How Georgia Tax Sales Work

Georgia hands you a deed at the sale and then hands the former owner a year to buy it back. That makes it a redeemable deed state, and it changes what you are actually buying. Most of the time you are buying a 20% return. Occasionally you are buying a house. The rules sit in Title 48 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, and the sale mechanics come from the general execution-sale statutes in Title 9.

Here is the cycle from delinquency through barment. County sale dates and offices sit on the Georgia tax sales hub, and how to buy tax deeds in Georgia covers the buyer's steps. For the wider structure, see tax liens compared to tax deeds.

Step 1: Execution and levy

After the last day for payment passes, the tax commissioner notifies the taxpayer and may issue an execution, called a fi. fa., 30 days later. That execution is levied against the property. The defendant gets at least ten days' written notice of the levy, and the sale is advertised before it happens.

Step 2: The first Tuesday, on the courthouse steps

Georgia sales run on the first Tuesday of the month between 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., moving to the following Wednesday when the first Tuesday falls on New Year's Day or Independence Day. Treat monthly as a ceiling rather than a schedule. A county holds a sale only in months it has parcels, and many rural counties go long stretches without one.

Most Georgia counties still cry these sales in person at the courthouse. Of the 159 counties, in-person outcry is the norm and only a handful have moved online, so plan on showing up or sending someone.

Step 3: Bidding is a premium bid

The parcel goes to the highest bidder at public outcry. Georgia fixes no statutory opening-bid formula for an Article 1 sale. The practical floor is the taxes, penalties, interest, and costs riding on the execution, since the county governing authority's own bid is capped at that amount.

Tender is cash or a cashier's or certified check for the full purchase price. No statewide deposit percentage exists and no statewide payment deadline exists either, so read the county's published sale terms before you go.

Step 4: You get a deed, and a waiting period

The winning bidder receives a tax deed. That deed does not give you clean possession on day one. What you hold is a defeasible title, and the former owner, their heirs, creditors, and other interest holders can undo it by redeeming.

Step 5: Redemption pays a flat premium

This is the number that matters. Redemption pays your bid, plus taxes you paid after the sale, plus special assessments, plus 20% of the bid for the first year or any fraction of a year, plus another 10 percent for each year or fraction after that.

Never prorate it. A redemption on day two pays the same 20% as a redemption in month eleven, which makes an early redemption an excellent annualized return and a late one merely a good one. If you redeem more than 30 days after a barment notice, sheriff service and publication costs get added, and sales after July 1, 2016 also pick up condominium and homeowner association sums.

Step 6: Barment ends the redemption right

The right to redeem runs at least 12 months and then keeps running. It does not lapse on its own. It ends when you end it, by serving and publishing the barment notice under Sections 48-4-45 and 48-4-46, and you cannot begin that before the 12 months are up.

Investors who skip this step sit on a deed nobody can insure, wondering why the clock never ran out. The barment notice is the clock.

Step 7: Title ripens over four years

For deeds recorded on or after July 1, 1996, tax deed title ripens by prescription four years after recording. Barment is the faster route to a marketable position, and prescription is the backstop. Either way, expect to budget for a quiet-title action before a normal buyer's lender will touch the property.

Excess funds go to the owner, not to you

When a parcel sells for more than the taxes and costs, the surplus belongs to the former owner and to recorded lienholders in priority order. The officer who sold the property mails notice within 30 days, and disputes go to superior court interpleader. Unclaimed funds escheat to the Georgia Department of Revenue five years after the sale. Bidding high does not buy you the overage.

There is no over-the-counter program

Georgia has no OTC certificate list and no lands available equivalent. Two near misses exist and both are discretionary: a county that bid in a parcel may resell it under Sections 48-4-20 and 48-4-21, and a tax execution can be transferred under Section 48-3-19. Whether any given county actually offers either is a county question. The Georgia over-the-counter page sets out what that means.

One more track: judicial in rem

Some counties opt in by ordinance to a judicial in rem foreclosure under Article 5. That track sets the minimum bid at the redemption amount, holds the sale no earlier than 45 days after the court order, and gives the owner only a 60-day post-sale redemption. If a county advertises a judicial in rem sale, the 12-month rules above do not apply to it.

Putting it together

Georgia works well for investors who want a defined return and can wait a year for it, and who treat the barment notice as part of the plan rather than an afterthought. Model the 20% as a flat premium rather than an annual rate, and confirm the sale format county by county, since the courthouse steps are still the norm. Start with the Georgia hub for county detail, and compare states on redemption periods by state.