How Virginia Tax Sales Work

Virginia sells the property, and it sells it by court order. No locality issues a tax lien certificate, so there is no rate to bid and no paper to hold while interest runs. Every parcel arrives at auction as a suit in equity, and the seller answers to a circuit judge rather than to a county office.

Treasurers, sale formats and locality detail sit on the Virginia tax sales hub, and how to buy tax deeds in Virginia walks the buyer's sequence. The governing law is Va. Code Title 58.1, Chapter 39, Article 4. If the two structures still blur together, read tax liens compared to tax deeds first.

Step 1: The locality holds the lien, and nobody sells it to you

Virginia's tax on real estate is a lien on that real estate ahead of every other lien or encumbrance, and it stays a prior lien until the tax is paid. Levies fall due December 5 unless the locality sets its own dates by ordinance. Miss that date and a 5 percent penalty attaches, with interest running at 10 percent a year from the next day.

Both amounts belong to the treasurer, so no Virginia buyer earns anything from waiting. The return comes out of the property or not at all. A locality may enforce the tax by sale for 20 years after December 31 of the assessment year, so parcels reaching auction are often years past the first missed bill.

Step 2: Six routes decide when a parcel becomes sellable

Most states publish one delinquency window. Virginia publishes several, and which one applies changes the kind of parcel you see advertised.

The default is delinquency on December 31 following the second anniversary of the date the taxes became due. It drops to the first anniversary where the parcel carries a condemned structure, a declared nuisance, a derelict building or a blight declaration. A court finding that the real estate is assessed at $100,000 or less does the same. A city adopting the ordinance under 58.1-3965.1 may use the first anniversary for any parcel inside it, and a qualifying locality can move at six months when unpaid abatement costs are involved. The treasurer's separate track for small parcels waits until December 31 following the third anniversary.

Read that as a sourcing map. Blighted urban parcels and low-assessment lots reach the docket about a year ahead of ordinary land.

Step 3: The treasurer gives notice, then an outside law firm sues

Before any suit the treasurer must notify the owner in writing, and the property address where it differs, at least 30 days ahead, and publish a list of the parcels 30 days beforehand. That published list is the earliest public signal a parcel is moving.

The locality then employs an attorney to file a suit in equity in the circuit court asking that the parcel be subjected to the lien for the delinquent taxes. The court appoints a special commissioner to sell the parcel and execute the deed, often naming that same attorney. Most localities retain an outside firm, so the auction notice carries a law firm's letterhead rather than a county seal.

Virginia also has 38 independent cities, each a taxing locality separate from the surrounding county, with its own treasurer and its own suits. A parcel inside city limits never routes through the county around it.

Step 4: No sale season, no minimum bid, no statewide terms

Virginia fixes no sale month. Each suit reaches auction when its own case matures, so localities post sales all year rather than one annual auction. The format is a live auction run by a licensed auctioneer, commonly with simulcast online bidding.

Bidding runs as a premium-bid auction to the highest bidder, and Article 4 sets no floor for the opening bid. Money terms come from the sale notice rather than the code: No statewide deposit percentage exists. Article 4 leaves the terms of sale to the special commissioner and the confirming court, so the deposit is whatever the advertised terms of that sale require. Read the terms of sale published with each auction and confirm accepted funds with the commissioner before bidding. The payment window works the same way. Confirm the settlement deadline and accepted funds before you bid, and set your ceiling in the tax deed max bid calculator.

Step 5: The owner can pay until the sale date, and not one day after

The recorded position reads: Until the date set for the sale. Virginia has no post-sale redemption period.

An owner named in the published notice, or the owner's heirs, devisees, successors and assigns, may redeem any time before the date set for the sale. The payment goes into court and covers everything due: taxes, penalties, interest, anything owed to a town or other taxing entity, costs, publication, title examination and a reasonable attorney fee the court sets. Partial payment redeems nothing and does not suspend the suit.

Two mechanisms still pull parcels off the calendar late. The treasurer may suspend a sale by entering an installment agreement running no more than 72 months. Attorney or collection agency fees the locality contracted for, capped at 20 percent of what is collected, also ride on the account and raise the payoff. Compare that cutoff against the fixed clocks in redemption periods explained.

Step 6: Confirmation, not the gavel, is the finish line

The auction settles nothing on its own. The court must confirm the sale, and the special commissioner executes the deed under the confirming order, which is when title passes.

Two things can still move between the hammer and the deed. The price achieved at public auction is prima facie but rebuttable evidence of the property's value, so a bid the court finds inadequate can be challenged before confirmation. And a party served only by publication may petition to have the case reheard, for good cause shown, within 90 days of entry of the confirming order.

One quoted figure needs a caveat. Section 58.1-3965 sets a 90-day floor before a final confirming order may be entered, but that language sits in the subsection covering real estate lying in two or more jurisdictions. Treat the 90-day rehearing right in 58.1-3967 as the post-sale window that applies everywhere.

Step 7: Two tracks, and only one of them clears a mortgage

A judicial sale under Article 4 conveys title on the principles governing purchasers at judicial sales generally. It bars the disabilities of parties defendant and is free of every claim of any creditor, person or entity, including a deed of trust beneficiary, provided that party was made a party defendant. Easements recorded before the sale are untouched. That proviso carries the whole risk. The wipe-out depends on the plaintiff having named and served everyone with an interest, so read the pleadings and the title work behind the sale.

The nonjudicial track under 58.1-3975 is weaker, and it reaches only small parcels. The ceiling is an assessment of $15,000, or $30,000 with no recorded mortgage or deed of trust lien plus a qualifying condition, or $40,000 with no such lien for an unimproved half-acre lot in a designated redevelopment zone. The buyer receives a special warranty deed, free and clear of the locality's tax lien alone. A lien recorded before the sale survives unless the treasurer gave that lienholder 30 days written notice, so a recorded mortgage can outlive this sale where it could not outlive a properly pleaded suit.

Confirm which track a parcel sits on before you bid. Work it with due diligence before a tax sale, read what survives a tax deed, and price quiet title after a tax deed into any resale plan.

Surplus, costs and the recording bill

The locality's attorney fees, publication and appraisal expense and the commissioner's fee come off the top first. The former owner and the owner's heirs, devisees, successors or assigns take the surplus above taxes, penalties, interest, fees, costs and any liens chargeable on the parcel, and the claimant must prove entitlement. Unclaimed money goes to the locality two years after confirmation, and on a nonjudicial sale a claimant has two years from the sale date to get a hearing scheduled. Tax deed surplus funds covers how those claims run.

Recording is a separate bill: the state recordation tax runs 25 cents on every $100, or fraction of it, of the greater of the deed consideration or the most recent assessment, plus up to one-third of that again locally.

Buying what nobody bid on

Virginia keeps no over-the-counter tax list, no struck-to-the-state inventory and no Lands Available roll of the Florida kind. A county, city or town may bid at its own sale. Where a parcel assessed at $125,000 or less carries taxes and liens above the share of assessed value the code allows, the locality may ask the court to deed it straight to the locality, its land bank entity or a designated nonprofit. Parcels routed that way never see an investor auction. Watch locality surplus property and land bank inventories instead. Over-the-counter tax liens shows how leftover inventory differs state to state.

Putting it together

Virginia rewards buyers who read court papers. With no certificate, no rate to win and no sale season, the facts that price a parcel live in the suit file and the advertised terms of sale. Find out which track the parcel is on, and check that every lienholder was named and served. Calendar the confirming order rather than the auction date, and start from the Virginia county directory to reach the right treasurer.