Allegheny County tax sales

Verified

Allegheny is a county of the second class, also outside the Real Estate Tax Sale Law: it has never operated a Tax Claim Bureau. Delinquent tax cases proceed under the Municipal Claims and Tax Liens Act to a court ordered sheriff sale, held monthly. Individual cases are sometimes labelled upset or free and clear by the collectors bringing them; those are case types inside the sheriff sale, not the bureau stages described below.

Selling office: Allegheny County Sheriff's Office executes the sales. Delinquent county taxes are collected by Jordan Tax Service, Inc., appointed by the county; school district and municipal delinquent collections run through their own collectors.

Next event: Monday, December 7, 2026 (Sheriff's Sale). From the Sheriff's events listing read: sales on November 2 and December 7, 2026, a monthly pattern. The collector lists for tax cases show the same two dates.

A list service reproducing the Sheriff's official list counted 310 properties on November 9, 2026 and 239 scheduled for December 7, 2026; another put 392 on the November 2 list. Counts vary by source and date; the Sheriff's list controls.

Dates and stages

Next event	Monday, December 7, 2026 (Sheriff's Sale)
Upset sale	Not applicable as a bureau stage. Some individual sheriff sale cases are labelled upset by the plaintiff collector.
Judicial sale	Not applicable as a bureau stage. Every tax sale here is a court ordered sheriff sale; free and clear cases are labelled as such in the collectors' lists.
Repository	Not applicable. Allegheny publishes no repository list; unsold cases return through later monthly sheriff sales.
Format	Sheriff sale (registered bidder attendance): The Allegheny County Judicial Sheriff Sales. Registered bidders and judgment creditors attend on Microsoft Teams. Lists publish through the Sheriff and the collectors, and in the Pittsburgh Legal Journal.
Selling office	Allegheny County Sheriff's Office executes the sales. Delinquent county taxes are collected by Jordan Tax Service, Inc., appointed by the county; school district and municipal delinquent collections run through their own collectors.
The list	The Sheriff publishes the sale list; one service that reproduces the official list counted 310 properties on it on November 9, 2026, with 239 scheduled for December 7. Collector lists (for example Keystone Collections Group, for school and municipal cases) carry their own cases.

Sources: Allegheny County Sheriff, Virtual Sheriff's Sale and Bidder Registration. Allegheny County Treasurer, testimony on the county delinquent tax system (Pennsylvania Legislature, 2013). Confirm with the selling office before relying on any date on this page: sales move, terms change, and owners can pay and stop a sale at any point before it starts.

Research Allegheny 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 Allegheny County, searchable by address, owner, or county, including parcels that never reach a sale list.

Open a PropertyRadar account See plans and pricing

Pine and Brass is a PropertyRadar partner. If you open an account through these links, we may earn a commission; it does not change the price you pay.

The three stages, and what title you get at each

Delinquent taxes go to the Tax Claim Bureau. When real estate taxes stay unpaid, the claims are returned to the county Tax Claim Bureau, which collects for the county, the municipality and the school district and runs the sales (Real Estate Tax Sale Law, 72 P.S. Section 5860.101 and following). Two counties in this set are outside the system by law: Philadelphia (a county of the first class) and Allegheny (second class). Their delinquent tax sales run through their sheriffs instead, and their pages say how.
Stage one: the upset sale. The bureau must schedule the upset sale no earlier than the second Monday of September and before October 1, and may continue it within the calendar year (Section 5860.601). The opening price is the upset price (Section 5860.605): the tax claims and interest, any other tax claims and judgments, all accrued taxes including the current year, municipal claims, and the record costs and costs of sale. No bid below the upset price can be accepted. An upset buyer takes the property subject to mortgages, liens and ground rents that were not part of the upset price (Section 5860.609): the taxes are paid, the liens may not be.
Stage two: the judicial sale. What does not sell at upset can be exposed again at a judicial sale, which the bureau petitions the Court of Common Pleas to order (Sections 5860.610 and 5860.612). This is the prize of the system: a judicial sale conveys the property freed and cleared of all tax and municipal claims, mortgages, liens, charges and estates, except separately taxed ground rents. Judicial lists draw the serious buyers precisely because the court order clears the title.
Stage three: the repository. What does not sell at judicial sale is placed in the repository for unsold properties, and the bureau must keep the list available to the public (Section 5860.626). At any time of year, the bureau may accept an offer of any price for a repository parcel, with the written consent of every taxing district where the property sits and without court approval (Section 5860.627). Repository deeds convey the same cleared title as judicial deeds, except separately taxed ground rents. Counties set their own minimum bids, forms and fees; each county page carries its own.
The owner's rights end at the sale. An owner can pay the claim and stop the process at any point before the sale, including by an installment agreement with the bureau. After an upset or judicial sale there is no redemption: the owner's remaining route is objections to the bureau's return in court, on the confirmation timetable in the terms table below. Philadelphia is the exception in this set: an owner-occupier there can redeem within nine months after the sheriff's deed is acknowledged (see the Philadelphia page).

How registration works in Allegheny County

Register with the Sheriff on the registered bidder form (all fields required), and allow five business days to receive your bidder number. A sheriff sale notice in the Pittsburgh Legal Journal for January 2026 told purchasers to be registered at least 7 days before the sale; treat the notice for your sale month as controlling.

Registration closes early everywhere that matters. In the bureau counties, Pennsylvania law requires registration at least 10 days before the sale, and several counties in this set close weeks ahead or cap the room. Philadelphia's deposit deadline runs about a week ahead of its sale dates.
You certify you are clean. A bureau bidder certifies they owe no delinquent real estate taxes or municipal utility bills and are not bidding for someone who does. Philadelphia requires tax compliance proof at settlement instead.

Terms: what a bid actually costs

Deposit, Allegheny County	The Sheriff's sale pages read publish no deposit or percentage figure. The conditions of sale publish with each month's notices in the Pittsburgh Legal Journal; read them there before bidding rather than assuming another county's number.
Payment, Allegheny County	Not published on the Sheriff's pages read. A January 2026 Legal Journal conditions excerpt references a cashier's check payment and a 10 percent payment timeline, but the full conditions were not cleanly verified, so this page states no Allegheny payment rule. Get the current conditions from the Sheriff or the Legal Journal notice for your sale.
What the upset price is	The upset price is the sum of the Commonwealth tax liens, the tax claim and interest on it, any other tax claim or tax judgment due with interest, all accrued taxes including taxes levied for the current year, municipal claims against the property, and the record costs and costs of sale (72 P.S. Section 5860.605). The bureau cannot accept a bid below it.
Title at an upset sale	An upset sale conveys title subject to every recorded obligation, claim, lien, estate, mortgage, ground rent and Commonwealth tax lien that was not included in the upset price (Section 5860.609). Paying the taxes does not clear the mortgage.
Title at judicial and repository sales	A judicial sale, ordered by the Court of Common Pleas, sells the property freed and cleared of all tax and municipal claims, mortgages, liens, charges and estates, except separately taxed ground rents (Section 5860.612). A repository sale conveys the same cleared title (Section 5860.627).
Bidder registration (state law)	Act 33 of 2021 (Section 5860.501a) requires a bidder at an upset or judicial sale to appear in person and register with the bureau at least 10 days before the sale, and to certify they are not delinquent on real estate taxes or municipal utility bills and are not bidding for someone who is. Counties add their own fees, forms and earlier deadlines; the county version is in the registration section above. Philadelphia and Allegheny run sheriff sales instead and set their own bidder rules.
After the sale	In the bureau counties there is no redemption after the sale. The bureau files its consolidated return with the court within 60 days of the sale; the court confirms the sale nisi, and owners and lien creditors then have 30 days to file objections, limited to the regularity of the bureau's proceedings (Section 5860.607). Absolute confirmation follows if no objections are filed.

No repository: the monthly list is the inventory

There is no repository layer in Allegheny. The year round layer is the monthly cadence: a fresh sheriff list every month, several hundred properties deep, which is its own kind of inventory for a buyer who works the list monthly.

Before you bid

Know which stage you are buying at. An upset price pays the taxes and leaves mortgages and liens standing; a judicial or repository deed clears them, except separately taxed ground rents. The cheapest parcel at the wrong stage is the expensive one.
Check the list again in sale week. Owners can pay and stop the process at any point before the sale, and lists shrink hard between posting and sale day.
Read the post sale rules before you bid, not after. In the bureau counties your protection is the court confirmation process; in Philadelphia it is the nine month owner-occupier redemption the buyer has to price in.
Set the maximum before the sale opens. The free Max-Bid Calculator below works backwards from your resale or hold value to the highest bid you can pay, with the costs shown.

Every Pennsylvania county in this set

One page per county, each verified against its own bureau, sheriff or platform source. Pennsylvania has 67 counties; this set is the top 30 by documented sale volume and population.

VERIFY BEFORE YOU GO

Keep going

Run your maximum bid

The free Max-Bid Calculator works backwards from your resale price to the highest hammer bid you can pay, with the fees shown line by line.

Open the Max-Bid Calculator

Get the Pennsylvania alerts

The Pine membership is built on alerts: members pick their counties, get an email when a sale is scheduled or a list posts, and receive the full property list with the analysis done. Pennsylvania counties are being added from the interest list first, in the order readers ask for them.

Join the Pennsylvania interest list below

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 and Texas tax sales, and the proven New York season, with the live membership, sits in the NY tax sale hub.

Pine Parcel Alerts · The paid tier

Allegheny County · PENNSYLVANIA

The sale dates are free. The parcels are the product.

Members set their counties and their parameters, parcel size and back taxes among them, and every matching parcel arrives by email with a one-page deal analysis: what the parcel is, when it sells, and what to bid. The dates and the basic alerts on this page stay free; Pine Parcel Alerts is $4.99 a month or $49 a year for the parcels themselves, screened and analyzed.

See Pine Parcel Alerts

Pennsylvania sale lists and county data, first.

One email when a Pennsylvania county opens for alerts, plus new county pages as they post. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

More state guides

New York tax sales · Florida tax deed sales · Texas tax sales