LaPorte County Tax Sale: Bidding, Redemption, and Tax Deeds

The LaPorte County tax sale is an annual online auction, run through SRI Services at sriservices.com, where investors bid on tax lien certificates tied to parcels with delinquent property taxes.¹ You are not buying the property. You are buying a lien that pays statutory interest if the owner redeems within one year, or that can be converted into a tax deed through a court process if they do not.

What You Are Actually Buying

The county commissioners accept bids for certificates of sale on each delinquent parcel.² What arrives in your hands after payment is a certificate, not a deed. It is proof of your lien and secures your right to either reimbursement if the owner redeems or a tax deed if they do not. It gives you no right to enter, occupy, or alter the property.³

Properties land on the sale list when they carry an unpaid balance from the spring installment of the prior year or earlier. The treasurer certifies the delinquency and adds a $220 tax sale charge to each parcel on top of the delinquent taxes, special assessments, and penalties already owed.¹ The names of delinquent owners and the affected properties are published in local newspapers before the sale, and the full list with parcel numbers and amounts owed is posted on the auction site.²

Who Can Bid and How to Register

Indiana law bars several categories of bidders. If you owe delinquent taxes, unpaid special assessments, penalties from a prior tax sale, civil fines for building code or county ordinance violations, or county health department penalties, you cannot participate. You also cannot bid as an agent for anyone who falls into those categories. Every bidder signs a sworn statement under penalty of perjury confirming eligibility.⁴

Registration itself is handled electronically through the auction website. You complete an IRS Form W-9 and agree to the statutory registration statement.² The W-9 lets the county report any financial gains to the IRS under your taxpayer identification number.⁵

Business entities face an added step. An LLC or corporation must provide a certificate of good standing or proof of registration from the Indiana Secretary of State to the county treasurer. An entity that is not properly registered or not in good standing is flatly ineligible to buy any parcel.⁶ All bidders must complete registration with SRI Services before the sale date.¹

How the Online Auction Runs

Bidding opens at the total of delinquent taxes, special assessments, and administrative costs owed on the property. Competition can push the final price above that minimum. Anything you pay over the minimum is treated as surplus, and that distinction matters at redemption because the two portions earn interest at different rates.

Before placing a bid, you must read and agree to the payment terms posted on the auction site.² Expect to pay with certified funds promptly after winning. Personal checks and credit cards are not accepted.

The Redemption Period and What You Earn

The original owner has one year from the sale date to redeem and wipe out your lien.³ During that year they keep full possession and can live in the home, rent it out, or use it as they choose. You have no possessory rights.

To redeem, the owner pays a package of amounts set by statute:⁷

110% of the minimum bid if they redeem within six months of the sale date.
115% of the minimum bid if they redeem after six months but before the year ends.
The surplus amount plus 5% annual interest on whatever you paid above the minimum.
Any taxes or special assessments you paid after the sale, plus 5% annual interest on those amounts.

A quick redemption within six months yields 10% on the minimum bid portion. A later redemption yields 15%. The surplus earns far less, so overbidding aggressively dilutes your effective return. If the owner never redeems, your money is tied up for at least a year before you can start the tax deed process.

Getting a Tax Deed When the Owner Doesn’t Redeem

Converting a certificate into ownership requires two rounds of statutory notices and a court petition, all on strict deadlines. This is the phase where first-time investors most often lose their rights.

The Six-Month Notice

Within six months of the sale date, during the redemption period rather than after it, you must send written notice by certified mail to the property owner and to anyone with a substantial recorded interest in the property, such as a mortgage lender or judgment creditor. The notice must identify the property, the sale date, the purchaser, the redemption amount, and the date on which a tax deed petition will be filed.⁸

Miss that deadline and you lose the right to a tax deed, no matter what you paid at auction. Publishing in a newspaper is not enough when a mortgagee’s name and address appear in public records; mailing or personal service is required.⁹

The Court Petition

After the one-year redemption period expires, you have exactly three months to file a verified petition in the court that entered the original sale judgment. The petition asks the court to direct the county auditor to issue a tax deed, and it should include copies of the notices sent, certified mail receipts and return receipts, and evidence of how you identified the owner and other interested parties.¹⁰

Notice of the petition goes to the same parties who received the earlier certified-mail notice. The court then has 61 days to review. If it finds the redemption period expired, the property was not redeemed, all required notices were properly given, and all taxes and assessments are paid, it orders the auditor to issue the deed.¹⁰

The three-month filing window is a hard deadline. Miss it and the certificate can revert to the county. Between attorney’s fees, title search costs, and service of process, plan on spending several hundred dollars or more on this phase, and factor those costs in before you ever place a bid.

What a Tax Deed Does and Doesn’t Clear

Once issued, a tax deed conveys fee simple absolute ownership, free and clear of nearly all liens and encumbrances that existed before the sale.¹¹ Mortgages and judgment liens against the former owner are extinguished. That clean slate is a central draw of tax sales.

Several categories survive, though:¹¹

Federal liens with statutory priority, including certain IRS liens that survive by operation of federal law.
State and local taxes and special assessments that accrued after the tax sale.
Recorded easements, regardless of when they were created.
Zoning laws, building codes, and land use regulations.
Covenants, declarations, and deed restrictions in the public record.

The federal lien exception is the one that catches people. If the former owner owed the IRS and a federal tax lien was filed before the sale, that lien can attach to your newly acquired property. A title search before bidding is the only way to spot it.

Title Insurance and Quiet Title

A tax deed legally conveys title, but most title insurance companies will not insure it. Their concern is that procedural defects in the sale, such as improper notice or missed interested parties, could support a later challenge. Some underwriters will not touch a tax-deed-derived title unless the deed has been recorded for 20 years or a court has entered a quiet title judgment.

A quiet title action is a lawsuit asking a court to declare your title valid and superior to all other potential claims. It names the former owner, known lienholders, and sometimes unknown parties as defendants. The process typically runs several months and involves attorney’s fees, service costs, and court filing fees. Without one, selling the property to a conventional buyer or using it as collateral for a mortgage is very difficult. If you plan to resell or finance, budget for a quiet title action from the start.

Risks Worth Pricing Into Your Bid

Environmental Liability

Federal environmental law can make you liable for cleanup costs on contaminated property you acquire at a tax sale, even if you had nothing to do with the pollution. Courts have found that taking title through a tax sale creates enough of a legal connection to trigger cleanup liability under CERCLA, the federal Superfund statute. Certificate holders cannot inspect the property during the redemption period, which makes environmental due diligence hard. At minimum, review publicly available environmental records and inspect the parcel visually from public areas before bidding on anything with possible industrial history.

Bankruptcy Automatic Stay

If the owner files for bankruptcy before or during the redemption period, a federal automatic stay halts all collection activity, including tax sale proceedings. A Chapter 13 filing can give the owner up to five years to catch up on delinquent taxes through a court-approved repayment plan, which effectively freezes your certificate for the duration. You cannot predict this before bidding, but the risk grows with higher-value residential properties where owners are more likely to fight to keep their homes.

Physical Condition You Cannot See

You are bidding on a lien against property you cannot enter. The structure could have major damage, code violations, or hazardous materials that are not visible from the street. A professional title search before bidding, generally $75 to $300, can reveal liens and encumbrances, but it tells you nothing about physical condition. Experienced tax sale investors treat the title search as mandatory and the condition as a known unknown they price into their bids.

Reporting Your Interest Income

Interest earned when a property owner redeems your certificate is taxable income. Report it on your federal return whether or not you receive a 1099-INT from the county. If your total interest and dividend income from all sources exceeds $1,500 in a year, you also need to file a Schedule B detailing each source. Keep records of every certificate purchase, redemption payment, and interest calculation. The IRS recommends retaining tax-related records for at least three years.

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LaPorte County, Indiana. Real Estate Tax Sale
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LaPorte County, Indiana. LaPorte County 2025 Certificate Sale Advertisement
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Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 6-1.1-25-4 – Period for Redemption and Issuance of Tax Deed
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Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 6-1.1-24-5.7 – Registration Statement
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Internal Revenue Service. About Form W-9, Request for Taxpayer Identification Number and Certification
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Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 6-1.1-24-5.1 – Ineligible Purchasers and Registration to Bid
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Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 6-1.1-24-2 – Notice of Sale
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Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 6-1.1-25-4.5 – Entitlement to Tax Deed Under Various Circumstances
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Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Mennonite Board of Missions v. Adams, 462 U.S. 791
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Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 6-1.1-25-4.6 – Petition to Court for Issuance of Tax Deed
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Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 6-1.1-25-4 – Redemption Period and Tax Deeds