For the owner — not the investor
Behind on property taxes? Your house can be sold at a tax sale — here's how much time you have to stop it. Your house was sold at a tax sale? The extra money from the sale may be yours to claim — and there's a deadline. Every course and video about tax sales is written for the investor who profits when you miss that deadline. This one is written for you.
Count my deadline — free What is the extra money?
Free checker. No upload, no account, nothing filed for you — and nobody here will ever ask for a percentage of your money.
The free deadline checker
Two emergencies live under the words "tax sale," and they have different clocks. Before the sale, the game is stopping it: paying, a payment plan, a deferral — and if a sale happens anyway, a redemption window to undo it. After the sale, the game is the extra money: whatever the sale brought above the tax you owed, held by a county office, claimable until a date almost nobody is told. Pick your door; the checker counts from your date.
No upload. No account. Nothing filed. Pick your state and your situation; the checker counts your deadline from your date, names the office that holds your money, and gives you your first moves. Nothing you enter leaves this page.
In a few states (Texas is the big one) your deadline is much longer for a main home. Answer honestly — the clock depends on it.
Why this site exists
Tax-lien schools teach "earn 18–36%" on your missed payments. Their redemption tables — the best public data in this field — exist so a buyer can price the day your rights end. They will never build your checker: it cannibalizes the product.
After a sale, surplus-recovery firms take 10–40% or more of the extra money — money the county already admits is yours — for filing a form. Legislatures wrote fee-cap statutes (Florida 12%, Texas bans non-lawyer fees entirely) because the farming got bad enough to regulate.
The county mails a notice to the address of the house that was just sold, and calls its duty done. The form exists. The list of names exists. What doesn't exist is anyone telling you which stage you're in and what your date is. That is the gap this site fills.
The two doors, in plain words
Redemption is the right to get your house back by paying what you owe — the tax, plus interest or a penalty the law sets, plus costs — inside a window your state fixes by statute. The window runs from 60 days (Delaware) to about 4 years (Wyoming), and in lien states it runs from the day the certificate was sold, not the day you find out. Before any sale, most states also have quieter doors: payment plans, and deferrals for seniors and disabled owners that pause the machinery entirely. How redemption works, state by state · Behind right now? Start here
If the sale brought more than the debt — a house worth $190,000 sold over a $6,000 tax bill — the extra money (the law calls it surplus or excess proceeds) is held by a named office: a clerk of court, a county treasurer, a court registry. It is yours, but only if you claim it correctly and in time: 120 days from the clerk's notice in Florida, 1 year from the deed in California, a court petition before the sale's 2nd anniversary in Texas, up to 5 years in South Carolina. After the deadline it is gone — to the county, or to the taxing units, for good. The surplus, explained and decoded
Get the TaxSaleDecoded Kit — $49
One payment of $49. No subscription. The kit is a web page you can return to and print — the claim pack, the redemption playbook, the heirs page, and the scam shield.
Start with your state
The system (lien, deed, or redeemable deed), the redemption window, the cost formula, the office holding your money, and the claim deadline are all set by your state's statute. Our state pages carry the statute citation and a "law checked" date — and where a figure comes from secondary sources instead of the statute text, the page says so on its face. All 50 state pages
Highest-stakes pages right now: Illinois (a one-time Surplus Equity Fund pays owners whose deeds were recorded in 2024–2026 — claims die in July 2028), Texas (homestead owners get 2 years; everyone else gets 180 days), Florida (a 120-day claim clock that runs from a mailed notice), California (a 1-year surplus clock), and Michigan (a two-step court claim with dates that cannot be missed).
Questions, in plain words
Usually not the day it's sold. In most states you get a redemption period — a window after the sale (60 days in Delaware, 1 year in Georgia and South Carolina, 2 years for a Texas homestead, up to about 4 years in Wyoming) — where paying the taxes, interest, and costs gets the house back. In some states redemption ends when the deed is issued instead. The free checker tells you which rule your state uses and counts your last day from your sale date.
If your house sold at the tax sale for MORE than the tax you owed, the difference is called the surplus or excess proceeds — 'the extra money — whatever the sale brought above the tax you owed.' In most states that money is legally the former owner's, but it is not mailed to you automatically: you must claim it, from a specific office, before a deadline (120 days from the clerk's notice in Florida, 1 year in California, before the 2nd anniversary of the sale in Texas). Miss the deadline and the money is gone for good in most states.
Almost certainly not before you read the claim form yourself. Recovery companies charge 10–40% or more of money the county already says is yours — $3,000 on a $10,000 surplus, $7,500 on a $25,000 one — for filing what is often a single form. Some states cap their fees (Florida caps foreclosure-surplus assignments at 12%; in Texas a non-lawyer may not charge any fee for this at all). The scam-shield page decodes their contracts, and the kit shows the self-file path they are charging for.
Heirs are exactly who this system fails hardest: notices go to the address of a house whose owner has died. Heirs can usually claim a surplus, and in many states redeem, but you will need a death certificate and proof of your relationship — sometimes an heir affidavit, sometimes a probate filing. The heirs page walks the simple path and marks the point where a real-estate attorney earns their fee.
Yes — Tyler v. Hennepin County (2023) held 9–0 that a county keeping more than the tax debt from a sale is a taking. But a second case, Pung v. Isabella County (June 2026), set the measure: for a fairly conducted sale, what you are owed is the sale price minus the debt — not what your house was 'worth.' Tyler gave owners the right; each state's law still sets the office, the form, and the deadline. That deadline is what this site counts.
No — and be suspicious of anyone who leads with that. This site gives you the deadline, the office, the form path, and the proof list, and you file it yourself and keep all of the money. Filing services and assignment contracts attach fees and regulations the moment someone acts FOR you; information sold TO you is a different, unregulated thing — and it is all we sell.