Santa Clara Tax-defaulted properties auction — 18 parcels left of 52, mostly houses, and every one opens below a third of its assessed value
What this is
Santa Clara listed 52 parcels for this sale, and 34 have been withdrawn since. The 18 still offered are mostly houses: the county's parcel map records a building on 14 of them, and 11 are in San Jose. Two are large. 042-05-015 is 320.8 acres on Sierra Road in San Jose, and 830-31-014 is 5.07 acres in Gilroy with no building on record.
Every one of the 18 opens below a third of the county's assessed value. The median opening bid is $126,750 against a median assessed value of $738,928, and the median parcel opens at 0.16 times its assessed value. The opening bid is what the owner owes: unpaid taxes, penalties and costs (what the opening bid measures). Against a house the county carries at several hundred thousand dollars, that debt is a small number.
The auction page names two costs that can outlast the sale. Bonds or assessments levied by agencies other than the tax collector may still be owed, and where a federal tax lien is recorded, the IRS can redeem the parcel for up to 120 days after the sale.
How to read the columns
Bid ÷ assessed is the opening bid divided by the county's assessed value as Bid4Assets prints it on each lot page. For 15 of the 18 that figure is from the 2019/20 roll, and the other three are from 2014/15, 2017/18 and 2018/19. Without a sale or new construction, Proposition 13 lets an assessment rise by at most 2% a year, which would put today's figure no more than about 15% above a 2019/20 one. Assessed value is the county's figure for tax purposes and can sit far from market value. Screen puts each parcel in a bracket from that ratio, and Flags names the specific things that cost money. Santa Clara publishes no improvement value, so Structure on record here means the county's parcel map records a year built.
Want to see a parcel? Here's how.
For the Assessor's current record, which is newer than the roll year on the lot page, copy the APN into the county's property search.
| 028-04-048 Map | Milpitas | 0.11 | $54,000 | $1,243,578 | 0.04 | Deep discount | Structure on record |
| 680-66-009 Map | San Jose | 0.69 | $700,600 | $6,131,053 | 0.11 | Deep discount | Structure on record |
| 277-35-037 Map | San Jose | 0.19 | $329,000 | $2,834,096 | 0.12 | Deep discount | Structure on record |
| 042-05-015 Map | San Jose | 320.80 | $198,400 | $1,483,426 | 0.13 | Deep discount | Structure on record |
| 680-67-083 Map | — | — | $319,900 | $2,244,501 | 0.14 | Deep discount | — |
| 342-42-026 Map | Cupertino | 0.03 | $122,900 | $849,055 | 0.14 | Deep discount | Structure on record |
| 216-11-064 Map | Santa Clara | 0.15 | $161,200 | $1,082,450 | 0.15 | Deep discount | Structure on record |
| 684-07-092 Map | San Jose | 0.14 | $44,100 | $288,030 | 0.15 | Deep discount | Structure on record |
| 706-45-058 Map | San Jose | 0.02 | $60,700 | $389,228 | 0.16 | Deep discount | Structure on record |
| 331-11-021 Map | Los Altos | 0.23 | $225,300 | $1,428,499 | 0.16 | Deep discount | Structure on record |
| 230-53-045 Map | San Jose | 0.11 | $40,200 | $246,191 | 0.16 | Deep discount | Structure on record |
| 586-05-002 Map | San Jose | 0.01 | $103,100 | $615,663 | 0.17 | Deep discount | Structure on record |
| 810-57-027 Map | Gilroy | 0.68 | $37,500 | $224,917 | 0.17 | Deep discount | — |
| 486-25-012 Map | San Jose | 0.11 | $16,800 | $91,364 | 0.18 | Deep discount | Structure on record |
| 429-05-085 Map | San Jose | 0.25 | $42,300 | $222,630 | 0.19 | Deep discount | — |
| 687-02-042 Map | San Jose | 0.14 | $237,300 | $1,251,606 | 0.19 | Deep discount | Structure on record |
| 429-48-009 Map | San Jose | 0.13 | $130,600 | $628,801 | 0.21 | Deep discount | Structure on record |
| 830-31-014 Map | Gilroy | 5.07 | $189,100 | $623,255 | 0.30 | Discount | — |
What the screen says
- Deep discount
- Opens at a quarter of the county's assessed value or less.
- Discount
- Opens between a quarter and 60% of assessed value.
- Structure on record
- The county's records show something built here: improvement value on the assessor's roll, or a year built on its parcel map. That can be the asset or it can be the liability — a derelict building is a demolition bill, and an occupied one is a possession problem.
18 parcels · every value traces to the county/auction source · download the full CSV
Source: Bid4Assets storefront for the County of Santa Clara tax-defaulted properties auction (storefront 17855): the lot list, the opening bids, and the county's assessed value with its roll year from each lot page. Joined to the County of Santa Clara's Parcels_Public_View layer for recorded acreage, year built, site address and parcel location.. All 52 lots were read from Bid4Assets' five closing groups on October 17, 2026. The 34 marked withdrawn are left out and the 18 still offered are published. Every offered lot page was read for the county's assessed value, and its APN checked against the lot list. All 18 matched the county's parcel layer by APN; one has no recorded acreage and no site address. Assessed values are from the roll year each lot page states, mostly 2019/20, and are the county's figures for tax purposes rather than market values. The county's parcel layer carries no assessed values, which is why they come from the lot pages. Withdrawals continue until the sale, so a parcel here can still come off.
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