Los Angeles auctions 1,252 tax-defaulted parcels on October 17 to 20. The nearest thing to a price history for that sale is the county’s previous one. Its April auction ran April 18 to 21, and the county has since posted every parcel sold there with the price it fetched. The list exists so that former owners can claim whatever a sale brought in above what was owed (the county’s list, PDF).
We matched each sale to its opening bid on April’s own list. All 136 sales match on both item number and AIN: 121 at the April auction and 15 at the June re-offer. Every one of them is in a single CSV.
April’s 121 sales
30 sold at exactly the opening bid. 61 sold for at least twice it, and 19 of those for five times or more. The median sale was 2.03 times its opening bid, at a median price of $10,684.
| Price ÷ opening bid | Sales |
|---|---|
| Exactly the opening bid | 30 |
| Above it, under 1.25× | 14 |
| 1.25× to under 2× | 16 |
| 2× to under 5× | 42 |
| 5× or more | 19 |
| All April sales | 121 |
115 of the 121 were bare land, with a median of 1.89 times the opening bid. All 30 of the sales at exactly the opening bid were bare land.
Butte County’s August auction had much thinner bidding. 13 of its 28 sales went at exactly the opening bid and the median was 1.02 times (our scorecard). Butte’s was a re-offer of parcels that had already failed to sell once, in a different county, so neither number stands in for the other.
By size of opening bid
Splitting April’s sales by opening bid changes the multiple very little. Under $5,000 the median sale went for 1.98 times its opening bid, and from $5,000 to $14,999 for 2.24 times.
| Opening bid | Sales | At the opening bid | Median price | Median multiple |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under $5,000 | 61 | 17 | $6,400 | 1.98× |
| $5,000 to $14,999 | 45 | 10 | $15,100 | 2.24× |
| $15,000 or more | 15 | 3 | not rated | not rated |
We print no median for a group of fewer than 30 sales. The 15 above $15,000 sold for between $16,400 and $665,100, and 8 of them went for at least twice the opening bid.
Six buildings
April’s list had 2,376 parcels, and the county marked 1,014 of them as having a building. Six of the 121 April sales did. Those six brought in $2,174,500 of the $4,929,892 paid at the auction.
| AIN | Opening bid | Sold for | Multiple |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7206-005-014 | $74,261 | $665,100 | 8.96× |
| 4335-008-104 | $29,542 | $611,700 | 20.71× |
| 5132-011-088 | $87,492 | $323,400 | 3.70× |
| 5224-013-015 | $137,270 | $204,100 | 1.49× |
| 7524-014-147 | $12,158 | $200,100 | 16.46× |
| 7524-014-139 | $13,895 | $170,100 | 12.24× |
Six sales are too few for a rate. They show what a building can fetch at this auction, but most of April’s buildings never sold there. 165 of the 1,014 are back on October’s list, and 843 are on neither list. A parcel with a building is the kind most likely to be paid off before a sale. On October’s list, 63 of the 248 parcels with a building had paid their default when we read the Assessor’s records on October 8, against 23 of the 1,004 without one (more on who redeems).
The June re-offer
A parcel that does not sell is offered again within 90 days, at a reduced opening bid (what a re-offer is). April’s re-offer ran June 6 to 9 and sold 15 parcels, all bare land. 13 of them went for less than their April opening bid. The 15 prices ran from $1,514 to $6,500. October’s re-offer is scheduled for December 5 to 8.
The surplus
April’s sales brought in $4,929,892 against opening bids of $1,329,071. The county lists $3,665,636 of it as surplus, which former owners and lienholders can claim (how the surplus works). $1,828,584 of that came from the six parcels with a building.
What the county’s list leaves out
It lists sales and nothing else. Of April’s 2,376 parcels, 136 sold in April or June and 314 are back on October’s list, and the county’s files do not say what became of the other 1,926. Some will have been paid off before the auction and some will have drawn no bid. Dividing 121 by 2,376 would count every paid-off parcel as a sale that failed, so we print no sell-through rate for April.
For October
314 of October’s 1,252 parcels were on April’s list and sold at neither the auction nor the re-offer. They include 163 of the 248 with a building. The October list flags each of them “Offered before, didn’t sell”, so the Flags filter keeps them or drops them in one pass.
Sources
- Los Angeles County Treasurer and Tax Collector, excess proceeds listing for the 2026A online auction (April 18 to 21, 2026) and the 2026A follow-up auction (June 6 to 9, 2026): parcel, item, purchase price, a follow-up marker and the excess proceeds for every sale. PDF.
- Los Angeles County Treasurer and Tax Collector, 2026A resolution list: 2,376 parcels with item, AIN, minimum bid and the county’s improvement marker.
- For the October comparisons: the Board of Supervisors resolution adopted May 5, 2026 (the 2026B list), and the Los Angeles County Assessor’s parcel records, read August 7 and October 8, 2026.