Cobb County Tax Liens: Auction, Redemption, and Foreclosure

Cobb County tax liens are sold at monthly public auctions as “tax executions” — the legal right to collect a delinquent property tax debt, not the property itself. The winning bidder pays the back taxes owed, receives a recorded tax deed, and then waits twelve months while the owner (or any other party with an interest in the property) has the chance to redeem by paying back the bid plus a 20 percent premium. If no one redeems, the investor can begin the statutory process to foreclose that redemption right and ultimately take clean title. The whole system runs under Title 48, Chapter 4 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated.¹

What You’re Actually Buying

Cobb County sells tax executions, sometimes called tax fi. fa.’s (short for fieri facias). When a property owner falls behind on taxes, the county issues this execution, which creates a lien against the property. At auction, you buy the right to collect that debt. You do not buy the deed in the sense of walking away as the new owner on day one.

What you hold after the sale is called defeasible title. It can be unwound if the owner redeems within the time the statute allows. During the redemption window you cannot take possession, collect rent, or treat the property as your own. The former owner stays in place and keeps a statutory right to buy the execution back.

The lien itself carries strong priority. Georgia law places tax liens above virtually every other claim against the property, including mortgages and judgment liens.² That priority is what makes the investment work. If the property goes unredeemed and you complete the foreclosure and quiet title steps correctly, those older encumbrances get wiped out.

How the Auction Works

The Cobb County Sheriff’s Office runs tax execution sales at the Cobb County Courthouse. Georgia law sets the sale date as the first Tuesday of the month. Sales happen only when there are delinquent properties to sell, so not every first Tuesday will have an auction. The list of properties scheduled for sale is published ahead of time in the county’s official legal organ, the newspaper designated by law for legal notices.

Bidding opens at the total owed on the execution: the principal tax, accrued interest, penalties, and statutory costs. Bidders go up from there, and the highest qualifying bid wins.

If the winning bid exceeds what was owed, the surplus does not disappear. Georgia law distributes excess funds first to lienholders of record at the time of sale, in the order their interests were recorded, and then to the former owner. Those funds sit for five years before any unclaimed balance moves to the Georgia Department of Revenue.

The winning bidder gets a tax deed, which has to be recorded with the Cobb County Clerk of Superior Court. Recording in Georgia typically runs about $25 for the first page. Recording the deed starts the twelve-month redemption clock.

Due Diligence Before You Bid

The published sale list is a starting point and nothing more. The real work happens before auction day.

Pull the parcel on the Cobb County Tax Commissioner’s website to confirm the exact delinquent amount and the current owner of record. Cross-check it against the Cobb County Tax Assessor’s database for the assessed and fair market values. The gap between what you would be willing to bid and what the property is actually worth is your margin of safety.

Then run a title search through the Cobb County Clerk of Superior Court records. Identify every mortgage, judgment lien, federal tax lien, and other recorded interest against the property. Two reasons this matters: all of those parties also have a right to redeem, and when you eventually move to foreclose that right, every one of them must receive proper notice. Miss a lienholder now and your title can be attacked later.

Give federal tax liens special attention. A state tax lien outranks an IRS lien, but the IRS keeps its own 120-day right of redemption under Internal Revenue Code Section 7425, running on its own clock. A property with a federal tax lien is not automatically off-limits, but the economics and the timeline change.

The Redemption Period and What You Get Paid

The owner, and anyone else with a legal interest in the property — mortgage holders, judgment creditors, heirs — can redeem after the sale.³ The redemption period runs twelve months from the date of the tax sale.⁴ During those twelve months, you cannot start the process to cut off the owner’s redemption rights.

If someone does redeem, the statute sets exactly what you receive:⁵

The original purchase price shown on the recorded tax deed.
A 20 percent premium on that amount if redemption happens within the first year or any fraction of it.
An additional 10 percent premium for each additional year or fraction of a year after the first.
Any later taxes you paid on the property to prevent a new execution.
Any special assessments.

The 20 percent first-year premium is the real draw. Pay $5,000 at auction and the owner redeems six months later, you receive $6,000. Because the premium applies to any fraction of the first year, a redemption two months in still triggers the full 20 percent.

The redeeming party pays you directly. Once a valid tender of the full redemption amount reaches you, you must execute a quitclaim deed giving up any interest in the property. Refusing a proper tender can lead to a court order forcing you to sign.

Foreclosing the Right to Redeem

When twelve months pass and no one has paid, you can begin cutting off all redemption rights permanently. The notice rules are strict, and mistakes here can invalidate the whole foreclosure.

Who Must Be Notified

You have to serve a formal notice of foreclosure on every party with a recorded interest: the original owner (the defendant on the tax execution), anyone occupying the property, and all lienholders of record in the county where the property sits.⁴ Whatever you missed in your initial title search comes back to bite you here.

How Notice Is Delivered

You prepare the written notice. It has to describe the property, reference the recorded tax deed, and state a final deadline for redemption. You then deliver the notice, along with copies for each person to be served and a list of those persons, to the Cobb County Sheriff at least 45 days before the deadline in the notice. The sheriff has 15 days to personally serve each person on the list who lives in Cobb County.⁶

For interested parties who live outside the county, you must send the notice by certified mail, registered mail, or statutory overnight delivery, provided their address can reasonably be found.⁴

When Personal Service Fails

If the sheriff reports that a party cannot be served, you must publish the notice in Cobb County’s official legal organ once a week for two consecutive weeks.⁶ Separately, for any tax sale that occurred on or after July 1, 1989, the statute also requires publication once a week for four consecutive weeks during the six-month period before the redemption deadline.⁴ These publication rules are technical and overlapping, and errors here are one of the most common reasons tax deed investors have to start over.

Quiet Title

After the final redemption deadline passes with no payment, you file a petition to quiet title in Cobb County Superior Court. Georgia law lets tax deed holders bring this proceeding against all persons, known or unknown, who might claim an interest in the property.⁷ The court checks that every statutory notice step was handled correctly. If so, the order grants you absolute fee simple title and extinguishes the prior mortgages, liens, and other encumbrances.

Costs Beyond the Bid

Your bid is the first expense, not the last. Budget for recording the tax deed (around $25), the title search, certified mail and service fees, newspaper publication charges for the required legal notices, and attorney fees for the quiet title action. The quiet title piece realistically needs a lawyer. All in, moving a tax execution through to clean title can add several thousand dollars on top of the bid.

You may also need to pay later years’ property taxes during the redemption period and the foreclosure process to prevent a new execution from being issued. Those payments come back to you as part of the redemption price if the owner redeems, but they tie up more of your capital in the meantime.⁵

If the Owner Files Bankruptcy

A bankruptcy filing after the tax sale can scramble the timeline. The automatic stay generally stops creditors from acting against the debtor, and courts are split on whether that stay also pauses Georgia’s twelve-month redemption clock. Some have held the clock keeps running but the debtor gets a 60-day extension under Bankruptcy Code Section 108(b). Others have held the stay freezes the redemption period entirely while the case is open. In a Chapter 13, the owner can potentially cure the tax debt through a repayment plan, which may redeem the property over time. If you learn an owner has filed, expect delay and get advice from a lawyer who handles both Georgia tax sales and bankruptcy before you take another step.