County Trustee Certificates: how it works
County trustee certificates and the scavenger sale
Illinois has no statewide over-the-counter counter. Every tax lien or certificate offered at the annual sale and not sold for want of bidders is forfeited to the county as trustee for the taxing districts. The county may then sell any property it acquired, or assign any tax certificate to any party, including taxing districts, municipalities, land banks, and non-profit affordable-housing developers. Many counties run that assignment program through a delinquent tax agent, so terms, pricing, and whether private investors are served at all are county decisions rather than statutory rights. An assignee must file notice with the county clerk within 60 days setting a redemption deadline no later than 3 years from the assignment. The older route that let anyone apply to the county clerk to buy forfeited taxes no longer applies to forfeitures occurring on or after January 1, 2024.
Does Illinois publish a lands-available list?
Counties may also offer county-held certificates at a scavenger sale, advertised alongside the annual sale when the county board orders one by resolution. Scavenger bidding is for cash to the highest bidder with a minimum bid of $250, or half the tax when the total liability is under $500, and the winning bidder takes an assignment of the county's certificate. Separately, a county that takes a tax deed as trustee must offer the parcel at a public tax deed auction within 120 days of recording the deed.
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 Jul 29, 2026 against Illinois 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.