We buy houses in Poinsett County, AR

Each year the county sends a list of tax-late land to the Commissioner of State Lands. Once that happens, legal title passes to the state, though no one takes the house.

The state cannot sell it until at least one year after it gets the land. The auction is held once a year, in this county or one next to it.

Before the sale, the state mails notice by certified mail to the owner. It also runs a legal notice in the county paper.

Anyone can pay the back taxes and clear the state's claim. The deadlines are strict:

• pay by 4 p.m. on the last business day before the sale
• in the last 30 days, use certified funds or pay online
• on sale day, it is too late

The winning bidder gets a limited warranty deed. The state tells buyers not to make big repairs during the 90 days after the sale when the sale can still be challenged.

Arkansas allows a statutory home loan sale, with no lawsuit. The Court of Appeals has said notice must go out in five ways (2009 Ark. App. 569):

• a county newspaper
• the internet, posted by a third party
• the county courthouse
• first-class mail to you
• certified mail to you

The notice must name your exact default. Saying only that a default happened is not enough, the Arkansas Supreme Court held in 2020 (Davis v. PennyMac, 2020 Ark. 180).

Timing matters. That 2009 case quotes a rule that claims must be raised before the sale or they are lost. A real estate attorney can check your dates.

The New Madrid earthquakes of 1811 and 1812 sank land here by 15 to 20 feet in places. That wrecked the St. Francis River channel and made the swamps now called the Sunken Lands.

Crowley's Ridge splits the county. Cotton and soybeans grow east of it, rice grows west, and cattle graze along the ridge.

Much of the land east of the ridge sits in Drainage District Number Seven, formed in 1917 to control flooding. In 1939 the Corps of Engineers built siphons to lift the river over a levee near Marked Tree.

If your land is low or near a ditch, expect any buyer to ask about water. Have your flood history ready.

Arkansas charges a transfer tax of $3.30 for each $1,000 of the price on sales over $100 (A.C.A. 26-60-101 et seq.). By our own math, a $90,000 sale owes $297.

The same tax applies when mineral rights change hands. So check whether past owners kept or sold the minerals under your land.

Mineral rights can go tax-late on their own. The state land office says those may be redeemed at any time.