ordinance are not trivial.
Instead, do this. If a tree on the property is genuinely dead or hazardous, apply for the DDH permit, get it approved, do the work correctly, and keep the paperwork in your listing file. Buyers' inspectors flag leaning trunks and dead crowns routinely, and having documentation ready turns a renegotiation into a non-issue.
Price with the tree situation in view. Metro Atlanta has loosened considerably. Reported figures for mid-2026 put the metro around five and a half months of supply with a median of roughly 57 days on market, up from a year earlier. Buyers have time to ask questions and room to walk. A lot with three declining hardwoods close to the house now carries a real, quantifiable liability, and a buyer's agent who understands the ordinance will price it in.
City limits matter more than your mailing address
This trips people up constantly. A large number of homes carry an Atlanta mailing address while sitting outside the City of Atlanta. Decatur, Brookhaven, Sandy Springs, Chamblee, Doraville, Smyrna, and unincorporated Fulton and DeKalb all have their own tree rules, and they are not identical to the city's. The 140-dollar-per-inch recompense figure applies inside Atlanta city limits.
Before you rely on anything in this article, confirm which jurisdiction the parcel is actually in. And if the home sits in a designated historic district, expect a second layer of review on top of the tree rules, which can affect timelines on any exterior project.
Questions to ask before you write the offer
- Is this parcel inside the City of Atlanta limits, or does it just have an Atlanta mailing address?
- How many trees on this lot are six inches dbh or larger, and where are they relative to anything I plan to build?
- Has any tree work been done here in the last several years, and was it permitted?
- Are there any open code or arborist cases attached to the property?
- If I need to remove a tree for my planned addition, what is the recompense exposure at 140 dollars per diameter inch?
- Is there physical room on this lot to plant replacement trees and use the 1.25x credit, or will I be writing a check?
None of this should scare anyone away from intown Atlanta. The tree canopy is a large part of why Grant Park, Virginia-Highland, and Candler Park feel the way they feel, and it is a genuine asset to the value of the homes underneath it. The point is to know the rules before you own the problem instead of after.
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Talk to The Corbin Team Before You Commit
The Corbin Team works the entire Atlanta metro, from intown neighborhoods inside the Perimeter to Henry County and the west side. We have walked plenty of lots where the tree math changed the offer. If you are evaluating an intown property, planning an addition, or preparing to list a home with mature trees on it, call us at (678) 783-8937 and we will help you think it through before you are committed.
