Each step below is drawn from Louisiana statute, not general advice. The exact sale dates, platform, and deposit amounts are set county by county, so confirm the specifics on your county page before you register.
New here? Most beginners start with a certificate (the lien path). The deed steps below apply once you hold a certificate long enough to force a sale, or you bid directly at a tax deed auction. Not sure which is for you? Start with tax lien vs tax deed.
Learn the timeline and lien priority
Louisiana statutory impositions, meaning ad valorem taxes plus anything else billed on the same tax notice, are payable as soon as the tax roll reaches the tax collector and are due no later than December 31. Anything unpaid is delinquent the next day and draws interest of 1 percent per month, or any part of a month, on a noncompounding basis. A 5 percent penalty on the statutory impositions is assessed once the lien is offered at auction, and no interest ever runs on that penalty. The delinquent obligation is secured by a lien and privilege that ranks ahead of every other mortgage, lien, privilege and encumbrance on the property, and all tax liens rank concurrently with one another regardless of when they arose or were recorded. If taxes, interest and costs on immovable property are still unpaid 90 days after becoming delinquent, which lands around April 1, the tax lien is offered at a tax lien auction. Understand this before you commit any money.
Find the advertised delinquent list
Before the certificate sale, the The parish sheriff, who is the ex officio collector of parish ad valorem taxes under La. Const. art. V, sec. 27. That section does not apply to Orleans Parish, where the City of New Orleans Bureau of Treasury bills and collects the taxes and runs the sale. Municipalities and other political subdivisions that levy their own ad valorem taxes hold their own auctions, so one parcel can carry a parish tax lien certificate and a separate municipal one. advertises the delinquent parcels. No statute fixes an auction date. R.S. 47:2127(D) requires the lien to be offered once the taxes have gone 90 days past delinquency, which falls around April 1, and R.S. 47:2154(A)(1) requires the tax collector to advertise the auction on or before May 1 of the year following the year of assessment, or as soon after that as possible. R.S. 47:2153(A) starts the chain earlier, with a certified mail notice of delinquency to every tax notice party no later than the first Monday of February. The auction runs on a weekday with bidding opening no earlier than 8:00 a.m. and closing no later than 8:00 p.m.; an online auction may run over several days so long as all bidding closes inside those hours on a weekday. Confirm the date with the tax collector, because none of these dates is the auction date. Pull that list for your target county and shortlist the parcels worth researching.
Register, deposit, and bid the rate down
Register on the county’s certificate-sale platform and fund the required deposit. At the sale you bid the interest rate down: it opens at the statutory maximum of 12 percent and drops in 1.2 percent steps, and the lowest rate wins. A redeemed certificate pays at least a 5 percent floor. No Louisiana certificate can be bid to zero. R.S. 47:2154(C) fixes the auction price at the face value of the tax lien certificate, and (D)(1) makes the monthly interest rate the only subject of the bidding. Bidding opens at the statutory ceiling of 1 percent per month and falls in increments of one tenth of one percent, which is 12 percent a year falling in 1.2 percent steps, and (D)(2)(b) refuses any bid that would take the rate below seven tenths of one percent per month. The worst rate a winning bidder can accept is therefore 8.4 percent a year. Where several bidders reach the same lowest rate, the first bid submitted wins, so at a competitive parcel the contest is decided on speed rather than on price. A lien nobody bids on is not passed over: the tax collector records the certificate in favor of the political subdivision, and that certificate earns the full 1 percent per month.
Collect interest or wait out redemption
Interest runs on the face value of the tax lien certificate at the monthly rate set by the winning bid, on a noncompounding basis, from issuance of the certificate. Face value is the delinquent statutory impositions plus the interest and costs that had accrued before the certificate issued, plus the clerk of court recording cost, and it deliberately excludes the 5 percent penalty. Because the auction price is fixed at face value there is no premium anywhere in the transaction, so the rate applies to every dollar the investor paid. The 1 percent per month ceiling is 12 percent a year and the seven tenths of one percent floor is 8.4 percent a year. Subsequent taxes are treated differently and better: under R.S. 47:2160.1(B)(2) a holder who pays a later year of statutory impositions adds them to the debt with their own 5 percent penalty and interest at the full 1 percent per month, whatever rate was bid on the original certificate. Louisiana replaced redemption with extinguishment of the lien, and the shape is different from a redemption clock. There is no date on which the owner's right lapses by itself. Any person may pay the termination price to the tax collector at any time. The holder cannot even start the enforcement suit until the later of three years from recordation of the certificate or six months after the R.S. 47:2156 notices went out, and once suit is filed the right to pay survives until the close of business on the thirtieth day after the last party was served. After that the tax collector stops accepting payment, and the lien can be extinguished only by the holder's own act or by court order: a party holding an interest may still file a contradictory motion before the judicial sale and ask the court to set the termination price, which the court fixes within 30 days and which must then be paid within 30 days more. The pressure on the holder comes from the other end. R.S. 47:2155(C) makes the right to sue peremptive at seven years from recordation, suspended while a political subdivision holds the certificate or a recorded bankruptcy stay is pending, after which the lien is extinguished and the inscription cancelled. Redemption periods that the constitution used to provide remain peremptive under R.S. 47:2241, but the amended constitution no longer provides any. To redeem, the owner pays The termination price under R.S. 47:2243(B) is the face value of the tax lien certificate, plus the 5 percent penalty assessed under R.S. 47:2127, plus interest on the face value at the monthly rate the certificate carries, plus the cost of preparing and recording the termination certificate, plus the certificate holder's post-auction notice costs on an affidavit filed with the tax collector, capped at 500 dollars, plus anything owed to the holder under R.S. 47:2160.1 for subsequent parish or municipal impositions with their own penalty and interest. R.S. 47:2244 adds the political subdivision's actual costs of preparing the certificate, giving notice of the auction and any post-auction notice, and recording, capped at 300 dollars exclusive of filing and recording fees. Where the tax collector cannot deliver a full payoff, partial payment need not be accepted, and where several certificates encumber one parcel a payment short of clearing them all is applied as the payer directs, or otherwise to the oldest lien. The tax collector remits the termination price to the certificate holder within 30 days and issues a termination certificate that the recorder uses to cancel the inscription. If they redeem, that payoff is your return; if they never do, the certificate becomes your path to the property.
Or buy over the counter
You do not have to wait for an auction. When a lien draws no bidder, R.S. 47:2154(E)(1) has the tax collector record the tax lien certificate in favor of the political subdivision, and that certificate earns the full 1 percent per month. R.S. 47:2246 then lets any person buy that lien from the political subdivision on the terms and conditions the political subdivision sets, and the buyer takes exactly the same rights as any other certificate holder. R.S. 47:2201(A)(3) is the enabling half: a political subdivision may adopt an ordinance governing the public sale of the tax liens it holds, and R.S. 47:2207.1 has it execute the sale and file the act of sale in the mortgage records. A political subdivision may sell for less than the full delinquent obligation without that counting as a donation of public property. There is no statewide list, no statewide price and no fixed discount. Ask the tax collector and the parish or municipal governing authority which certificates are held and what their ordinance requires. Louisiana keeps no lands available list in the Florida sense. Its nearest equivalent is adjudicated property: parcels whose tax sale title passed to a political subdivision before January 1, 2026 under the now repealed R.S. 47:2196. Those are still sold and donated under Part IV of Chapter 5, and R.S. 47:2201(B) lets a political subdivision convert adjudicated title into a tax lien certificate issued to itself, with the period of adjudication counting toward the three years a holder must wait before suing. Where a tax sale party or tax lien auction party acquires an interest through one of these sales or donations, R.S. 47:2209 treats it as a redemption or extinguishment rather than a purchase, so prior mortgages, liens, privileges and encumbrances survive with their original rank.
One more step: clear the title
Winning a tax deed does not hand you marketable title. Before you can resell to a normal buyer or insure the parcel, you will usually need a quiet title action, which takes months and costs money. Fold that cost into your maximum bid and read what you actually own after a tax deed before you bid. A tax deed also does not wipe out everything: select governmental and municipal liens can survive, and a federal tax lien carries a 120-day IRS redemption right, so check what survives a tax deed too.
New to this? Start with tax lien vs tax deed and the full Louisiana walkthrough, then value a parcel with the due diligence guide.
Steps verified Aug 24, 2026 against Louisiana statutes.
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.