Land · Mississippi tax sale guide

Mississippi tax sales by county

Verified

Mississippi is the state where the two money facts in every summary are the two the statute places somewhere else. The sale itself is simple to state: after August 5 the tax collector advertises the delinquent lands with the list (section 27-41-55) and sells the land for cash to the highest and best bidder on the last Monday of August, in 2026 Monday, August 31, 2026 (section 27-41-59), with an April first Monday election available to the collector and online sales authorized. What the purchaser receives defeats the usual labels: no deed, no possession, and no certificate, only the collector's recorded lists vesting a perfect title subject to redemption, with his money lien secured at one and one half percent per month (sections 27-41-79, 27-45-27). The overbid above taxes and costs is paid into the county treasury and is the purchaser's in no outcome at all: the county keeps it on redemption, and the former owner may claim it only when the land is not redeemed (section 27-41-77). And the 5 percent damages a redeemer pays go to the county, not to the purchaser whose return is the 1.5 percent per month on taxes and costs alone (sections 27-45-3, 27-45-1).

This page set covers the top 10 Mississippi counties by population, each verified against its collector's, chancery clerk's, or county government's own publications, and all ten counties sold on the statutory day, Monday, August 31, 2026. Hinds County ran two online GovEase sales, one per judicial district, on the tax collector's own published notice; DeSoto, Rankin, Lee, Harrison, Jackson, and Lamar also sold online on GovEase, Harrison in two district sales of its own. Rankin's collector published the fullest notice in the set, with 4,971 parcels; Lauderdale County sold online on a platform its own publications never name, and published the set's only results: 4,326 parcels offered, 4,126 sold, 5,860,775.44 dollars collected, and an overbid above 543,000 dollars that the county reports almost doubled since the sale went online. Oktibbeha County is the set's in person holdout, selling at the courthouse in Starkville on its tax office's own page against a platform listing it never adopted, flagged on its page. Madison County is the honest gap: its county site carried only an outage notice, no 2026 sale notice exists on the official sources read, and its page is built on the statute with every county specific field marked NOT PUBLISHED rather than borrowed from a platform's county list.

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 Mississippi tax land sales work

• Mississippi sells the land itself, for cash, on one statutory day, and the collector may move it to April. Taxes are due February 1 (section 27-41-1) and bear delinquency interest of one half of one percent per month (section 27-41-9). After August 5 the tax collector advertises the delinquent lands for two weeks in a county newspaper, with the list of lands to be sold (section 27-41-55), and on the last Monday of August sells the land to the highest and best bidder for cash, between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., continuing day to day until the sale is complete (section 27-41-59(1)). In 2026 that day was Monday, August 31, 2026. The same sections let the collector elect the first Monday of April instead (in 2026, Monday, April 6, 2026), and authorize online sales (section 27-41-59(2)); the statute names no platform, so venue and platform are county facts, and the sale day is the collector's election, not a statewide certainty. County pages commonly cite section 27-41-49 for the sale; that section is a notice duty owed to a taxpayer's debtor, and the operative sections are 27-41-55 and 27-41-59.
• The purchaser walks away with no deed, no possession, and no certificate, and the statute's own words are stranger than either label. The collector's certified lists, recorded by the chancery clerk, vest the purchaser with what the statute calls a perfect title to the land, but without the right of possession and subject to redemption (sections 27-41-79 and 27-41-81). The amount paid for taxes is at the same time a lien on the land at one and one half percent per month, enforceable in chancery even if the sale was defective on some other ground (section 27-45-27). No section in Chapters 41, 43, or 45 creates a certificate for the collector to issue. Calling Mississippi a lien state or a deed state both contradict the text; during the two years the purchaser holds a recorded, interest bearing claim and nothing he can occupy, rent, or improve.
• The overbid is the most misdescribed money in the system, and the buyer never sees it again. Bidding is premium bidding in substance: the price must cover the taxes and costs, and anything above that is an excess bid under section 27-41-77. The collector reports the excess to the chancery clerk and pays it into the county treasury for the general fund. If the land is redeemed, the county keeps the excess outright. If the purchaser's title is defeated or set aside for any reason, the county keeps it. Only if the land is not redeemed may the former owner claim it, and only on request within two years after the redemption period expires. Descriptions that say the overbid is held for the owner are wrong in the redeemed case; descriptions that say the buyer earns interest on his whole bid are wrong in every case, because redemption is computed regardless of the bid.
• Redemption runs two years at the chancery clerk, on a measure that ignores your bid. The owner, anyone for him with his consent, or any interested person may redeem within two years after the day of sale, paying the taxes for which the land was sold, all costs incident to the sale, 5 percent damages on the tax amount, interest on the taxes and costs at one and one half percent per month (any fraction of a month counting as a full month) from the sale date, and costs accrued since the sale at the same rate (section 27-45-3). For the August 31, 2026 sale the period runs to August 31, 2028. The 5 percent damages go to the county, not the purchaser (section 27-45-1); the purchaser's return is the taxes and costs with the 1.5 percent per month, and a summary crediting him with the damages overstates it. On payment the clerk executes a release operating as a quitclaim of the purchaser's claim. Offices open redemptions only after the sale is balanced and turned over, so the practical first redemption date is a county fact; Harrison County, for example, states it opens by October 1 after the sale.
• The deed comes from the chancery clerk, on demand, after a notice process the clerk must run first. Between 180 and 60 days before the period expires the clerk must search for and notify the owner by personal service, mail, and publication at least 45 days out (sections 27-43-1 and 27-43-3), and must send certified mail notice to lienholders (section 27-43-5). If the land is not redeemed, the clerk executes a tax deed to the purchaser on demand, vesting perfect title with immediate possession (section 27-45-23). The current text sets no 90 day deadline for that demand; a 2025 bill that would have added one died in committee, and a 2026 bill restating the title language was amended into a study committee instead. A confirmation or quiet title suit (section 11-17-1) is a separate, permissive step buyers take for marketability, not a statutory requirement, and current Mississippi law commissions are actively studying the unmerchantable tax title problem those suits exist to solve.
• Parcels nobody bids on are struck off to the state, and the state resells them through the Secretary of State. A parcel drawing no bid covering taxes and costs is struck off to the state at the sale (section 27-41-59(1)), and a defaulting purchaser's parcel follows the same route after reoffering (section 27-41-73). The owner may still redeem state held land within the same two years. After the period expires, the chancery clerk certifies the unredeemed list to the Secretary of State within 30 days (section 27-45-21), who registers the lands (section 29-1-21) and sells them back into private ownership by online application or auction (section 29-1-37). The state price is the higher of 50 percent of market value (25 percent for a prior owner or blighted property), the total back taxes and fees, or the applicant's own offer, with the Governor's approval and a title investigation on a 60 to 90 day timeline, and title passes by patent signed by the Governor and the Secretary of State (section 29-1-81). The flat 50 percent of value figure in most summaries is only one of three floors, and never the only one.

One Mississippi fact decides most purchases: the premium is a donation in every outcome. Redemption is computed on the taxes and costs regardless of the bid, the county keeps the excess if the land redeems, and the owner may claim it only if it does not. A bidder's entire return lives in the taxes and costs at 1.5 percent per month; every dollar above that line buys the same recorded claim as a dollar at it, and Lauderdale County's published 543,000 dollar overbid is what a room full of bidders paid for claims they could have had at the taxes.

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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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. Mississippi 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.