Land · Nebraska tax sale guide

Sarpy County tax sales, Nebraska

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Sarpy County publishes the most complete sale packet of these five counties, a full procedures document that a first time buyer can actually prepare from, and the sale itself is old fashioned: in person in the Sarpy County Boardroom in Papillion, round robin, with a randomly assigned bidder number and one blank check handed over at check in. Registration is the real gate. It closes the Friday before the sale, it costs $25 for every single entity a person represents, and one representative carrying twenty entities owes $500 before the sale starts, with a W-9 on file for each. The county splits the day into parcels over $400, parcels under $400 and special assessments, warns that the printed list understates the true purchase price because interest and fees sit on top, and states in capital letters that there are no refunds on purchased certificates. The classic mistakes are arriving unregistered, bringing one check when special assessments need a second, and treating the list amount as the price.

Selling office: Sarpy County Treasurer, Treasurer Jeff Mikesell, 1102 E. 1st Street, Papillion, NE 68046, office phone (402) 593-2143 (treasurer letterhead of March 20, 2026). Sale questions and registration go to taxsale@sarpy.gov

Next sale: Monday, March 2, 2026, 9:00 a.m. public tax sale (held). The date, time and venue come from two treasurer publications that agree: the Tax Sale Information page and procedures document headed Public Sale Date, March 2, 2026, and the treasurer's signed Delinquent Tax Sale Notice dated January 20, 2026, published in The Daily Record on February 5, February 12 and February 19, 2026, which states the sale covers delinquent real estate taxes for 2024 and prior years. The treasurer's letter of March 20, 2026 to the County Board then reports on parcels offered but not sold at the March 2, 2026 tax sale, which proves the sale ran. March 2, 2026 was a Monday, verified by date arithmetic

The county itself dates the next sale. The treasurer's Real Estate Taxes page states that if 2025 taxes are not paid on real property, they will be offered at a public tax sale on March 1, 2027, and that such sale would result in a tax lien being placed on the property. March 1, 2027 is a Monday, verified by date arithmetic. No 2027 registration window or venue notice is published yet as of November 9, 2026

Dates and deadlines

Sources: Sarpy County Treasurer, Tax Sale Information (Public Sale Date, March 2, 2026). Sarpy County Treasurer, Tax Sale Information procedures document for the March 2, 2026 sale. Sarpy County Treasurer, 2026 Delinquent Tax List and Sale Notice, January 20, 2026. Sarpy County Treasurer, Real Estate Taxes (next sale March 1, 2027). Sarpy County Board of Commissioners, Agenda Item 26-161, April 28, 2026, treasurer list of property offered but not sold. Sarpy County Board of Commissioners, Agenda Item 26-162 and Resolution 2026-104, May 5, 2026. Confirm with the selling office before relying on any date on this page: sales move, terms change, and parcels are pulled up to sale day.

Research Sarpy County parcels before you bid

A sale list gives you the parcels, 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 Sarpy County, searchable by address, owner, or county, including parcels that never reach a sale list.

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How Nebraska tax certificate sales work

• Nebraska sells certificates, not land, at a public sale that opens on the first Monday in March. Real estate on which taxes are unpaid on or before the first Monday in March after delinquency is subject to sale on or after that date (section 77-1801); the treasurer prepares the delinquent tax list not less than four nor more than six weeks before that Monday and gives notice that the listed property will be sold on that Monday at public auction at the treasurer's office or another designated location, published once a week for three consecutive weeks commencing the first week in February, posted in the treasurer's office, and forwarded for compiled publication on the Department of Revenue website (sections 77-1802 and 77-1804). The sale commences on the noticed day and continues from day to day, Sundays and holidays excepted, until every item has been sold or offered (section 77-1806). For the 2026 cycle the Monday was March 2, 2026.
• What the buyer receives is a lien, in writing. The purchaser pays the taxes, delinquent interest and costs due, or the property is offered again (sections 77-1807 and 77-1808), and receives a certificate of purchase from the county treasurer describing the property, the sum paid and the deed entitlement dates, presumptive evidence of the regularity of the prior proceedings, deliverable by hand, mail or electronic means (section 77-1818). Each certificate carries one tax lien, and the lien is perpetual (section 77-1819). On issuance the purchaser must notify the owner, and a 150 dollar administrative fee is charged to the owner (section 77-1818). Title, possession and the property itself are not part of the transaction.
• The old bid-down is dead, and summaries still describing it are describing pre-2015 law. The smallest portion language of section 77-1807(1) applies only until January 1, 2015. Under the current procedure in section 77-1807(2), a land bank's automatically accepted bid takes the property with no auction; otherwise the purchaser is the person who offers to pay the amount of taxes, delinquent interest and costs due, bidding rules are announced at the start of the auction, and a round robin sale, where a county uses one, follows the statutory count, ticket drawing and one parcel per round order. In practice the counties in this set run in person round robin sales at which registered bidders take turns accepting or passing parcels at the statutory amount.
• The interest rate is 14 percent per annum, and it is not written in the tax sale article. Article 18 states no number; the rate is incorporated from section 45-104.01 and applied on redemption under section 77-1824. It runs on the certificate sum from the date of purchase to the date of redemption, and on each subsequent tax payment, which the holder may pay after delinquency and add to the lien (section 77-1818), from the date of that payment to redemption, together with the issuance and administrative fees. Counties do not set the rate and most do not print it in their sale packets; its absence from a county's instructions does not change it.
• Registration is statutory; a deposit is not. A bidder must register with the treasurer or a designee before participating, a foreign corporation must show a registered agent for service of process, and the registration fee is 25 dollars, nonrefundable on redemption (section 77-1807(2)(g)). The article sets no deposit anywhere. The other statutory fees are distinct and frequently conflated: a 25 dollar certificate issuance fee (section 77-1823), a 20 dollar reassignment fee (section 77-1822), a 20 dollar per description advertising fee (section 77-1804), and the 150 dollar administrative fee charged to the owner on issuance (section 77-1818). The blank checks several counties require at check-in are county terms, not statute, and the registration deadlines in February are county terms too.
• Redemption runs until the deed application is filed, and then it ends that day. The owner redeems by paying the treasurer the certificate sum, the fees and interest at 14 percent per annum (section 77-1824). The right does not expire on a fixed anniversary: it ends at the close of business on the day the holder files a deed application with the treasurer. A holder who waits gives the owner more time at the same rate; the deadline pressure in Nebraska runs the other way, on the holder, whose own window opens only after three years and closes nine months later.
• The deed is gated twice, by time and by value, and missing either gate has a statutory price. A treasurer's deed under section 77-1837 may be applied for only within nine months after the expiration of three years after the sale, a window the 2025 Legislature widened from six months, and only if 110 percent of the assessed value minus the redemption amount is 25,000 dollars or less; above that gate the holder must foreclose under section 77-1902 instead. At least three months before applying, the holder must give the notice required by section 77-1831, served under section 77-1832 on occupants, record title holders and every encumbrancer of record found by the title search the statute requires, with publication under section 77-1834 for anyone who cannot be found. The recorded deed vests title subject to community improvement district and sanitary and improvement district special assessment liens not previously offered for sale, and the grantee must pay any calculated surplus to the previous owner within 30 days after recording (section 77-1838). A holder who neither demands a deed nor forecloses inside the window loses everything the certificate carried: it ceases to be valid, is canceled, and the tax lien is discharged (section 77-1856).
• The alternative route is a court case, and above the value gate it is the only route. Judicial foreclosure under article 19 may be brought by the county on its own lien, on a board order directing the county attorney (section 77-1901), or by a certificate or deed holder instead of demanding a deed, or surrendering a deed in court, under section 77-1902, within the same nine months after three years. It proceeds like a mortgage foreclosure except as article 19 provides; redemption before suit, during suit and after decree but before confirmation runs on the terms in section 77-1917, and surplus is handled as in a mortgage foreclosure under section 77-1916. The two year tracks that appear in sections 77-1837 and 77-1902 belong to vacant and abandoned property held by a land bank, not to ordinary certificates. Articles 18 and 19 name no online auction or bidding platform anywhere: the only electronic provisions are website publication of the compiled list and electronic delivery of the certificate, so an online sale, a deposit, or a platform rule is always a county or platform term. In this set only Douglas County sells online; the other nine counties verified in person.
• Unsold certificates are not automatically struck off to the county, whatever the summaries say. Property that draws no bid at the public sale goes to private sale by the treasurer at the treasurer's office, to any person who will pay the taxes, penalty and costs (section 77-1814), the channel Scotts Bluff and Dodge Counties publish as the private tax sale after their public sales close. The county board may also purchase unsold property in the name of the county, hold the certificate in the treasurer's custody, and assign it later for its face amount plus interest, with a land bank first opportunity where one exists (section 77-1809); in 2026 the boards in Sarpy, Lancaster and Buffalo Counties resolved to take their unsold parcels this way. Property delinquent three or more years is separately reported and put to a board choice between county foreclosure and certificates to the county (section 77-1918).

How buying works in Sarpy County

Advance registration only, in person at the treasurer's office or by emailing an Excel spreadsheet to taxsale@sarpy.gov with the name, address, tax ID or social security number, phone, email and check writer for each entity. The statutory registration fee is $25 per registered entity or bidder, non-refundable, and payment must arrive by Friday, February 27, 2026, the Friday before the sale. One person representing 20 entities owes $500 in registration fees. A W-9 must be on file for all bidders, and each bidder must have a distinct social security number or federal tax ID number

• The price is the tax bill; the skill is parcel selection. Since 2015 nobody bids a rate or a portion down. Every buyer pays taxes, delinquent interest and costs, so the round robin room rewards the buyers who researched which parcels to accept when their number is called and which to pass, not the buyers with a bidding technique.
• Registration is a February problem, not a March one. The statutory 25 dollar registration is the floor; counties add their own deadlines days or weeks before the sale, W-9 forms, and, in Sarpy, Hall, Dodge and Lincoln Counties in 2026, a signed blank check left at check-in. A buyer who starts paperwork in March has already missed these sales.
• Budget the statutory fees, not just the taxes. Each certificate carries the 25 dollar issuance fee, and the owner is charged the 150 dollar administrative fee on issuance, which lands in the redemption amount. Reassignment costs 20 dollars. Small certificates are disproportionately fee heavy, and the math belongs in the maximum before the sale.
• Price the exit before the entry. Three years out, the deed exists only under a 25,000 dollar value gate and inside a nine month window; above the gate the exit is a district court foreclosure, priced like one. The parcels that work are the ones whose exit route was chosen, and costed, on sale day.

Terms: what a bid actually costs

What happens to certificates that do not sell in Sarpy County

Two verified channels. First, the treasurer's procedures describe leftovers directly: after the sale and after paperwork is processed, an updated list of parcels whose delinquent taxes remain unpurchased may be viewed at the real estate counter, a copy may be purchased for $25, and buyers are told not to contact the office for at least one week after the sale. Second, the unsold parcels are struck to the county: the treasurer reported the parcels offered but not sold at the March 2, 2026 sale to the County Board on April 28, 2026 under Neb. Rev. Stat. 77-1918, and on May 5, 2026 the Board adopted Resolution 2026-104 authorizing the treasurer to issue tax sale certificates to the County of Sarpy on all parcels offered for one or more consecutive years and not sold for want of bidders, with the county to hold the certificates and the County Attorney to initiate foreclosure after three years if they are not redeemed

Before you bid

• Read the county's own sale instructions for the year in front of you. Venue, registration deadline, check requirements and the round robin order are county terms. Five of these ten counties publish a dated 2026 record; the others publish fragments or nothing, and their pages say which is which rather than borrowing a neighbor's terms.
• Confirm the parcel is still on the list in the final week. Owners redeem until the deed application years later, and certainly until the sale; treasurers publish updated lists as the sale approaches, Lancaster County weekly on Fridays in its published practice. Research spent on a redeemed parcel is spent.
• Do the title search thinking before you need it. The deed route requires notice served on every encumbrancer of record found by title search, and the deed itself leaves unoffered district assessment liens standing. Knowing what sits on a parcel is sale day work in Nebraska, not a later surprise.
• Set the maximum before the sale opens. The free Max-Bid Calculator below works backwards from your exit value. In Nebraska run it with both exits priced: the treasurer deed under the value gate, and the foreclosure the statute requires above it, with the nine month window diarized from the day you buy.

Every Nebraska county in this set

One page per county, each verified against the county treasurer's own publications and the current text of Neb. Rev. Stat. chapter 77, articles 18 and 19. Nebraska has 93 counties; this set is the top 10 by population.

• Douglas County tax sales
• Lancaster County tax sales
• Sarpy County (this page)
• Hall County tax sales
• Buffalo County tax sales
• Scotts Bluff County tax sales
• Dodge County tax sales
• Lincoln County tax sales
• Madison County tax sales
• Platte County tax sales

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. The same desk runs Florida tax deed sales, Texas tax sales, Pennsylvania tax sales, Georgia tax sales, North Carolina tax foreclosure sales, Ohio tax foreclosure sales, Illinois tax lien sales, Michigan tax foreclosure sales, Arizona tax lien sales, California tax defaulted property sales, Colorado tax lien sales, South Carolina tax sales, Indiana tax lien sales, Tennessee delinquent tax sales, Wisconsin tax deed sales, Missouri tax sales, New Jersey tax lien sales, Maryland tax lien sales, West Virginia tax sales, Virginia tax sales, Oklahoma tax resale, Kansas tax foreclosure sales, Arkansas tax-delinquent land sales, Alabama tax sales, Kentucky certificate of delinquency sales, Mississippi tax land sales, Nevada tax deed sales, New Mexico delinquent property tax sales, Iowa tax lien sales and Nebraska tax certificate sales, and the proven New York season, with the live membership, sits in the NY tax sale hub.