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Tax Sale Atlas

Cherokee County, KS tax sales

How tax deed sales work in Cherokee County, seat of Columbus: sale calendar, auction platform, over-the-counter lists, and the offices that run each sale.

New to tax sales? Read how Kansas tax sales work or look terms up in the glossary.

Next sale
No sale is on the calendar.
Format
In person
County office
(620) 429-9500 ext. 4
Every displayed fact carries a source badge. Verified Aug 24, 2026 against official county and state pages.How we verify
On this page

How Cherokee County sells delinquent taxes

No tax lien certificate sale

Kansas counties sell no tax lien certificates to investors. The county treasurer bids the delinquent parcel off to the county itself, and the county then enforces its own first and prior lien through a judicial foreclosure in the district court.

Tax deed sale

In person
Run by
Cherokee County Sheriff's Office
Frequency
annual
Typical timing
No sale is on the calendar.
Sale list
Pending Kansas tax foreclosure sales, Cherokee County row carrying the sale date, petition and parcel list
When it runs
No sale is on the calendar. Cherokee County has no tax foreclosure case on file, and a date is set only after the county files its foreclosure petition in Cherokee County District Court. Once a petition is filed, the parcels reach sheriff's sale within two to six months. The sale bill then runs once a week for three consecutive weeks in the Columbus News Report, the county's official newspaper for legal notices, starting about a month before the auction. Separately, the Treasurer publishes the delinquent real estate list in that same paper for three consecutive weeks each August, which is the first public signal of which parcels are heading toward foreclosure.
Registration and deposit

Every bidder must register and take a bidder number before the auction opens, and no bid is recognized without a number. Registering means signing a Bidder's Declaration stating you owe no delinquent real estate taxes in Cherokee County, and anyone who does owe is barred from bidding. A winning bidder then signs a Purchaser's Declaration confirming the purchase is not for, and not on behalf of a relative of, anyone holding an interest in that parcel, so bidding on a parent's or sibling's property is not allowed. Pay in full before you leave the sale by cash, check or a combination of the two, and add a $21 deed recording fee and a $100 processing fee to each winning bid. Cash must be exact because no change is given, and any overage is added to the purchase price. There is no online registration form for this county, so call the Treasurer at (620) 429-9500 ext. 4 to confirm the registration window, the sale location and the accepted payment forms before sale day.

Sale format and venue
Kansas sells the deed rather than a lien, and Cherokee County gets there by judicial foreclosure instead of an administrative auction. The county files a petition in Cherokee County District Court to foreclose the tax liens on parcels unpaid for three years, the court enters judgment, and the Sheriff sells the parcels at public auction under the court's order of sale. Klenda Austerman LLC, the outside firm Cherokee County retains for tax foreclosure, files and prosecutes the case for the Board of County Commissioners and keeps the public schedule of pending Kansas sales, so its Cherokee County row is where the sale date, the petition and the parcel list surface first. That row reads no case on file, so nothing is pending. The firm's line is 316-267-0331, though it represents the county and gives no advice to bidders. The auction is live and in person. These sales run as open outcry auctions with an auctioneer calling bids, held in whatever space fits the expected crowd, which has meant a courtroom, a community center, a school auditorium or the courthouse lawn. Sedgwick County is the only county on this firm's roster that sells online, so expect no internet bidding here. Bid4Assets carries notices for past Cherokee County sales, but it states that it does not run the auction and is not affiliated with it, so treat those listings as advertising and not as a bidding platform. Redemption runs before the sale, not after it. An owner or mortgage holder can pay all taxes, interest and costs and pull a parcel out of the case any time up to the day before it is sold, so the offering shrinks right up to sale day and you should confirm what is still in before you travel. Once the gavel falls no owner has a right to redeem. The IRS keeps a special federal redemption right of six months to a year on parcels carrying a federal tax lien, rarely exercised but real. A prior owner can also move the court to set aside the sale, and a buyer who does not appear to oppose that motion can lose the parcel. Winning is not owning. The court must confirm the sale before title passes, and the sheriff's deed usually issues ninety to one hundred twenty days after the auction. Until confirmation you cannot collect rent, remove an occupant, change locks or start work, and you may not hold an insurable interest, so a fire before confirmation is your loss and not grounds to undo the sale. Bids are final when the gavel falls. Buy on the legal description. Parcels sell by legal description and parcel number, and the county and its counsel hold no information about condition, occupancy or access. A street address in the notice is approximate and can be wrong. A sale can include mineral interests, often undefined ones, where you take only what the former owner held. Confirmed title arrives free of tax liens, mortgages and prior interests but stays subject to easements, recorded covenants and any existing lease or tenant. A special assessment a city has charged but not yet reported to the county is not discharged, and current year taxes are not prorated. Some title companies decline to insure tax foreclosure title, which can force a quiet title action before you resell.
Source: Pending Kansas Tax Foreclosure Sales, Klenda Austerman LLC· Verified Aug 24, 2026

Cherokee County tax sale list and auction calendar

For Cherokee County tax sale 2026 searches, use the county-run sources below rather than a copied parcel list, and confirm the parcel, registration cutoff, deposit, and payment deadline against the county before you bid.

  1. Get the advertised list

    Use Pending Kansas tax foreclosure sales, Cherokee County row carrying the sale date, petition and parcel list for the current advertised parcels, then recheck it before the auction.

  2. Register to bid

    Ask the county office how and when to register; many counties close registration days or weeks before the sale.

  3. Sale day

    No sale is on the calendar. The sale is live and in person; there is no online bidding platform. Confirm the venue and hour with the county office before you go.

  4. Confirm with the office

    If the list, platform, and notice disagree, use Cherokee County Sheriff's Office as the source to confirm which parcels are actually offered.

Before you bid in Cherokee County

  1. Start with the live sale list

    Pull the current advertised parcels from Pending Kansas tax foreclosure sales, Cherokee County row carrying the sale date, petition and parcel list. Lists can change before the sale, so recheck the county source before you price a parcel.

  2. Confirm registration and deposit

    Every bidder must register and take a bidder number before the auction opens, and no bid is recognized without a number. Registering means signing a Bidder's Declaration stating you owe no delinquent real estate taxes in Cherokee County, and anyone who does owe is barred from bidding. A winning bidder then signs a Purchaser's Declaration confirming the purchase is not for, and not on behalf of a relative of, anyone holding an interest in that parcel, so bidding on a parent's or sibling's property is not allowed. Pay in full before you leave the sale by cash, check or a combination of the two, and add a $21 deed recording fee and a $100 processing fee to each winning bid. Cash must be exact because no change is given, and any overage is added to the purchase price. There is no online registration form for this county, so call the Treasurer at (620) 429-9500 ext. 4 to confirm the registration window, the sale location and the accepted payment forms before sale day.

  3. Check the state rules that change the bid

    Read the Kansas due-diligence checklist before bidding. Redemption, liens that survive a tax deed, title cleanup, and payment deadlines can change what a parcel is worth.

  4. Set a walk-away number

    Work out what the parcel is actually worth with the rural land value estimator, then turn it into a ceiling with the tax deed max-bid calculator.

Over-the-counter (leftover) purchases

Kansas counties sell no tax lien certificates and keep no over-the-counter certificate list. What a county can hold is real estate it bought in at its own sheriff's sale. The commissioners keep a record of every such parcel that is open to public inspection, and the board sells them at private or public sale for cash, at a price of at least the original judgment lien plus interest, the costs in the order of sale, and every subsequent tax and special assessment. Six months after the sale to the county is confirmed the board may reduce the price and take sealed bids after advertising for three consecutive weeks, or sell at public auction to the highest cash bidder. Ask the county clerk or county counselor for the current county-owned list, and check whether the county has a land bank.

New to this path? Read how over-the-counter purchases work.

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County offices

Tax sale office

Cherokee County Treasurer

(620) 429-9500 ext. 4

110 W Maple St., Room 144, P.O. Box 149, Columbus, KS 66725

Official website

County notes

  • The Treasurer is the office to call about a Cherokee County tax sale. Heather Sapp is Treasurer, the counter is at 110 W Maple St., Room 144 in the courthouse in Columbus, mail goes to P.O. Box 149, Columbus, KS 66725, the phone is (620) 429-9500 ext. 4 and the fax is (620) 429-2256. Real estate hours are Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
  • The county posts a Tax Sale page under Departments, and the Treasurer's office says a date will be posted on the county website once one is set. The page carries no sale details today, so use the counsel's schedule and the Columbus News Report as the working sources and treat the county page as confirmation.
  • First half real estate taxes are due December 20 and second half by May 10, and interest starts once a half goes unpaid. A parcel becomes eligible for tax foreclosure after three years of unpaid taxes, and the Treasurer's office describes the foreclosure process as lengthy, often a year or more from start to sale.
  • Do your title and valuation work before the sale. The Register of Deeds holds recorded deeds and liens and offers an online document search, the Appraiser's parcel portal and the county GIS viewer let you pull ownership, valuation and boundaries, and the Treasurer's tax search portal shows what a parcel owes. Nothing at the auction warrants title or condition.
  • Published legal notices for Cherokee County are searchable on the Kansas Press Association public notice site, which lets you filter by county, so it is a useful backstop if you do not subscribe to the Columbus News Report.
  • The Sheriff's Office conducts the auction under the court's order of sale and is at 915 East Country Road, P.O. Box 479, Columbus, KS 66725, phone (620) 429-3992. The office does not publish sale bills online, so the newspaper notice and the Treasurer remain the operative sources for date, time and place.

Kansas rules

Redemption
Kansas redemption has two stages, and both close before the auction. Stage one is K.S.A. 79-2401a: once the treasurer bids the parcel off to the county in September, the county holds it for three years for a homestead under section 9 of article 15 of the Kansas Constitution and for all real estate not described in K.S.A. 79-2401a(a), two years where the parcel was bid off for both delinquent taxes and special assessments, and one year for an abandoned building or structure and the land accommodating it, meaning one that has been unoccupied for at least a year with a failure to perform reasonable maintenance. During that window the owner pays the county treasurer directly. On the three-year track a PARTIAL redemption is allowed: paying the taxes for one or more years, starting with the earliest year the parcel was carried on the tax-sale book, plus interest at the K.S.A. 79-2004 rate, pushes back the date a foreclosure sale may be commenced by the number of years paid. The Johnson County paragraph applies the same partial payment to the most recent year instead of the earliest, and it does not carry the extension sentence. Stage two is K.S.A. 79-2803: after the petition is filed the treasurer may no longer take ordinary payments, but the owner or holder of record title, their heirs, devisees, executors, administrators, assigns, or any mortgagee or mortgagee's assigns may still redeem at any time BEFORE THE DAY OF SALE by filing an application to redeem with the clerk of the district court and paying the clerk a share of the costs, being whatever the court orders or, absent an order, 5 percent of the lien amount stated in the petition for that parcel plus any charges chargeable separately against it. The treasurer then computes the full taxes, charges, interest, and penalties, issues a redemption certificate in triplicate, and the sheriff strikes the parcel from the order of sale. Once the sale happens the right is gone. Kansas gives no post-sale redemption period and no right to buy the property back after the sheriff's deed. What exists after the sale is a twelve-month window under K.S.A. 79-2804b to open, vacate, modify, or set aside the judgment, the order of sale, or the sale. That is a title challenge, not redemption: it is available to parties attacking the proceedings, it requires grounds, and it does not let a former owner simply pay the taxes and take the parcel back.
Deed deposit
Kansas fixes no statewide deposit percentage and no statutory bidder registration. K.S.A. 79-2804 is silent on deposits, so the terms are whatever the sheriff publishes for that sale. The statute does require one payment at the auction itself: the register of deeds filing fee for the sheriff's deed is collected from the successful bidder at the time of sale and deposited with the register of deeds at recording. Confirm the county's accepted funds, any registration step, and the payment deadline before bidding, and expect certified funds.
Surplus proceeds
If a parcel sells for more than the judgment lien for taxes, interest, penalty, and charges plus its share of the costs, charges, and expenses of the proceedings and sale, the court orders the excess paid, upon due proof, to the owner or the party entitled to it. The court apportions costs across the parcels sold as soon as practicable after the sale, deducts the total costs from the gross proceeds, and equitably apportions the balance to each parcel that sold for more than its share. The clerk pays that balance to the county treasurer, who prorates it among the state, city, township, school district, and other taxing units in proportion to their interest in the lien, and cancels the taxes charged against the parcel. Tax liens on every parcel sold or redeemed in the action are satisfied and discharged of record.
Governing statute
K.S.A. Chapter 79, Article 28 (79-2801 et seq.)

A tax deed does not convey marketable title. Most buyers file a quiet title action before they can resell or insure the property. See the due diligence guide.

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Frequently asked questions

Does Cherokee County, Kansas sell tax liens or tax deeds?

Tax deeds. Kansas sells no tax lien certificates to investors; the county sells the property itself at a public tax sale.

How often does Cherokee County hold tax deed sales?

Cherokee County holds its tax deed sale once a year. No sale is on the calendar. Each sale is scheduled and advertised in advance, so check the county's tax deed calendar for the next posted date.

I own a property in this sale. Can I stop it?

Often yes, by paying the overdue taxes, interest, and costs before the deadline. Kansas's redemption rule: Runs BEFORE the sale and ends on the day of the sheriff's sale. One, two, or three years from the county's September bid-off depending on the parcel, then a further right to redeem at the courthouse until the day of sale. Kansas has no redemption period after the sale. Call the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office as early as possible for your exact payoff and options; deadlines are strict. Free help: lawhelp.org lists legal aid programs, and consumerfinance.gov lists HUD-approved housing counselors.

Where can I find the Cherokee County tax sale list?

Cherokee County posts its tax sale list at klendalaw.com. Lists go up ahead of each sale and keep changing until the sale date, so confirm every parcel against the county's legal advertisement before you bid.

Verified Aug 24, 2026 against official county and state sources.

Tax Sale Atlas publishes educational information about public tax sale processes. This is not legal, financial, or investment advice. Rules, dates, and fees change; confirm with the county office before you bid.

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