California Tax Auctions — Every County's Tax-Defaulted Property Sales

591 properties across 5 counties are scheduled for upcoming tax sales as of October 12, 2026, with the next sale closing October 20, 2026. Counts update daily as counties publish, add and redeem parcels.

The county-by-county table on this page lists every California county’s tax-sale program: how often it sells and the next published date. Counties with a sale on the calendar link to that sale’s page. Most counties sell once a year; a few sell as needed and can go years between sales.

No. California is a tax-deed state — there are no tax lien sales and no tax lien auctions here, and no county sells tax lien certificates, so there is no interest rate to bid down and no lien position to hold. After five years of default (three for some non-residential parcels) the county can sell the property itself at a tax deed sale, and the winning bidder receives a tax deed. If you have bid at a tax lien auction in Florida, Arizona or New Jersey, California works the other way round: you are buying the real estate on the day, not a claim against it.

The tax deed is senior to private encumbrances, so a completed tax sale wipes out deeds of trust, HOA liens, and junior judgment liens. That is exactly why lenders usually advance delinquent taxes before a sale — to keep the auction from extinguishing their lien. The exception that matters is a recorded federal tax lien: it survives the sale and gives the IRS 120 days to redeem the parcel from the buyer. Certain government assessments and bonds can also carry over.

Tax-delinquent means an installment was missed — penalties start immediately. Tax-defaulted is the state’s term for a property whose taxes were still unpaid when the fiscal year closed on June 30; from July 1 it sits in a redemption period, and after five years of default the county can sell it. Every property in a tax auction was tax-delinquent first.

Pull the county records first: current ownership, open liens and their seniority, the tax-delinquency history, and whether the parcel has structures or is raw land. Properant links every scheduled auction lot to its full property profile — owner, liens, equity estimate, and the recorded timeline — so bidders can screen an entire county auction list before sale day.