Frequently Asked Questions

The payment to redeem a tax lien on a parcel must be made in full as we are not insured to hold money like a bank or lending institution. This amount must be paid in full so that we can immediately reimburse the tax lien holder and process the redemption.

For information like this we recommend you contact the Alamosa County Treasurer's Office immediately to obtain a projected redemption figure that reflects current interest owed and all fees.

If you are the senior lien holder you always have the right to redeem out a junior. Note that this redemption money is not going to be refunded to you if the owners redeem your tax lien. You would simply be out this money to protect your lien. After all, the only way that this situation arose is because you neglected to endorse your tax lien in a subsequent year and we sound another lien on it. This does not work the other way around. If you are a junior lien holder you are not entitled to redeem a senior's tax lien. You may, after the three year redemption period is up on your lien (and assuming that the senior has never applied for treasurer's deed them self) apply for deed yourself and give the senior one last shot at redeeming you out. Should they choose not to, then they waive their interest in the parcel.

I got my endorsement list and sent money for the tax lien endorsements, but I waited a little too long to send it and you refunded me some money, saying that some of my endorsements were already paid by another tax lien holder on the same parcel. Is it too late for me to endorse these liens again this year? What does this mean for my interest I am earning?

If another tax lien exists on a parcel you currently hold a tax lien on, we will send an endorsement notice to both lien holders because Alamosa County does not care who endorses taxes, they simply need to collect the tax revenue. In cases like this, we will accept the endorsement payment from whichever lien holder we receive payment from first on a given parcel. Every time you endorse taxes on a tax lien, you are increasing the amount you are earning interest on. So it is important to endorse as soon as we send out notices to you. (This is also why you don't want there to be other tax liens on parcels you currently hold a lien on!)

This endorsement list is only liens which you are eligible to endorse and have not been paid for the current year. The property owners may have actually paid the current years taxes due this year, but not redeemed the tax lien (i.e., the back taxes, interest and fees owed to you from the year of the tax lien). If they have not redeemed the actual tax lien, then you still hold that lien, but you may not have to pay the current year if the owners have paid it already.

A treasurer's deed is a deed issued by the County Treasurer of a given county that states that a buyer of a tax lien has been granted ownership of a parcel they held a tax lien on. The three year redemption period must have expired for the owner and all other requirements under the law must have been fulfilled. At the end of this process, should no tax lien redemption take place, the County Treasurer will conduct a Public Auction. If there are no bidders at the auction, the current buyer will receive a Certificate of Option for a Treasurer's Deed. The buyer then will be deeded the property. 

The entire process takes approximately five to six months. There are statutory obligations that we must meet in order to fulfill "due diligence" and rightfully issue a treasurers deed to you.

In Colorado, you must hold the lien for three years. That is, we cannot issue you a deed until the lien has been held three years from the date of the sale. You can apply for a deed before that three year point, but we cannot issue you a deed until that time. It is our office policy that we send notice to you each year listing what liens are now eligible for deed. We will not send notice for any which became eligible in prior years and you have failed to apply for deeds on. If you hold liens on these older ones, you can still apply for deeds on them, but we will not be sending you "reminders" that you are eligible. Your list will only include those liens which will be three years old in November of that year. It is also our policy not to accept applications for deed unless the lien is already eligible (older than three years) or we are only approximately 5 to 6 months out from the date it becomes eligible. That is, you cannot apply for a deed right after buying the lien.

For real estate parcels, we ask for $1,200 for each parcel to cover all the legal fees, certified mailings, advertisements and current year taxes left unpaid in the process. If any of this money is not used, it will be returned to you with your deed. For mineral rights only parcels and mobile homes, please call our office at 719-589-3626.

We first send a "10 Day Letter" and a "Lien Payoff Statement" amount to the owner of record. They have ten working days to pay the back taxes owed and not incur any additional costs. If there is no redemption, we order an "Ownership and Encumbrance Report" from a title company and this usually comes back to us within a few weeks. We use the information provided in the O&E to send certified mailings (an official "Notice of Sale of Real Estate/Mineral Rights") to individuals and entities of interest in the parcel, giving them one last opportunity to pay off back taxes. We also run three consecutive newspaper advertisements (the "Notice of Sale" above, one per week) as required by law when the value of the parcel is over $500. If the value is under $500, the step is not required.

Please Note: We will not send any correspondence to owners, "warning letters", etc. before a deed application has been received and you have paid fees. It is our office policy that no work will begin until we have received a signed application and fees. This is a legal document and must be filled out and signed correctly. We will provide assistance in filling it out, but we need a signed copy on file. You can request a blank form to photocopy yourself and use in the future applications, but please send an individual signed copy when you apply.

• If we have sent out all official notices, run all required advertisements and waited the necessary amount of time (we schedule the deed date three months and one week from the date of the last publication date) - on that prescribed date, we will record a treasurers deed in your name with the Office of the Clerk and Recorder. At that point, you will be the owner of that parcel through a treasurer's deed.
• Any of the $1,200 fee you paid at the beginning which where not used in the process will be refunded to you at this point as well. In addition to the above costs there are fees for legal forms, recording fees to the Clerk and Recorder, notarization fees and other minor miscellaneous fees that your money is paying for. All expenses will be detailed for you in an expense worksheet included when we send your copy of the deed.

This is one of our office policies because we have found that often, if the owner receives it right away and we provide them with a solid redemption figure (unclouded by other fees and costs), that they will pay it immediately and it prevents many of the complications of refunding your money. This allows us to bring closure to the whole process in a more efficient manner.

Treasurer's deeds in Colorado are non-merchantable titles. It is possible to sell a property obtained through a treasurer's deed, but the terms and conditions under which you do so may be limited by the law. If you have questions regarding the legality of sale, under what terms, obtaining "quiet-title" on a property, or any other legal issues regarding the newly acquired property, please refer these questions to an attorney, real estate agent, Title Company or your own research as We cannot provide legal advice in these matters.

We encourage you to apply for deeds on them right away! It should also be noted that according to Colorado law, we can, and do cancel any tax liens older than fifteen years, with or without notice.

It is our county's policy to ask for $1000 (for real estate and mobile homes) as this seems to be an amount sufficient to cover process costs and is often enough to cover any current year taxes which are due. It is our goal to find an amount of money that is a perfect balance of an amount convenient enough to allow you to start the deed without too much financial burden and, at the same time, cover all costs. We feel that the $1000 fees meet this goal. If we need to ask for more money to cover the treasurer deed costs, we will try to do so as soon as it is discovered in order to issue you your deed quickly and without any further delay.

Sometimes O&Es take a long time to get back from title companies, sometimes there are legal issues that need to be sorted out with an attorney, sometimes we are just swamped with treasurer's deed applications and we are a very small staff. Each of these steps takes time, labor and lots of organization to ensure that we are fulfilling our "due diligence" as required by law to notify those who need to be notified. There could be many reasons, but rest assured that we are working to issue you a deed in a timely manner. Please bear in mind that, while we are the entity which facilitates you getting your deed, our primary obligation is to the property owner and we need to make every effort to get them to pay their property taxes so they don't lose the property in question.

We are obligated by law to allow the property owner to pay the taxes before we can allow you, the tax lien holder, to endorse taxes on the property in any given year. We prepare and send you a listing of parcels that you hold liens on (typically around August 1st of that year) with a total to re-endorse all taxes. Please remember that any tax amounts you endorse for subsequent years you earn you additional interest on in the event of redemption by the owner.

We hold an on-line auction for tax liens through a third party auction house. The company we are currently using is SRI, Inc. The auction is similar in many ways to an "E-Bay" style auction. We use a proxy bidding system. It takes place over a three day period in November. High bidders at the end of the auction win the tax liens on their parcels. Payment is due immediately and is done through an electronic transfer of funds from an account of the buyer’s choosing. Should there not be sufficient funds to cover the total payment, the buyer waives their right to the lien and the lien will not be granted to them. Registration takes place between September and November before the tax auction. Please contact our office for additional information on how to participate. All sales are final and it is the buyer’s responsibility to know exactly what they are bidding on. CAVEAT EMPTOR or "Buyer Beware". The mobile home parcels are covered in a separate sale that takes place in the form of a live auction – typically at the Alamosa County Treasurer’s Office on a given date in November. Contact us for more info.