How each label is decided

Informational only. Not legal, tax or investment advice. Data comes from official county records and may be out of date. Verify with the county before bidding.

In short

• Buy-back period. After a tax sale the former owner can buy the property back for a set time. For most properties that is 180 days. If the property was the owner's home or farm land when the tax suit was filed, it is 2 years. We show which one we think applies.
• Premium. A former owner who buys back owes the buyer the bid plus a premium. On a 2-year period it is 25% in the first year and 50% in the second. On a 180-day period it is up to 25%.
• How we decide. The county lists do not say whether a property was a home. We read the appraisal district's records for the same account, then label it. "Likely" means the records support the label; it is still an estimate. When the records cannot settle it, the label says to check with the county.
• What we cannot know. Whether a home was occupied, whether a legal exception applies to one property, and what a property sold for. Verify with the county and read the deed records before you bid.

The rest of this page gives the exact rules, with the statute for each, for anyone who wants to check them.

Every legal period and percentage is kept in one place in our code with its statute citation, and tests check that the two implementations of the rules agree on a 200-row sample.

The statutory periods and premiums were reviewed on 2026-10-22 against the official Texas Legislature text: redemption, §34.21, title actions, §33.54, and deferral, §33.06. This checks the legal inputs, not the facts or title history of an individual parcel.

Redemption class (Tex. Tax Code §34.21)

The class depends on whether the property was the owner's residence homestead or land designated for agricultural use "when the suit or the application for the warrant was filed" (§34.21(a)).

Class	Window	Premium
2-year (homestead/ag)	2 years after the deed is recorded (§34.21(a), (b))	25% in year 1, 50% in year 2 (§34.21(a))
180-day	180 days after the deed is recorded (§34.21(e)(1))	up to 25% (§34.21(e)(2): "may not exceed 25 percent")
check	the evidence is not enough	both schedules shown

The suit-filing date is rarely published, so the status at suit is estimated from the CAD rolls. The first rule that applies wins:

#	Evidence	Result
0	No CAD record for the account	unknown
0b	A struck-off parcel held by a taxing unit, with no roll from before the year of its deed	unknown
1	The roll for the suit-filing year: homestead or ag	yes; neither: no
1b	The rolls for the judgment year and the year before agree: homestead in both, or ag in both	yes; neither in either: no
2	Homestead in the current roll, effective on or before the judgment date (Dallas HOMESTEAD_EFF_DT)	yes
2b	Ag appraisal in the current roll, and in the prior roll when there is one	yes
3	No homestead and no ag in the current and the prior roll	no
4	Anything else	unknown

For a struck-off parcel now held by a taxing unit, rules 1 to 3 read only the rolls from before the year of the taxing unit's deed: later rolls describe the city, county or school district, not the former owner, and would make every former homestead look like a 180-day parcel.

The suit-filing year in rule 1 comes from the filing date when a list prints it (none do yet), else from the cause number. A court assigns the cause number when the suit is filed, so a year inside it is the filing year: Harris district causes start with it (201969598 was filed in 2019), Tarrant tax causes end with it (D39369-23, 2023) and Dallas tax causes carry it (TX-22-00738, 2022). A year after the judgment year or after today is ignored, as is any number without one (some Harris execution causes). The patterns are CAUSE_YEAR_PATTERNS in rules/redemption.py; the site shows this evidence as "the year the suit was filed, which is part of the cause number". Checked on the lists of 2026-10-22 and 2026-10-23: in 354 Harris rows the cause year was never after the judgment year (0 to 7 years before it), and wherever the judgment-year rolls (rule 1b) had already decided a Harris, Tarrant or Dallas parcel, the cause-year roll gave the same class. Its gain is in Tarrant, whose list prints no judgment date: 8 of 10 parcels that were "check" now have a class. The roll for the filing year must be loaded; Tarrant suits filed in 2023 need the 2023 TAD roll.

"yes" gives the 2-year class, "no" the 180-day class, "unknown" gives "check". Confidence is "likely" for yes and no, never "confirmed": the CAD shows exemptions, not the court record.

Harris execution-sale records (EOS, including alias and pluries execution) also show "check". The sale-list category alone does not establish that ordinary tax-foreclosure redemption rules apply. Harris resales use the same pre-deed evidence restriction as Dallas struck-off records.

Mineral interests (state category G) are outside this homestead/ag classifier. Section 34.21 treats mineral interests separately, so these records show "check" rather than an ordinary-property estimate. Verify the interest and its applicable treatment with the county. Premium schedules shown for other records are statutory context, not a promised return or a quote for redeeming directly from a taxing unit.

"Ag" means the CAD shows an agricultural or open-space appraisal: Dallas LAND_AG_EXEMPT or AG_USE_VAL above zero, Harris ag_val above zero, Tarrant an ag value or ag code.

Contest window (Tex. Tax Code §33.54(a))

An action relating to title must be brought before the first anniversary of the recording of the purchaser's deed (§33.54(a)(1)). It is the second anniversary for a residence homestead, or land appraised or eligible for appraisal under Chapter 23, Subchapter C or D, on the date the suit was filed (§33.54(a)(2)). The label uses the same homestead or ag status as the redemption class.

Windows are shown only when the deed recording date is known. For upcoming sales it is not, so the labels show the class and the schedule without end dates.

The displayed boundary is an estimate under the cited general rule. Statutory exceptions and the facts of possession can affect an action. Passing a displayed date does not establish clear title.

Title seasoning on struck-off parcels (proxy)

For a struck-off parcel, seasoning is the number of days since the taxing unit's deed, with marks at 180 days (§34.21(e)), 1 year (§33.54(a)(1)) and 2 years (§33.54(a)(2)).

The deed date is a proxy: the CAD's deed transfer date (Dallas DEED_TXFR_DATE), used only when the resale list does not supply the taxing unit's deed recording date. A date printed in the official resale list is marked recorded and takes precedence. The proxy uses the CAD date only when the current owner's name looks like a taxing unit (CITY OF, COUNTY, ISD, SCHOOL, COLLEGE, HOSPITAL or DISTRICT as whole words). The label reads "check the county" when the owner is not a taxing unit, the date is missing or in the future, or the date is more than SEASONING_PROXY_MAX_AGE_YEARS (10) years old. An old taxing-unit deed is unlikely to be the tax deed for a current resale list.

Possible deferral (Tex. Tax Code §33.06)

Homestead owners who are 65 or older, disabled, or disabled veterans may file a deferral affidavit, and the home then cannot be sold. The label reads "Possible: the sale may be stopped" when the CAD shows an over-65, disabled or disabled-veteran exemption, or a recorded deferral (Dallas TAX_DEFERRED_DESC, Tarrant "DEFERRED TAX HOMESTEAD ... 33.06"). It reads "no" when the property has no homestead exemption in the latest roll, since the deferral is for a residence homestead only.

For a homestead without those flags the label is "unknown" where the CAD withholds the status: HCAD's public file defines over-65 and disability codes but publishes none, and Tarrant may withhold over-65 details under §25.027. HCAD publishes no deferral records, so that field alone never makes the label unknown.

Property type

From the state property type code (Dallas SPTD_CODE, Harris state_class, Tarrant state use code), by its first letter: A single-family, C vacant lot, D agricultural, F commercial or industrial, anything else other. TAD mineral-interest records have a separate display label and filter.

Date arithmetic

• Year-based periods (2-year redemption, the premium step, contest windows, seasoning marks) use calendar years: the same month and day N years later. A deed recorded on 29 February ends on 28 February. Python uses dateutil.relativedelta; DuckDB and BigQuery add INTERVAL n YEAR, which clamp the same way (checked by the parity test).
• The 180-day period counts days: the deed date plus 180 days (deed 2026-11-20 gives 2027-05-19).
• A window "ends" on the date shown: the anniversary or the 180th day.
• Seasoning days are the date of the data run minus the deed date.

Past sales, changes and "listed before"

Each weekly check keeps a copy of every list and of the labels built from it, so the site can compare checks:

• What changed compares the latest check with the one before. A property is new when it is for sale now and was not before; withdrawn or cancelled when the list now says so; dropped when it is no longer on the list although its sale date has not passed.
• Past sales. Tarrant County Constable Precinct 3 posts results on each sale's own page after the sale: every cause is marked sold, struck off or withdrawn. The county keeps only the last two past sales online, so each past page is stored once its results have settled (14 days after the sale) and reused from then on. Harris County posts no results, so a Harris property shows "dropped from the list" if it left the list before the sale, "cancelled" if the list said so, and "result not posted" if it was still listed at our last check before the sale.
• Listed before on a current property means the same account was on an earlier sale list we recorded, with that sale's result.

Neither county publishes sale prices online. Tarrant County says the sale amount and the buyer are on the deed once it is filed at the courthouse.

Buy-back amount on the bid sheet

When a former owner redeems, §34.21 has them pay the buyer the amount bid, the deed recording fee and the taxes, penalties, interest and costs the buyer paid on the property, plus a premium on that total. The bid sheet multiplies your maximum bid (or the published minimum bid) by one plus the premium for the property's estimated class: up to 25% for the 180-day class, 25% in the first year and 50% in the second for the 2-year class, and both for "check". It leaves out the recording fee and the other costs, which the sheet cannot know, so the real figure is higher. The premiums are the same ones used everywhere else on the site.

Known gaps

• The suit-filing date is not on any list we use, so rules 1b to 3 estimate it from the rolls.
• CAD exemptions show status on 1 January of each roll year, not on the suit date.
• Harris and Tarrant do not publish a homestead effective date, so rule 2 applies only to Dallas.
• Seasoning uses the CAD deed date as a proxy for the taxing unit's tax deed.
• The rules do not determine whether a statutory exception applies to an individual parcel.
• Sale prices are not published online, so past sales show outcomes, not winning bids.
• Harris results are not posted; Harris history starts with our first weekly check (2026-10-22).