We buy houses in Baldwin County, AL.

Baldwin County moved to selling tax liens in 2019, starting with tax year 2018 delinquencies, and has run a tax lien auction since. Do not carry that assumption into any other Alabama county. Act 2018-577 gives each county's taxing official the choice, every year, between auctioning the lien and selling the property outright, so two neighboring Alabama counties can be running different systems in the same spring. Baldwin's method is stated on the Revenue Commission's own tax lien auction page.

The auction runs once a year, between March 1 and June 15, online through GovEase, and the date moves, so get this year's from the county rather than from a page like this one. Bidders compete on the interest rate rather than the price, starting from a twelve percent maximum and bidding down in one percent increments toward zero, with the lowest rate taking the certificate. The Baldwin County Revenue Commissioner's office is 251-937-0245.

A tax lien in Baldwin can be redeemed at any time after the auction closes and before a judgment of foreclosure is entered. Alabama Code 40-10-193, the tax lien redemption statute, sets out who may do it: the owner or a partial owner, heirs, a personal representative, a mortgagee or purchaser, and others holding an interest. Under Alabama Code 40-10-197 the certificate holder cannot file to foreclose until three years after the auction, and the certificate expires at ten years. That is a different shape from Mississippi's fixed two years.

Alabama foreclosure is non-judicial, run under a power of sale with notice published three consecutive weeks and a sale at the courthouse. What Alabama adds, and Mississippi does not have at all, is a statutory right of redemption after the sale. Alabama Code 6-5-248 sets it at one year from the sale generally, and 180 days for residential property where a homestead exemption was claimed in the tax year of the sale and the mortgage was taken out on or after January 1, 2016.

Baldwin is where Alabama's classification rules bite hardest. Under Alabama Code 40-8-1, property used by the owner exclusively as the owner's own single-family dwelling is Class III, assessed at ten percent of fair market value, and only Class III property carries a homestead exemption. A Gulf Shores condo, an Orange Beach rental or a Fairhope house somebody moved out of is not that, and falls to Class II at twenty percent. Ask the Revenue Commissioner what class and exemptions your parcel actually holds.

One Alabama trap has no Mississippi equivalent and it costs people the right outright. Under Alabama Code 6-5-251, possession must be delivered to the foreclosure purchaser within ten days of a written demand. Failing to hand it over forfeits the statutory right of redemption entirely. If a demand letter arrives after a foreclosure sale, it is not junk mail, and the clock on it is short.