How to buy tax-forfeited land
Tax-forfeited land is property the government took because the taxes were not paid, and is now selling. Buying tax forfeited land is therefore a purchase from a county or a state rather than from an owner, and that single fact changes the title you receive, the diligence you have to do, and the reason the parcel is available at all.
It is a different transaction from a mortgage foreclosure and a different one again from a tax lien sale, and the differences are not cosmetic. Different statute, different timeline, different title, and a different explanation for why the parcel is available at all.
How a parcel becomes forfeited#
The sequence varies by state but the shape is consistent.
Taxes go unpaid. One year, usually with penalties and interest accruing.
The county obtains a judgment or files a certificate of delinquency, depending on the state. This is the point at which the process becomes formal and public.
A statutory redemption period runs. Commonly one to five years. The owner, or anyone with an interest, can pay everything owed and stop the process. This period is much longer than the redemption period after a mortgage foreclosure, because legislatures have generally been reluctant to let people lose a property over a few thousand dollars in tax.
Forfeiture completes. Title passes to the state or the county.
The parcel is offered for sale. Public auction, sealed bid, or over the counter from unsold inventory, on the government's schedule.
The whole process commonly takes three to six years. A parcel at a forfeiture sale has been in trouble for a long time.
Who runs the sale, and what you buy#
There is no national system. The office and the instrument both differ.
| State | Administered by | What you receive |
|---|---|---|
| Minnesota | County auditor, under ch. 282 | State deed |
| Michigan | County treasurer, then state auction | Quit claim deed |
| Arkansas | Commissioner of State Lands | Limited warranty deed |
| Oregon | County, after foreclosure of the lien | County deed |
| Washington | County treasurer | Treasurer's deed |
| Wisconsin | County, after in rem foreclosure | Quit claim deed |
| North Dakota | County auditor | County deed |
| Idaho | County, after tax deed | County deed |
| California | County tax collector | Tax deed |
| New York | County or city, varies widely | Deed, form varies |
| Pennsylvania | County tax claim bureau, upset then judicial | Deed; judicial sale is free of liens |
| Kansas | Sheriff, after judicial foreclosure | Sheriff's deed |
| Maine | Municipality, after automatic foreclosure | Municipal deed |
| Nevada | County treasurer | Trustee's deed |
| New Mexico | State taxation department | State deed |
| Utah | County | Tax deed |
| Virginia | Judicial sale | Special commissioner's deed |
The remaining states route through a tax lien or certificate first, and the property is only sold after the certificate holder forecloses. Those are covered in the companion article on tax deed versus tax lien systems.
| Lien-first states |
|---|
| Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware |
| Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa |
| Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi |
| Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina |
| Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee |
| Texas, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming |
Verify locally. Several states permit both and county practice differs within states.
Minnesota: forfeiture under chapter 282#
Minnesota does not sell tax liens at all, and its process is worth setting out because it is unusually clean and frequently misunderstood by out-of-state buyers.
The clock. Taxes become delinquent, the county obtains a tax judgment — entered on the second Monday in May of the year following delinquency — and a statutory redemption period runs from that judgment. Three years for most homestead and agricultural property, five years for other classifications, and shorter where the property is vacant or abandoned.
Forfeiture. If nobody redeems, the parcel forfeits to the State of Minnesota absolutely. Not to the county, and not to a private certificate holder.
The sale. The county board classifies forfeited parcels as conservation or non-conservation, and non-conservation land is offered for public sale under Minn. Stat. ch. 282. Sales are typically annual or semi-annual, conducted by the county auditor or land department, with a published list and a minimum bid set by appraisal.
Terms. Full payment or, in many counties, a contract for deed with a down payment and instalments. Counties also sell unsold parcels over the counter between auctions.
Repurchase by the former owner. Minnesota permits an application to repurchase forfeited land in defined circumstances, at the county board's discretion. This is unusual and it means a forfeited parcel is not always finally gone.
Where the inventory is. St Louis County holds one of the largest forfeited land programmes in the country, a legacy of iron range and cutover timber land. Aitkin, Cass, Itasca, Koochiching, Beltrami and Hennepin all carry significant inventory, and the character differs enormously — Hennepin's forfeited parcels are urban lots and structures, while northern counties hold large rural acreages.
Two clocks that must not be confused. Minnesota's mortgage foreclosure redemption is six months from the sheriff's sale. Tax forfeiture runs three to five years from judgment. Pooling them produces nonsense — when 335 forfeiture windows were mistakenly included in a survival analysis of mortgage redemption, "reached a foreclosure sale within one year" read 18.8% instead of the correct 33.0%, because forfeiture windows average 921 days and never resolve the same way.
What you actually get: title#
This is the part that surprises first-time buyers, and it is the main practical risk.
You receive a tax deed, state deed or quit claim deed — not a warranty deed. It conveys whatever interest the government held. It makes no promise that the title is good.
Many title insurers will not insure it until a quiet title action has been completed: a lawsuit that names everyone with a possible interest, gives them notice, and asks a court to declare your title good against all of them.
That costs money and months. Budget for legal fees and several months of delay, and note that you cannot conventionally finance or comfortably resell the parcel until it is done.
Some states convey a stronger title than others. Pennsylvania's judicial sale conveys free and clear where the upset sale does not. Minnesota's state deed is comparatively strong. Others are weak enough that quiet title is routine rather than exceptional.
Ask before bidding: will a local title company insure this deed, and if not, what does quiet title cost here? Two phone calls, and they change the economics of the purchase.
What survives, and what does not#
Forfeiture is powerful because the tax claim is senior to almost everything.
Usually extinguished: mortgages, deeds of trust, judgment liens, mechanic's liens, most junior encumbrances.
Usually survives:
- Special assessments — sewer, sidewalk, demolition, board-up
- Federal tax liens, commonly with a statutory right for the IRS to redeem
- Easements — utility, access, drainage — which are property rights rather than debts
- Restrictive covenants
- Environmental liability, which follows the land regardless of how you acquired it
- Existing leases, in some states
The mortgage point deserves emphasis. A tax deed can wipe out a mortgage, which sounds like an opportunity and is mostly a warning. Lenders watch tax delinquency closely — escrow accounts exist largely for this — and will pay the taxes themselves rather than lose their security.
So a parcel that reaches forfeiture with real value and no lender intervening is telling you something. Usually one of three things: there is no mortgage, the property has a problem the lender chose not to pay for, or the owner died and nobody opened probate — the tangled title case, where heirs may not know they own it and nobody has standing to pay the bill.
Why most forfeited inventory is cheap#
Forfeiture sales are advertised as bargains. Some are. The composition of what remains unsold explains the rest.
Landlocked and unbuildable parcels. Slivers left by road widening, strips with no legal access, lots too small for the current zoning. These do not become buildable because you bought them.
Contaminated or remediation-liable land. Former petrol stations, dry cleaners, industrial sites. The tax debt is trivial next to the cleanup, which is precisely why nobody paid it.
Structures under demolition order. The city will bill the owner for the teardown, and you are now the owner.
Wetland, floodplain and steep ground. Common in rural forfeited inventory. Assessed at low value for a reason.
Genuinely abandoned property in declining markets, where the land is worth less than the accumulated tax.
And a minority that are simply good parcels where the owner died, moved away, or lost track. Those are the ones worth the research, and they are found by doing the research rather than by bidding on everything cheap.
Tyler v. Hennepin County, and surplus#
In 2023 the Supreme Court held that a government keeping equity beyond the tax debt is an unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment. Geraldine Tyler owed about $15,000 on a condominium the county sold for $40,000 and kept all of it.
Two consequences for a buyer.
The arithmetic changed for counties. Where a county previously retained the whole sale price, the surplus now belongs to the former owner. That alters what forfeiture recovers and, in some states, how aggressively it is pursued.
Unclaimed surplus is a live niche, and a fraught one. Former owners often do not know they are owed anything and a claim process exists that many never use. Whether recovering it on someone's behalf is a service or a form of predation depends entirely on the fee, and several states have legislated on exactly that.
Researching a parcel before the sale#
The list gives you a parcel number and a minimum bid. Everything that decides whether it is worth buying has to be assembled from elsewhere, and most of it is free.
Start with the parcel identifier, not the address. Much forfeited land has no address at all — vacant lots, rural acreage, remnant strips. The parcel number is the only reliable key.
Pull it up on the county GIS. Shape, acreage, neighbours, and roads. This one step eliminates a large share of bad parcels in seconds.
Check legal access. A parcel with no frontage on a public road may have an easement, or may have nothing. Landlocked land cannot be built on, cannot be financed and is difficult to resell. It is the single most common defect in forfeited inventory and it is visible on a plat.
Check zoning and minimum lot size. A quarter-acre lot in a district requiring half an acre is not a building site. Some counties will grant relief on a legal non-conforming lot and some will not; the planning department will tell you before the sale.
Check wetland and floodplain. National Wetlands Inventory and FEMA flood maps are both public and free. A large share of cheap rural forfeited acreage is unbuildable for this reason.
Check the city file if there is a structure. Code violations, condemnation orders, vacant building registration, demolition orders. A demolition order follows the property and the bill will be yours.
Check the assessor's record for the improvement. Year built, square footage, condition class. Combined with a drive-by this is usually enough to tell a rehabilitatable house from a teardown.
Look for the reason it forfeited. A valuable parcel that nobody paid tax on has a story. Search the recorder index for the owner name: a death with no subsequent transfer is the tangled-title case, and it explains a surprising share of the better parcels.
Then go and look at it. Photographs from the road answer questions no record does — whether there is a driveway, whether it floods, whether the neighbouring use makes it unsellable.
Over-the-counter inventory#
Parcels that fail to sell at auction do not disappear. Most states allow them to be purchased directly from the county between sales, often at the minimum bid, with no competition.
The advantages are real. No auction, no bidding against anyone, time to do diligence properly, and in many counties the ability to walk in and buy.
The obvious caveat. These parcels have already been offered publicly and nobody wanted them. Most are unsold for good reason.
But not all. Auction attendance is small, lists are long, and parcels are frequently passed over because nobody researched them rather than because they are bad. An over-the-counter list is the closest thing in this market to inventory nobody is competing for, and the work is in reading it properly.
Ask the county three questions: is there an over-the-counter list, how is it updated, and can parcels be purchased on terms. Several counties offer contract-for-deed arrangements on forfeited land that make otherwise capital-intensive purchases workable.
Before you bid#
- Establish which system the state uses — direct forfeiture or a lien route first.
- Get the published list early and research parcels, not the list.
- Check access. Pull the plat. A parcel with no legal access is worth very little regardless of acreage.
- Check zoning and buildability, including minimum lot size and setbacks.
- Check for a demolition order or condemnation.
- Ask a title company whether they will insure the deed, and price quiet title if not.
- Check what survives — assessments, federal liens, easements, environmental.
- Ask why no lender protected it. Usually no mortgage, or a death with no probate.
- Visit the parcel. Cheap land is cheap for reasons visible from the ground.
- Confirm payment terms before the sale, including whether the county offers instalments.
The bargains at forfeiture sales are real and they are a minority of the inventory. The work is in telling which is which before the auction rather than after.