Hi Daniel,

From the way you describe it, I think you might be referring to a Tax Certificate sale, not a Tax Deed auction. You mention a tax debt, a future foreclosure, an interest payment, and the possibility of the owner redeeming the property, and all those things belong to the certificate stage.

At that point, investors aren’t buying the property itself; they’re buying the tax lien for the unpaid amount. If the owner redeems it later, they pay the taxes plus interest, and that money goes to whoever bought the certificate. If they don’t redeem after a certain time, the certificate holder can apply for a Tax Deed sale, which is when the property actually gets auctioned.

If what you saw was already a Tax Deed auction, then there’s no later foreclosure or interest to be paid, the buyer simply gets title to the property and that’s it.

So my guess is that you were looking at a Tax Certificate sale, not a Tax Deed sale. Can you confirm which one it was?