2924 Placard: California Foreclosure Notice of Sale

The 2924 placard is California’s Notice of Sale, a document a foreclosure trustee posts on the property to announce the date, time, and place of a public auction. Its name comes from Civil Code section 2924, the statute that governs non-judicial foreclosure. If one is taped to your door, the lender has already recorded a Notice of Default, the three-month waiting period has run, and a specific sale date is now on the calendar. You still have rights, but they run on a short clock.

How Much Time You Actually Have

The sale date printed on the notice is the key figure. By law, the notice had to be posted, recorded, mailed, and first published at least 20 days before that date.¹ So when you find it, you generally have somewhere between a few days and about three weeks before the auction, depending on how quickly it reached you.

Two deadlines matter more than the sale date itself:

Five business days before the sale. That is the last day you can reinstate the loan by paying what’s in arrears.²
Thirty-seven days before the sale. That is the federal cutoff for submitting a complete loss mitigation application that forces the servicer to pause the auction.³

Pull the placard down carefully and read it. Confirm the sale date and count backward.

What the Notice Must Say

The document has to identify the trustee by name, California street address, and a toll-free or in-state phone number; name the original borrower on the deed of trust; describe the property by street address and assessor’s parcel number; state the exact date, time, and street address of the auction, including the specific spot; and give the total unpaid balance plus a reasonable estimate of costs, expenses, and advances as of the date of first publication.¹

The debt figure is the one to scrutinize. It combines remaining principal, accrued interest, late fees, and trustee’s charges. If the number is materially different from what your own records show, that gap can support a challenge to the sale. Missing or defective elements in the notice itself can also give a homeowner or junior lienholder grounds to challenge in court.

Stopping the Sale by Reinstating the Loan

California law gives you the right to reinstate the loan at any point from the recording of the Notice of Default until five business days before the scheduled sale.² Reinstating is not the same as paying the loan off. You pay only the arrears: the missed payments, accrued interest, late charges, attorney fees, and trustee’s foreclosure costs. Once that payment clears, the foreclosure stops. Your loan goes back to its original terms as if the acceleration never happened, and you resume normal monthly payments.

Call the trustee at the number on the notice and ask for a written reinstatement quote good through a specific date. The quote will itemize what you owe to bring the loan current. Then confirm how they require payment. Certified funds or a wire is typical; a personal check that late in the process is often refused.

The five-business-day cutoff is firm. If the sale is later postponed and a new Notice of Sale is recorded, your reinstatement right revives as of that new recording date.²

Applying for a Loan Modification Before the Sale

If you can’t come up with the reinstatement amount, federal servicing rules give you a separate route. If you submit a complete loss mitigation application more than 37 days before the scheduled sale, your servicer is prohibited from conducting the auction while it reviews the application.³ The servicer must evaluate you for every available option, whether that’s a modification, forbearance, short sale, or deed in lieu. It can only move forward with the sale after it has evaluated your file and determined you don’t qualify, after you reject every option offered, or after you fail to perform under an agreed plan.

The word “complete” matters. Servicers routinely put applications on hold pending missing documents, and the anti-dual-tracking protection only kicks in when the file is complete. If the sale is close, request the servicer’s document checklist, submit everything at once, and get written confirmation of receipt.

If the Sale Gets Postponed

Trustee’s sales are postponed all the time, for reasons ranging from bankruptcy stays and court orders to the lender voluntarily giving more time. A postponement is announced by public declaration at the originally scheduled time and place. For ordinary postponements, the trustee doesn’t have to re-publish the notice in the newspaper or re-post it on the property.⁴

Total postponements cannot exceed 365 days from the original sale date. If they do, the trustee has to start over with a brand-new Notice of Sale and repeat the full posting, publishing, mailing, and recording sequence.⁴ Because trustees are not obligated to mail you a fresh reminder for short postponements, call the trustee before the sale date to confirm whether it’s going forward. That call is also how you learn the new date if it has already been continued.

What Happens If the Property Sells

Once the auctioneer accepts the winning bid at a non-judicial trustee’s sale, the outcome is unusually final. California does not give you a post-sale right of redemption after a non-judicial foreclosure. Judicial foreclosures carry a statutory redemption period; the non-judicial process trades that away in exchange for speed. You cannot buy the property back after the gavel falls.

On the other side, the lender cannot sue you for any shortfall. California’s anti-deficiency statute bars a deficiency judgment following a trustee’s sale, so if the auction price is less than what you owed, the lender absorbs the loss.⁵ The protection covers the borrower who signed the deed of trust. A guarantor or other surety on the loan may still face liability for the unpaid balance.

The Tax Bill You Might Not Expect

Even though the lender can’t sue you for the deficiency, the IRS can treat forgiven mortgage debt as income. You’ll usually receive a Form 1099-C reporting the cancelled amount, and it’s reported as ordinary income on your federal return unless an exclusion applies.⁶

Two exclusions do most of the work here. If your total liabilities exceeded the fair market value of all your assets immediately before the cancellation, you can exclude the cancelled amount up to the extent of your insolvency, using Form 982. And for discharges completed before January 1, 2026, up to $750,000 of cancelled debt on a qualified principal residence can be excluded from income. That exclusion doesn’t apply to discharges after December 31, 2025, unless Congress extends it. A bill to do so (H.R. 917) was introduced in the 119th Congress, but its status is uncertain.⁶ Debt discharged in a Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy is not treated as taxable income.

If You Are a Tenant, Not the Owner

Renters in a property that goes to trustee’s sale have their own set of protections. Under the federal Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act, the buyer at auction must give you at least 90 days’ written notice before requiring you to move. If you have a bona fide lease, you generally have the right to stay through the end of that lease term.⁷

One exception: if the new owner intends to occupy the property as a primary residence, the lease does not survive the sale, though the 90-day notice still applies. A lease qualifies as bona fide only if it was arm’s length, the rent is at or near fair market value (or subsidized), and the tenant is not the former owner or a close family member of the former owner.⁷ The 90-day clock starts when you actually receive the written notice to vacate, not on the day of the auction.⁸

1
California Legislative Information. California Code, Civil Code CIV 2924f
2
California Legislative Information. California Code, Civil Code CIV 2924c
3
eCFR. 12 CFR 1024.41 – Loss Mitigation Procedures
4
California Legislative Information. California Code, Civil Code CIV 2924g
5
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure 580d
6
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 4681 (2025), Canceled Debts, Foreclosures, Repossessions, and Abandonments
7
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act – Comptroller’s Handbook
8
California Courts. Tenants’ Rights in a Foreclosure