No-bid lands: how it works
Unsold lands sold by the Auditor without further auction
A parcel that draws no bid at the annual auction, or whose sale the Auditor disapproves, or that was sold within the previous five years and neither redeemed nor deeded because the purchaser never followed through, may be sold by the Auditor with no further auction and no additional advertising. The statute sets a priority order rather than a price auction: first an owner of an adjacent tract or parcel, and if more than one adjacent owner wants the same parcel the Auditor sells to the highest bidder among them; then the municipality; then the county commission; then the West Virginia Land Stewardship Corporation for its Land Bank Program; then any party willing to buy. The price is whatever the Auditor and the purchaser agree, and the Auditor may require the buyer to reimburse the cost of a licensed attorney's title examination or let the buyer engage one at their own cost. The Auditor may refuse a buyer on the same grounds that disqualify an auction bidder, and citizens and entities of a country designated a Country of Particular Concern by the United States Department of State are barred. Operationally the Auditor's land department takes these as written bids with a check, inside a bid window it posts on its Land/County Collections page; the window shown on that page as of September 10, 2026 closed for processing on September 30, 2026.
Does West Virginia publish a lands-available list?
West Virginia keeps no separate lands available list of the Florida kind. Parcels that stay unsold remain with the Auditor under the no-bid status and are offered again at the next auction or sold under the priority order above. Escheated lands and waste and unappropriated lands are handled inside the same annual auction and cannot be redeemed.
This route skips the live auction, which means these are the parcels nobody bid on, so the due diligence matters even more. Every state names this inventory differently, and the state-held and struck-off land table maps each local name to the same mechanism. The over-the-counter guide has the cross-state playbook.
Verified Sep 10, 2026 against West Virginia 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.