Data sources

Every rule on this site is meant to be traceable to a primary, official source. This page explains how the data is gathered, verified, and kept current, and what the confidence labels mean.

Official sources only#

The structured rules are built from primary government material:

• State statutes published on official legislative or code sites.
• Administrative rules and regulations from the issuing agency.
• County treasurers, tax collectors, clerks, and sheriffs for local process.

Aggregators, forums, and blog summaries are not used as sources for a rule. When a state has no free official host for its code, that is noted explicitly rather than papered over.

Respect for robots and terms#

Any automated retrieval respects the source's robots.txt and terms of service, identifies itself, and rate-limits requests. Where a platform blocks automation, coverage is not obtained by circumventing those controls. Sources are re-checked over time so that a change in policy is caught.

Verification#

Each field carries a citation with three parts:

• Cite — the exact section or rule reference.
• Link — a URL to the official source.
• Quote — the language that supports the value.

Values are checked against the quoted language. A value that cannot be tied to a quote is treated as undocumented rather than guessed.

Confidence levels#

• High — every field's quote was machine-checked against the official source.
• Medium — the value is sourced but the quote could not be fully machine-verified, usually because the official host blocks automated retrieval or the text is not published on a free official site.
• Low — the value is provisional and needs confirmation before use.

Confidence applies to the rule as a whole, not to each field separately.

Update cadence and change tracking#

• Statutory rules change slowly; they are re-verified on a regular cycle and when a source is reported to have changed.
• Auction calendars and parcel lists change constantly and are fetched on a cadence tied to each sale date — more often as a sale approaches.

Each listing shows the last successful pull date and links to the official list or county source used for that record. Internal QA checks compare each source's last successful run with its expected cadence and watch for parser format changes, zero-row results, sharp row-count drops, and parse failures. These checks produce dry-run notifications for review; no email or external notification is sent.

• Every fetch is compared with the last, producing added, changed, and removed events.

Structured schema#

Rules are stored as structured JSON, not free text. A state rule includes:

• sale_type — lien, deed, redeemable deed, hybrid, or tax title.
• redemption — base length, start event, exceptions, and notice days.
• interest — type, rate, maximum, period, and any stepped schedule.
• bid_method — how the winner is chosen.
• sale — frequency and months.
• citations — the cite, link, and quote for each field.

The bidder-process data is structured the same way, covering registration, deposits, forms, eligibility, payment, sale format, and numbered steps, each with its own citations.

What this means for you#

• Use the rules as a starting point and confirm with the county before bidding.
• Prefer high-confidence fields when the stakes are high.
• Treat any field marked "Not documented" as an open question to ask the county.

See the FAQ for common questions about the data.