County-Held Parcel Resale: how it works
County-held parcel resale (deferred sale)
Parcels the clerk bids in for the county at the tax sale pass to the county mayor's charge, and state law gives every county a resale process an investor can use. Any person may file a written offer for a parcel; the county publishes the offer's details, and for ten days anyone else may raise it by 10 percent or more, which forces a small auction among the offerors with the highest written offer as the starting bid. Unless county regulations say otherwise, parcels are offered with no minimum bid and no county board approval, and the county mayor may run the resale online instead. A parcel bought from the county before the redemption period has run stays subject to redemption.
Does Tennessee publish a lands-available list?
Each county mayor must prepare an annual listing of all parcels the county acquired at tax sales, by July 1 each year, and publish it in a newspaper of general circulation or post it on a website with newspaper notice of the posting. Municipalities keep the same listing for parcels they hold. That published list is the place to shop for county-held property.
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 Aug 18, 2026 against Tennessee 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.