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Tax Sale Atlas

McMinn County, TN tax sales

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

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

Next sale
Not published.
Registration
Not published online.
County office
(423) 745-1281
Every displayed fact carries a source badge. Verified Aug 18, 2026 against official county and state pages.How we verify
On this page

How McMinn County sells delinquent taxes

No tax lien certificate sale

Tennessee counties enforce the tax lien through a delinquent tax suit and sell the property itself; no tax lien certificates are auctioned.

Tax deed sale

Run by
McMinn County Clerk & Master, clerk of the Chancery Court and master in Chancery for the Tenth Judicial District of Tennessee
Frequency
annual
Typical timing
Not published.
Registration
Not published online.
Sale list
Delinquent Tax Properties list, county-held parcels open to written offer (not the Clerk & Master auction docket)
When it runs
Not published. McMinn County posts no delinquent tax sale date, sale notice, or sale calendar anywhere on its official website. The Clerk & Master page describes the office's authority only in general terms, stating that "the Clerk & Master is a quasi-judicial position established by the Constitution of the State of Tennessee and as such, the Clerk & Master can hold hearings, report findings to the court, conduct judicial sales, etc." It carries no tax sale schedule. The only delinquent tax material the county publishes concerns parcels the county already owns, headed "Delinquent Tax Properties" with the instruction to "Please contact McMinn County Mayor's Office (423) 745-7634 to check on any property in which you have interest to assure it is still available for bid." Tennessee sales are set case by case as each delinquent tax suit reaches judgment rather than on a fixed annual month, so call the Clerk & Master at (423) 745-1281 for the next scheduled sale.
Registration and deposit

Not published online. No bidder registration form, deposit rule, pre-registration deadline, or payment terms for the Clerk & Master's delinquent tax sale appears on the McMinn County website. Contact the Clerk & Master at (423) 745-1281 before a sale to confirm bidder requirements, accepted funds, and whether bidding is conducted in person at the courthouse. A separate and simpler process governs parcels the county already holds from earlier tax sales: a buyer prints the county's Delinquent Tax Bid Form, states an offer amount and the map and parcel number, and submits it to the McMinn County Mayor's office at 6 E. Madison Ave. The form states that the offer "must be published in the newspaper with a ten (10) day notice," that absent a counter offer the bidder pays the offered amount and "the County will furnish me with a quit claim deed to said property," and that property is sold "as is" with no warranty as to boundaries, condition, or location.

Sale format and venue
Tennessee sells a redeemable deed through the Chancery Court, and in McMinn County the Clerk & Master is the office that handles that docket. The county's own page confirms the role, stating the Clerk & Master "serves in the dual role of clerk of the Chancery Court and the master in Chancery for the Tenth Judicial District of Tennessee" and "can hold hearings, report findings to the court, conduct judicial sales." Beyond that statutory role, McMinn County publishes no sale logistics. The auction venue is not documented: no online platform and no in-person courthouse sale location could be verified from an official source, so neither is asserted here. McMinn County does not appear among the fifteen Tennessee entries carried on the GovEase live auction portal's county selector, the platform several Tennessee clerks and masters use, so GovEase should not be assumed. What McMinn does publish is the post-sale inventory. Its Delinquent Tax Properties list is drawn from a concluded county delinquent tax suit, headed "McMinn County vs. Guzlas, et al, Docket #2018-CV-107 (2014, 2015 & 2015 County Del Tax Sale)," with amounts stated "as of May 2023." Each entry itemizes the sums due McMinn County, the clerk fees and court costs, and the county tax attorney's fee, then totals them as the "TOTAL DUE IN CLERK & MASTER'S OFFICE" and carries that figure across as the "MINIMUM ORIGINAL OFFER FOR SALE." These are parcels struck to the county at a prior sale and now resold by written offer through the County Mayor rather than by auction, which matches the county-held resale path in Tenn. Code Ann. 67-5-2507. Investors chasing a live redeemable deed auction should call the Clerk & Master directly for the sale date, bidder registration, deposit terms, and the parcel list, and should not read the published list as the auction docket. The Trustee collects current property taxes, which the Trustee page states "are due and payable beginning October 1st through the last day of February the following year," and the Trustee does not run the tax sale.
Source: McMinn County, Tennessee official website, Clerk and Master office page· Verified Aug 18, 2026

McMinn County tax sale list and auction calendar

For McMinn 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 Delinquent Tax Properties list, county-held parcels open to written offer (not the Clerk & Master auction docket) for the current advertised parcels, then recheck it before the auction.

  2. Register to bid

    Not published online. Full requirements are in the sale card above.

  3. Sale day

    Not published. The auction platform is still being verified. Confirm the next sale date and registration window with the county before you bid.

  4. Confirm with the office

    If the list, platform, and notice disagree, use McMinn County Clerk & Master, clerk of the Chancery Court and master in Chancery for the Tenth Judicial District of Tennessee as the source to confirm which parcels are actually offered.

Before you bid in McMinn County

  1. Start with the live sale list

    Pull the current advertised parcels from Delinquent Tax Properties list, county-held parcels open to written offer (not the Clerk & Master auction docket). Lists can change before the sale, so recheck the county source before you price a parcel.

  2. Confirm registration and deposit

    Not published online. No bidder registration form, deposit rule, pre-registration deadline, or payment terms for the Clerk & Master's delinquent tax sale appears on the McMinn County website. Contact the Clerk & Master at (423) 745-1281 before a sale to confirm bidder requirements, accepted funds, and whether bidding is conducted in person at the courthouse. A separate and simpler process governs parcels the county already holds from earlier tax sales: a buyer prints the county's Delinquent Tax Bid Form, states an offer amount and the map and parcel number, and submits it to the McMinn County Mayor's office at 6 E. Madison Ave. The form states that the offer "must be published in the newspaper with a ten (10) day notice," that absent a counter offer the bidder pays the offered amount and "the County will furnish me with a quit claim deed to said property," and that property is sold "as is" with no warranty as to boundaries, condition, or location.

  3. Check the state rules that change the bid

    Read the Tennessee 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

Parcels struck to the county at the tax sale can be bought from the county afterward. Each county mayor must publish a list of county-held parcels by July 1 every year, and any person may file a written offer for one. The county advertises the offer, competing bidders have ten days to raise it by 10 percent or more, and the highest offer wins, sometimes through an online resale. A parcel bought before the redemption period expires stays subject to redemption. Ask the county mayor's office or the clerk and master where the current list is posted.

County-held parcel listings are published per county under Tenn. Code Ann. 67-5-2511; find the current list on the county's website or newspaper of record

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

Use the arrow keys to switch between these sections.

County offices

Tax sale office

McMinn County Clerk & Master (Chancery Court, Tenth Judicial District)

(423) 745-1281

McMinn County Courthouse, 6 East Madison Avenue, Athens, TN 37303

Official website

County notes

  • Patty Gaines is the Clerk & Master. The office is on the top floor of the McMinn County Courthouse. Posted hours are Monday through Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Fax is (423) 744-1652. The Clerk & Master is appointed to a six-year term.
  • McMinn County publishes no delinquent tax sale page. A full extraction of the county home page link list returned three delinquent tax documents, all of them about county-held parcels resold by written offer, and no tax sale notice, calendar, or bidder terms.
  • County-held parcels are resold through the County Mayor's office, not by auction. The bid form is signed by County Mayor John M. Gentry and directs offers to the Mayor's office at 6 E. Madison Ave. The Mayor's office number for checking whether a parcel is still available is (423) 745-7634.
  • The published Delinquent Tax Properties list is dated as of May 2023 and derives from Docket #2018-CV-107 covering the 2014 and 2015 county delinquent tax sales. Confirm current availability and amounts before relying on any figure in it.
  • No online auction platform is verified for McMinn County. The county names none, and McMinn does not appear in the Tennessee county list on the GovEase live auction portal.
  • Redemption runs up to 1 year from the order confirming the sale, tiered to 180, 90, or 30 days by length of delinquency and an abandonment finding, and a redeeming owner repays the purchase price plus 12 percent per annum interest under Tenn. Code Ann. 67-5-2701.
  • The County Trustee at (423) 745-1291, McMinn County Courthouse, 6 East Madison Avenue, Athens, TN 37303, collects current taxes only and does not conduct the sale.

Tennessee rules

Redemption
The right to redeem vests when the court enters the order confirming the sale and never runs longer than one year from that date. The court sets each parcel's period before the sale on a statutory scale: one year when the taxes were delinquent 5 years or less, 180 days when delinquent more than 5 but less than 8 years, 90 days when delinquent 8 years or more, and 30 days when the court finds the property vacant and abandoned. To redeem, an interested person files a motion in the same lawsuit and must first pay the clerk the full redemption amount; the purchaser then has 30 days after notice to ask the court for additional reimbursements. When the court declares the redemption complete, title divests from the purchaser and the clerk refunds the purchase money plus everything owed. During the redemption period the purchaser owes no duty to insure the parcel and is not liable for damage to it except from the purchaser's own intentional acts. Separately, a suit attacking the validity of the sale itself must normally be filed within one year of the confirmation order, with an absolute three-year outer limit.
Deed deposit
No statewide deposit percentage exists. The statute fixes the form of payment (cash, certified funds, cashier's check, money order, or ACH transfer) and each court sets its own payment terms. Davidson County takes cashier's checks only, Rutherford County requires payment by close of business the day after the sale, and counties selling through GovEase collect payment through the platform. Confirm the terms with the clerk and master that runs the sale before bidding.
Surplus proceeds
Sale proceeds pay the delinquent tax attorney, then court costs, then the taxing entities. Any excess is claimed by motion in the same case: remaining taxes are paid first, then lienholders in order of priority (pre-sale liens before post-sale liens), then the former owner. Filing the motion ends any remaining redemption period as to the movant. Excess proceeds nobody claims pass to the state under the Uniform Unclaimed Property Act.
Governing statute
Tenn. Code Ann. Title 67, Chapter 5, Parts 25-27

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 Tennesseerules and every county →

Frequently asked questions

Does McMinn County, Tennessee sell tax liens or tax deeds?

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

How often does McMinn County hold tax deed sales?

McMinn County holds its tax deed sale once a year. Not published. 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. Tennessee's redemption rule: Up to 1 year from entry of the order confirming the sale, tiered by how long the taxes were delinquent. Call the McMinn County Clerk & Master, clerk of the Chancery Court and master in Chancery for the Tenth Judicial District of Tennessee 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 McMinn County tax sale list?

McMinn County posts its tax sale list at mcminncountytn.gov. 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 18, 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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Compare sale calendars, platforms, and rules across the state, or read the guides before you bid.

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Call McMinn County Clerk & Master