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Consultant outlines county tax-foreclosure process, fees and timelines
Summary
A consultant walked Dickinson County commissioners through the county tax-foreclosure workflow, explaining timeline expectations, how redemption costs stack, and coordination steps with treasurer and title companies; she urged counties to finalize parcel lists before contracting.
A consultant who helps counties manage tax-foreclosure cases described how the process works and what counties should expect. She told commissioners the firm typically moves cases from list receipt to final accounting in roughly eight to 18 months, depending on parcel volume and title work.
The presenter said counties do not pay the firm up front. Instead the firm charges a per-parcel attorney fee that is attached to each parcel and held by the county treasurer in an account earmarked for tax-foreclosure proceedings. She said redemption costs commonly include the per-parcel attorney fee, title-company charges and, after a lawsuit is filed, a $100 court cost. Once a case is filed, taxpayers seeking to redeem must pay all outstanding years of tax to be removed from the foreclosure list, the presenter said.
She outlined the firm’s workflow: the treasurer produces an Excel master spreadsheet of candidate parcels, the firm performs address and title cleanup, files a skeleton petition and later amends that petition after title reports to add mortgagees and other lienholders, then serves the amended petition before litigating the foreclosure. The presenter emphasized that, by statute, publication and waiting periods limit how quickly a sale can be advanced, and that the firm’s role is aimed at maximizing redemptions and county tax recovery rather than creating expedited sale opportunities for local buyers.
Commissioners asked about partial payments and how no-sale parcels are handled. The presenter advised counties to accept partial payments where feasible to capture revenue but cautioned that partial payments do not remove a parcel from foreclosure once a lawsuit is filed. For parcels that receive no bids at sale, she said the usual statutory approach is to roll them into the next year’s sale; the county does not automatically take ownership if a parcel fails to sell.
She offered practical next steps: finalize the parcel list with the treasurer before signing a contract, allow the firm to coordinate title work with a county-preferred or the firm’s recommended title company, and promised two memos for the treasurer (a one-page procedure overview and parcel-selection criteria) plus a blank master spreadsheet to begin the process.
The presenter cited success examples from other counties and said the firm can scale fees by volume. She invited the county to email to initiate a contract and noted adjustments to fees can be made in rare cases where sales produce very low revenue.
