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Tax Sale Atlas

Brown County, SD tax sales

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

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

Next sale
The third Monday in December.
Format
In person
Registration
No advance registration, bidder packet or deposit is published.
County office
(605) 626-7133
Every displayed fact carries a source badge. Verified Aug 31, 2026 against official county and state pages.How we verify
On this page

How Brown County sells delinquent taxes

Tax certificate sale (lien)

In person
Run by
Brown County Treasurer
Frequency
annual
Typical timing
The third Monday in December.
Registration
There is no online bidding portal and no published pre-registration form.
Next expected
on the third Monday in December, 2026 (window; exact date posts closer to the sale)
When it runs
The third Monday in December. South Dakota fixes one annual tax certificate sale date for every county: the treasurer offers certificates at public sale at the courthouse on the third Monday of December each year, between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., and may continue the sale from day to day until every certificate has been offered. Brown County does not publish a sale bulletin of its own, so confirm the hour and the room with the Treasurer's office at (605) 626-7133 in early December.
Registration and deposit

There is no online bidding portal and no published pre-registration form. Bidders attend at the Brown County Courthouse, 25 Market St. Suite 2, Aberdeen, and bid parcel by parcel as the Treasurer offers each certificate in tax list order. Come ready to pay the full amount of taxes, interest and costs on anything you win: if a winning bidder does not pay, the Treasurer can reoffer the certificate and the county can sue the bidder for the amount bid. Call (605) 626-7133 before the sale to confirm what the office needs from you and which forms of payment it accepts.

Sale format and venue
Bidding runs the interest rate down, not the price up. The Treasurer offers each parcel in the order it appears on the tax list and sells to the bidder who pays the full amount of taxes, interest and costs due and names the lowest annual interest rate. The price is fixed at that delinquent amount, so there is no premium to bid and no overbid to lose. A valid bid may not exceed ten percent per year, and the statute sets no minimum rate, so a contested parcel can be bid all the way down toward zero percent. Interest accrues at the bid rate from the date of purchase, on the certificate amount and on any later taxes the holder pays. A county commission may set a fee of up to fifty dollars that is deducted from the proceeds paid to the certificate holder on redemption and is never charged to the property owner, so ask the Treasurer what Brown County's fee is. The sale notice and the list of parcels run in the county's official newspaper during the week before the sale, which is where the sale list appears; Brown County places its legal notices with the Groton Independent and the Aberdeen Insider. Certificates that draw no bid can be bought afterward at the Treasurer's office at private sale for the taxes, penalty and costs due, and the Treasurer can assign a certificate the county holds to a buyer who first pays every tax on the parcel in full, including the amount the certificate was bid off for. Ask the Treasurer what the county is holding before you plan around it.
Source: S.D. Codified Laws 10-23-7, Time and place of annual sale, adjournment from day to day· Verified Aug 31, 2026

Tax deed sale

In person
Run by
Brown County Commission
Frequency
annual
Registration
No advance registration, bidder packet or deposit is published.
Sale list
Brown County property sales page, tax deed auction notice with parcel descriptions and minimum bids
When it runs
Brown County auctions property it has already taken by tax deed only when the County Commission approves a group of parcels for sale, so the date moves year to year rather than sitting on a fixed calendar. The county's notice scheduled the 2026 auction for March 31 at 3:00 P.M. in the Community Room of the Brown County Courthouse Annex in Aberdeen. Watch the county's property sales page and the county's official newspaper for the next notice.
Registration and deposit

No advance registration, bidder packet or deposit is published. Bidders attend the auction in the Community Room at the Brown County Courthouse Annex in Aberdeen. The county's notice states that the "Purchase price of the property along with a $30.00 recording fee shall be paid in full on the day of the sale and a Quit Claim Deed will be issued to the successful bidder."

Sale format and venue
This is a sale of real estate the county already owns rather than a lien sale, and the county notices it under SDCL Chapter 6-13 instead of the tax certificate chapter. Each parcel carries a published minimum bid: the 2026 notice offered bare lots and a commercial building at 407 Main St. in Frederick, Stratford and Prairiewood Village, with minimums running from $3,000 to $8,500. Title passes by quit claim deed, so the county conveys whatever interest it holds and warrants nothing; price the parcel accordingly. The Auditor publishes tax deed sale notices for the Commission. The same county page also lists Sheriff's foreclosure sales, which are mortgage foreclosures run by the Sheriff's Office and are unrelated to delinquent property taxes, so read the heading before you plan a trip.
Source: Brown County, Property Sales and Tax Deed Auction Notice· Verified Aug 31, 2026

Brown County tax sale list and auction calendar

For Brown 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.

  1. Get the advertised list

    Use Brown County property sales page, tax deed auction notice with parcel descriptions and minimum bids for the current advertised parcels, then recheck it before the auction.

  2. Register to bid

    No advance registration, bidder packet or deposit is published. Full requirements are in the sale card above.

  3. Sale day

    The third Monday in December. 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 Brown County Commission as the source to confirm which parcels are actually offered.

Before you bid in Brown County

  1. Start with the live sale list

    Pull the current advertised parcels from Brown County property sales page, tax deed auction notice with parcel descriptions and minimum bids. Lists can change before the sale, so recheck the county source before you price a parcel.

  2. Confirm registration and deposit

    No advance registration, bidder packet or deposit is published. Bidders attend the auction in the Community Room at the Brown County Courthouse Annex in Aberdeen. The county's notice states that the "Purchase price of the property along with a $30.00 recording fee shall be paid in full on the day of the sale and a Quit Claim Deed will be issued to the successful bidder."

  3. Check the state rules that change the bid

    Read the South Dakota 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 South Dakota before you price the title work.

  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

Three routes exist and each runs through a county office. A certificate that stayed unsold for want of bidders must be sold at private sale at the treasurer's office to any person who pays the taxes, penalty and costs due. A person may also buy the county's interest in a certificate the treasurer bid off, by paying the taxes, penalty, interest and costs of sale and transfer plus every unpaid and subsequent tax, after which the treasurer assigns the certificate and the buyer holds the rights of an original purchaser. Both routes are closed in a county whose commissioners have not waived SDCL 10-23-28.1. Separately, tax deed property the county offered that drew no bid may be sold at private sale within twelve months for not less than ninety percent of the appraised value, without further publication or appraisal. Ask the county treasurer about certificates and the county auditor about unsold deeded parcels.

New to this path? Read how over-the-counter certificates work. Every state has its own name for what goes unsold, so check what South Dakota calls its leftover tax-sale inventory.

Use the arrow keys to switch between these sections.

County offices

Tax Collector (runs the certificate sale)

Brown County Treasurer

(605) 626-7133

25 Market St., Suite 2, Aberdeen, SD 57401

Official website

County notes

  • Both offices a bidder deals with sit in the Brown County Courthouse at 25 Market St. in Aberdeen: the Treasurer in Suite 2 at (605) 626-7133, and the Auditor in Suite 1 at (605) 626-7110. Both are open 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday.
  • Brown County runs two separate sales and they are not the same market. The Treasurer's December tax certificate sale sells liens, priced at the delinquent amount and won by bidding the interest rate down. The county's tax deed auction sells real estate the county already owns, at published minimum bids, in the Courthouse Annex Community Room.
  • Redemption runs until a tax deed actually issues. A certificate holder can begin the deed proceeding three years after the sale date and must serve a notice of intention to take a tax deed on the owner of record, the person in possession and the person the property is taxed to, with mortgagees, lienholders and other interested parties served by registered or certified mail or by publication once a week for two successive weeks. The owner then has sixty days from completed service to redeem.
  • A South Dakota tax certificate does not last forever. If the deed proceeding is not completed within six years of the sale date, the certificate, the tax lien and the lien for any subsequent taxes the holder paid all cease and are forever barred, and the Treasurer cancels the certificate. Calendar the six-year date the day you buy, and note that an assignee inherits the original purchaser's clock rather than starting a new one.
  • Brown County does not post the December delinquent list online. It runs in the county's official newspaper in the week before the sale, and the Treasurer's office can tell you what is on it.

South Dakota rules

Max interest rate
10% per year, bid down at auction
Minimum return
No statutory minimum; interest accrues at your bid rate
Redemption
There is no fixed redemption deadline that starts at the sale. SDCL 10-24-1 lets any person redeem at any time before a tax deed is issued. What sets the outer limit is the deed process: SDCL 10-25-1 bars the certificate holder from starting that process until three years after the certificate sale, and SDCL 10-25-8 keeps the right to redeem alive until sixty days after the affidavit of completed service of the notice of intention is filed with the treasurer. Missing that sixty-day window passes the owner's, mortgagee's and lienholder's interests to the certificate holder. After the deed is recorded, the former owner has one hundred eighty days to bring an action to recover possession or to avoid the deed, which is a limitation period rather than a further right to redeem.
Deed deposit
Chapter 6-13 sets no deposit for a cash sale. A buyer taking an installment contract must deposit the cash portion with the fiscal officer as soon as the bid is accepted, and the board can still decline to approve the sale, in which case the deposit is returned. A separate rule bars a bidder from the sale entirely: under SDCL 10-25-45 a county may refuse a bid from any person who is not current on all property taxes due within that county. Payment methods and any county-set deposit are county practice rather than statute, so confirm them with the county before bidding.
Surplus proceeds
The county first deducts the expenses of taking the tax deed and of the sale. What remains is prorated to the taxing districts on the levies for the most recent year included in the proceeds until all tax and interest is paid. Any surplus left after taxes, penalty, interest, county liens and other costs must be returned to the prior owner of record, and if that owner cannot be found within one hundred eighty days the surplus is transferred to the Unclaimed Property Division under SDCL chapter 43-41B. The same distribution binds a private buyer. SDCL 10-25-39.2, effective February 12, 2024, requires any person other than a county who acquires property by tax deed after being issued a tax certificate to offer that property at public auction under chapter 6-13 within one year of the deed, and entitles that seller only to compensation in the same manner as a redemption under SDCL 10-24-1. A South Dakota certificate is therefore a route to being paid what the certificate is worth, not a route to keeping the land.
Governing statute
SDCL Title 10, Chapter 10-23

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.

See the full South Dakotarules and every county →

Frequently asked questions

Does Brown County, South Dakota sell tax liens or tax deeds?

Brown County follows South Dakota's tax lien state system.

When is the Brown County tax certificate sale?

The third Monday in December. South Dakota fixes one annual tax certificate sale date for every county: the treasurer offers certificates at public sale at the courthouse on the third Monday of December each year, between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., and may continue the sale from day to day until every certificate has been offered. Brown County does not publish a sale bulletin of its own, so confirm the hour and the room with the Treasurer's office at (605) 626-7133 in early December. The sale is held in person. Always confirm the exact date with the County Treasurer before the sale.

How often does Brown County hold tax deed sales?

Brown County holds its tax deed sale once a year. 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. South Dakota's redemption rule: Open until a tax deed issues; a deed cannot be sought until 3 years after the certificate sale, and redemption then runs until 60 days after completed service of the notice of intention. Call the Brown County Commission 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 Brown County tax sale list?

Brown County posts its tax sale list at brown.sd.us. 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 31, 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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