Land · Iowa tax sale guide

Iowa tax sales by county

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Iowa is the state where the auction is not about money. Every parcel is offered for the total amount of taxes, interest, fees and costs due, every bidder pays that same total, and the competition is over the percentage of the parcel the winner will take for paying it: smallest percentage wins, 1 percent is the floor, and ties are settled by the treasurer's random selection (Iowa Code section 446.16). The winner receives a certificate of purchase earning a fixed 2 percent per month that nobody bids and no county sets (section 447.1). The deed path runs through the notice of expiration of the right of redemption, servable after one year and nine months from a regular sale, with the right expiring 90 days after service is completed by filing the affidavit of service, and the treasurer's deed, recorded before delivery, immediately after (sections 447.9, 447.12, 448.1). Two corrections run through this whole page set: the clocks on public bidder, housing and public nuisance certificates are nine months and three months, not one year nine months (sections 446.18, 446.19A, 446.19B, 447.9), and Iowa law contains no scavenger sale at all; parcels nobody bids on go to the public bidder sale and behind it to the county's mandatory bid (sections 446.18, 446.19). Registration is partly statutory, but windows, platforms and payment forms are county terms, and the counties run genuinely different sales.

This page set covers the top 10 Iowa counties by population, each verified against its treasurer's own publications, and the 2026 season, all of it on Monday, June 15, 2026, shows the variety. Polk County sold online only through GovEase, 8:00 a.m. to about 11:00 a.m., on pre-bids; Woodbury County the same way, 9:00 to 10:30 a.m. Dubuque and Story Counties took online bids only through Iowa Tax Auction inside a single morning, closing at 11:00 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., and Linn County ran its sale at the Treasurer's Office in Cedar Rapids with bids placed online. Scott County sold in person in the Board Room in Davenport from 8:30 a.m., continuing to a second day if unfinished; Black Hawk County in person in Waterloo, 8:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. daily until everything was offered, on paper registration with original signatures, and its own packet and web page disagree about the adjourned sale cadence, a conflict its page carries rather than resolves; Johnson County in person in Iowa City at 8:00 a.m., oral bidding, payment by personal check or money order only. Published registration fees ran from 35 dollars in Scott County to 58 dollars in Johnson County, and no county in the set publishes a separate bidder deposit. Pottawattamie County publishes full terms only through its June 16, 2025 sale and no dated 2026 sale, and Dallas County publishes only the annual June pattern; both pages say so plainly instead of borrowing the statewide date.

Verify before you go: counties can move a date, change terms, cancel a sale, or pull parcels at any time. The official sale list is the final word.

The 10 counties

Each row links to that county's own page: selling office, venue or platform, deposit, payment terms, leftover channel, and sources. Where a county has not posted a dated sale, the row says so instead of projecting a pattern onto it.

How Iowa tax sales work

• Iowa holds one sale a year, on the third Monday in June, and the county treasurer runs it. Under Iowa Code section 446.7 the treasurer offers every parcel on which taxes are delinquent, for the total amount of taxes, interest, fees and costs due. The notice discipline is statutory: the treasurer mails notice of the date, time and place to the person in whose name the parcel is taxed not later than May 1, and publishes it once in at least one official county newspaper at least one week and not more than three weeks before sale day (section 446.9). In 2026 the sale day was Monday, June 15, 2026. A different June date is allowed for good cause, which is one reason each county's own published date governs over the statewide pattern.
• The bid is a percentage of the parcel, not a price and not an interest rate. Bidders offer to pay the total amount due in exchange for a percentage of the parcel; the smallest percentage wins, the designated percentage may not be less than 1 percent, and an equal smallest bid is resolved by a random selection process run by the treasurer (section 446.16). The winner then pays the full total amount bid immediately, or the parcel is offered again (section 446.23). The percentage matters only later: if a deed issues, it conveys the undivided interest the percentage represents. A room full of buyers all pay the same dollars for a parcel; the auction decides how much of the parcel those dollars buy.
• The certificate earns a fixed statutory rate that nobody bids. The purchaser receives a certificate of purchase (section 446.29). When the owner redeems, the redemption price includes interest of 2 percent per month on the amount for which the parcel was sold, counting each fraction of a month as an entire month, and the same rate on any subsequent taxes the purchaser paid (section 447.1). Summaries that describe Iowa bidding as an interest rate auction are importing another state's system: in Iowa the rate is set by the statute, the same for every certificate in every county, and the only competitive variable is the percentage.
• Redemption stays open until the holder closes it, and owners use the whole window. The owner may redeem at any time before the right of redemption expires by paying the treasurer the amount sold for, the certificate fee, the 2 percent per month interest, and subsequent taxes with interest (section 447.1). Parcels leave the published list as owners pay, right up to the sale, and certificates are redeemed at the treasurer's office, not by paying the holder. The certificate is an interest-bearing claim with a deed at the end of a long fuse, not a purchase of the land on sale day.
• The fuse is one year and nine months, and the 90 days run from completed service, not from the notice. After one year and nine months from the date of a regular sale, the holder may cause a notice of expiration of the right of redemption to be served by both regular mail and certified mail on the person in possession, the person in whose name the parcel is taxed, and lienholders and other persons with an interest of record (section 447.9). Service is not complete until the affidavit of service, with the costs of service, is filed with the treasurer (section 447.12), and only then does the 90 day clock run; redemption must reach the treasurer, or the treasurer's authorized internet site, before the close of business on the ninetieth day. A holder who counts the 90 days from the mailing has started the clock early and can lose the deed over it.
• The deed follows immediately when the 90 days expire. On return of the certificate and payment of the deed and recording fees, the treasurer makes out, signs, acknowledges and records the deed before delivering it (sections 448.1 and 448.3), and the recorded deed vests the purchaser with the right, title, interest and estate of the state, the county and the former owner, as to the percentage the bid designated. Challenges are narrow: an equitable action in district court (section 448.6), a bar on actions brought more than three years after execution and recording (section 448.12), and a faster bar where the holder records the affidavit described in section 448.15, after which a claim must be filed within 120 days and suit brought within 60 days after that (sections 448.15 and 448.16). The two year recital in the deed form in section 448.2 is form language, not a waiting rule.
• The clocks are not uniform, and this is the correction that matters most on publicly held paper. The one year nine month wait belongs to the regular sale. A certificate sold at a public bidder sale under section 446.18 carries a nine month wait before the expiration notice may be served. Certificates arising from a housing purchase under section 446.19A or a public nuisance tax sale under section 446.19B carry a three month wait (section 447.9). Applying the regular sale clock to a public bidder certificate overstates the wait by a full year, and to a housing or nuisance certificate by a year and a half. Which sale produced the certificate is printed on the county's own records and decides the deed timeline before any other fact does.
• Parcels nobody bids on do not disappear, and Iowa law never calls what happens next a scavenger sale. Parcels previously advertised and offered for one year or more that remain unsold for want of bidders are offered at a public bidder sale on the day of the regular sale or an adjournment of it (section 446.18). If no bid is received there, or the bid is less than the total amount due, the county, through its treasurer, must bid the full total amount due and take the certificate without paying money, the taxing bodies being charged their shares (section 446.19); a city may bid to protect its own interests but is not the default holder. The word scavenger appears nowhere in chapters 446, 447 or 448. Certificates are assignable by endorsement and entry in the county system at the treasurer's office for a 100 dollar transaction fee, 10 dollars for an assignment by an estate or by a county, and may not be assigned to a person entitled to redeem the parcel other than a municipality (section 446.31).
• Registration is partly statutory and partly county terms, and the counties do not run the same sale. The statute authorizes a reasonable registration fee capped in total at the cost of the sale and limits who may register, bid or own a certificate, with a federal tax identification number and either a secretary of state agent designation or a chapter 547 verified statement required of non-individuals (section 446.16). Windows, payment forms and the platform are not in the statute at all. In the 2026 sales in this set, Polk and Woodbury Counties sold online only through GovEase with pre-bids, Dubuque and Story Counties took online bids only through Iowa Tax Auction inside a single morning, Linn County ran its sale at the Treasurer's Office with bids online, and Scott, Black Hawk and Johnson Counties sold fully in person, Johnson by oral bidding. Read the county's own packet for the year in front of you; there is no statewide Iowa registration window, deposit rule or platform.

One Iowa fact decides most purchases: you never bid a price. The whole room pays the same total amount due, and the auction only decides what percentage of the parcel the winner will own if a deed ever issues. A careless 1 percent bid converts a full payment into a deed for a sliver of a parcel, and the 2 percent per month the certificate earns in the meantime is the compensation for the other outcome, redemption, which is how most Iowa certificates end.

Research the parcels before you bid

A sale list gives you the parcel, the date, and the opening terms. It does not give you the owner, the value, or the rest of the picture: liens, foreclosure status, and parcel history. PropertyRadar is the data platform for that layer. It carries owner records, assessed and market values, foreclosure and tax data, and property history for parcels across the country, searchable by address, owner, or county, including parcels that never reach a sale list.

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Get the alert, not just the calendar.

The dates on these pages are the free layer. The Pine membership is the paid layer, proven in New York: members pick their counties, get alerts when a sale is scheduled or a list posts, and receive the full property list with the analysis already done. Iowa counties open from the interest list first, in the order readers join it.

Keep going

Once a deadline puts you in a sale, the Land Investor Due Diligence Toolkit is the checklist and bid worksheet to run on each parcel before you bid.