Missoula County, MT tax sales
Tax Sale Atlas maps the Missoula County, MT tax sale, one of 2,862 counties in 36 states. Montana sells tax lien certificates paying up to 10%. Sale office, calendar and list locations read from the county’s own official pages on Sep 11, 2026.
How tax lien and tax deed sales work in Missoula County, seat of Missoula: sale calendar, auction platform, over-the-counter lists, and the offices that run each sale.
New to tax sales? Read how Montana tax sales work or look terms up in the glossary.
- Next sale
- Nothing is scheduled in advance.
- Format
- In person
- County office
- 406-258-4747
On this page
How Missoula County sells delinquent taxes
Tax certificate sale (lien)
- Run by
- Missoula County Treasurer's Office, the combined Clerk & Treasurer
- Frequency
- annual
- Typical timing
- There is no auction and no sale day.
- Registration
- No bidder registration and no deposit, because there is no auction.
- Sale list
- Delinquent tax list request form
When it runs
Registration and deposit
No bidder registration and no deposit, because there is no auction. First mail the person to whom the property was assessed the statutory notice of pending assignment by certified mail, no earlier than August 15 and at least two weeks before you pay. Then deliver a complete package to the Treasurer: proof of the mail notice for every parcel, a W-9, and verifiable funds sufficient for every assignment sought. Verifiable funds means a cashier's check, a money order, a credit card, or a personal check with a letter from your bank confirming the account covers it. To land in the Electronic Submissions category, which is filled first, also submit an Excel or CSV file listing all parcels sought with a column of parcel identification numbers in your order of preference. Anything without that ranked electronic list is a Manual Submission and is filled only after the electronic lists are served.
Sale format and venue
Tax deed sale
- Run by
- County Treasurer
- Frequency
- As applied for. There is no deed sale calendar, and most parcels never reach an auction at all.
- Typical timing
- Nothing is scheduled in advance.
When it runs
Registration and deposit
Bidders at a Montana tax deed auction do not pre-register, but three requirements bind at the auction itself. An entity must give the treasurer written proof that it is a domestic entity before the treasurer will accept its opening bid, and a foreign entity may not buy at all. The high bidder posts a nonrefundable deposit at the time of sale of 5 percent of the bid or 200 dollars, whichever is greater, applied to the price on full payment, and the treasurer may ask bidders to show they can post it. Full payment of the purchase price plus the treasurer's auction costs is due within 24 hours of the sale, excluding weekends and legal holidays, and a bidder who misses it loses the parcel to the next highest bidder. Confirm the accepted payment methods with the county treasurer before the auction opens.
Sale format and venue
Missoula County tax sale list and auction calendar
For Missoula 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. If the parcels on this list are vacant land rather than houses, what buying land at a tax sale hands you is the place to start.
Get the advertised list
Use Delinquent tax list request form for the current advertised parcels, then recheck it before the auction.Register to bid
Ask the county office how and when to register; many counties close registration days or weeks before the sale.Sale day
Nothing is scheduled in advance. 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.Confirm with the office
If the list, platform, and notice disagree, use County Treasurer as the source to confirm which parcels are actually offered.
Before you bid in Missoula County
4 checks
Start with the live sale list
Pull the current advertised parcels from Delinquent tax list request form. Lists can change before the sale, so recheck the county source before you price a parcel.Confirm registration and deposit
Bidders at a Montana tax deed auction do not pre-register, but three requirements bind at the auction itself. An entity must give the treasurer written proof that it is a domestic entity before the treasurer will accept its opening bid, and a foreign entity may not buy at all. The high bidder posts a nonrefundable deposit at the time of sale of 5 percent of the bid or 200 dollars, whichever is greater, applied to the price on full payment, and the treasurer may ask bidders to show they can post it. Full payment of the purchase price plus the treasurer's auction costs is due within 24 hours of the sale, excluding weekends and legal holidays, and a bidder who misses it loses the parcel to the next highest bidder. Confirm the accepted payment methods with the county treasurer before the auction opens.
Check the state rules that change the bid
Read the Montana due-diligence checklist before bidding. Redemption, liens that survive a tax deed, title cleanup, and payment deadlines can change what a parcel is worth. Which liens survive is state law, so read what survives a tax deed in Montana before you price the title work.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
unsold liens and deeds
Every Montana tax lien is effectively over the counter, because assignment is the only way one is ever acquired. The county holds each lien from the day it attaches, and the treasurer must assign it to any person who mails the assessed owner the statutory notice and pays the delinquent taxes, penalties, interest and costs plus the county's assignment fee. After the late August allocation step, whatever is left sits with the treasurer and can be assigned on demand for the rest of the year, subject to the same notice rules: not earlier than August 15, mailed at least 2 weeks before payment and no more than 60 days before it. Older tax years are assignable the same way. Separately, land the county itself took by tax deed is sold at a public auction the county commissioners must order within 6 months of acquiring title, at a price the board fixes in advance, with the list of lands and the time and place published by the county clerk. That county land auction is not a tax lien or tax deed sale and the delinquent taxpayer may repurchase up to 24 hours before the first offering.
New to this path? Read how over-the-counter certificates work. Every state has its own name for what goes unsold, so check what Montana calls its leftover tax-sale inventory.
Use the arrow keys to switch between these sections.
County offices
Tax Collector (runs the certificate sale)
County notes
- Missoula County publishes no downloadable list of liened or delinquent parcels. The Clerk & Treasurer's delinquent tax page carries a "Request delinquent tax list" form instead, and submitting that form is the way to obtain the current list. The statutory notice of pending attachment also runs in the county legal newspaper by the last Monday in June.
- Ranking beats volume in Missoula. The snake draft awards one parcel per investor per round from the top of each ranked list, so the order of parcel identification numbers in your CSV decides what you actually win. Submitting a paper request with no ranked electronic list drops you into the Manual Submissions pool, which is served only after every electronic list has been filled.
- Timing is by the day, not the hour. Everything received in one calendar day competes as one group, and a package is only dated when the last piece arrives, so an early list with late funds is grouped with the funds. Mail and courier deliveries count on the day they physically arrive during business hours; email counts on its time stamp.
- Missoula County's tax pages carry no notices of the occupied dwelling tax deed auction that Mont. Code Ann. 15-18-219 and 15-18-220 require when an assignee seeks a deed to a home the legal titleholder still lives in. That auction is set parcel by parcel once an assignee applies, never on an annual calendar, so ask the Treasurer's Office whether one is pending on a parcel you hold.
- Worth pricing in before you buy: delinquent taxes carry a 2 percent penalty plus interest at a 10 percent annualized rate, the $75 tax lien certificate fee is charged to the property at attachment, and the owner has two to three years from the attachment date to redeem.
Montana rules
- Redemption
- The clock runs from attachment of the tax lien, which happens no later than the first working day in August, and it ends on the first working day in August of the third year after that. Redemption stays open for the whole period and the assignee cannot shorten it. On the residential auction track the right to redeem runs further still: the statutory notice tells the parties that a tax deed will be auctioned unless the lien is redeemed before the date of the auction, and 15-18-112(4) lets a particular tax year be redeemed until a deed has issued under 15-18-211 or 15-18-220. Interest and costs keep accruing until the day of redemption, and the county treasurer, not the assignee, calculates the payoff as of the date of payment. A redemption before the lien is assigned goes to the county; after assignment the treasurer pays the assignee.
- Deed deposit
- The high bidder posts a nonrefundable deposit with the county treasurer at the time of sale of 5 percent of the bid or 200 dollars, whichever is greater, and the deposit is applied to the sale price on full payment. Notice of the deposit requirement must be posted at the auction site, and the treasurer may require bidders to show they can post it. The treasurer may refuse to recognize a bid from someone who previously bid and then refused to honor the bid.
- Surplus proceeds
- Montana pays the owner's equity out rather than letting it be forfeited. The portion of the opening bid equal to half the most recent assessed value of the land and of the dwelling is treated as surplus funds, and so is anything a winning bid adds above the opening bid. Where the deed is bought by someone other than the assignee, the treasurer first repays the assignee the amount paid for the assignment, including delinquent taxes, penalties, interest and costs, plus everything paid on the tax deed application under 15-18-219(2). The treasurer then distributes the surplus to the legal titleholder of record within 30 days of receiving payment from the purchaser, whether or not the titleholder lives in Montana. On the ordinary non-auction track there is no sale, no bidding and no surplus: the assignee receives the deed itself.
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.
Frequently asked questions
Does Missoula County, Montana sell tax liens or tax deeds?
When is the Missoula County tax certificate sale?
How often does Missoula County hold tax deed sales?
I own a property in this sale. Can I stop it?
Where can I find the Missoula County tax sale list?
Verified Sep 11, 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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