Porter County, IN
Online tax lien sale on Zeus Auction, Oct 21–22 — 533 parcels, registration closes Oct 20 at noon
· this sale has been held
Porter County, whose seat is Valparaiso, holds its 2026 tax sale online at zeusauction.com. Bidding opens Wednesday, October 21 at 9:00 a.m. local time, and properties begin closing Thursday, October 22 at 2:00 p.m., each with its own closing time posted on the site. The county's notice lists 533 properties, many of them strips of land, ditch parcels and improvements on leased land rather than houses. To bid you need a Zeus account plus a registration for the Porter County auction, with an IRS W-9 and the statutory registration statement completed online; registration opened September 21 and closes Tuesday, October 20 at noon. A business must also give the Treasurer a Certificate of Existence or Foreign Registration Statement from the Secretary of State.
The minimum bid is the delinquent and current-year taxes and assessments, penalties, $25 for postage and publication and the county's sale costs. What you buy is a lien: if the owner redeems within six months you get 110% of the minimum bid, after six months 115%, plus your overbid with 5% a year (IC 6-1.1-25-2). The redemption period for this sale ends Friday, October 22, 2027. You must notify the owner within six months of the sale and, if there is no redemption, petition the court for a deed within three months after it ends, or the lien terminates. A bidder who fails to pay owes a 25% civil penalty.
Porter County tax sale results and what happens next
The sale opened on October 21, 2026. Below: the official results, the next date, how surplus money is claimed and what the redemption period means now.
Results of the October 21, 2026 sale
We have no official results for this sale on file. Results, when the county releases them, appear with its sale notice on portercountyin.gov; we don't estimate or reconstruct them. If you bought at this sale, the receipt or certificate from that office is your record.
Next Porter County tax sale
No next date has been posted that we could verify, so we don't give one. Under Indiana law sales are held: yearly, county by county, plus certificate sales (IC 6-1.1-24, 6-1.1-25). The auction calendar gets it the day it is posted.
Every date we have sourced for Porter County is on the Porter County page.
Porter County surplus funds (excess proceeds)
A tax lien sale doesn't create surplus on the day: the buyer pays the tax debt and gets a certificate, not the property. Surplus can only appear later, if the lien ends in a deed sale that brings in more than is owed. How surplus is handled in Indiana.
Redemption period after the sale
Indiana's window is 1 year (120 days on county-held certificates), counted from the sale. For a sale on October 21, 2026 that is until about October 21, 2027. Until then the owner (and anyone with a recorded interest) can pay off the sale and the buyer gets the redemption amount back instead of the property. Ask the county for a parcel's exact last day: holidays, notices and abandoned-property rules can change it.
Source: IC 6-1.1-25-2. The full rule is on the Indiana page, and the tax lien calculator works out what a redemption pays on an Indiana purchase.
Indiana rules at a glance
Indiana sells tax sale certificates to the highest bidder above a minimum bid made up of the taxes, penalties and costs (IC 6-1.1-24-5). The owner has one year to redeem and pays 110% of the minimum bid within six months or 115% after that, plus 5% a year on any amount bid above the minimum (IC 6-1.1-25-2). Certificates on parcels nobody bought can be resold by the county at a later certificate sale, with a 120-day redemption period and a 10% return on the certificate price (IC 6-1.1-24-6.1, IC 6-1.1-25-4). Vacant or abandoned parcels certified for sale carry no redemption at all.
The statute, the bidding and what goes wrong for new buyers are on the Indiana page; every sale date we have sourced for Porter County is on the Porter County page.
Property & tax profile
The median homeowner in Porter County pays $2,326 a year in property tax — above the Indiana median of $1,614 (U.S.: $3,119). That is roughly what a typical home here owes after one missed year — about the face value of a one-year certificate, before interest, fees and any premium. Homes with a mortgage pay a median of $2,359; homes owned outright, $2,251.
On a home with a mortgage, the lender has its own reason to pay a delinquent tax bill: the tax lien outranks the mortgage, and a tax deed can wipe out the loan. On a home owned outright, nobody but the owner — or the heirs — has that reason. In Porter County, 32.9% of owner-occupied homes are owned outright (Indiana: 36.4%, U.S.: 39.4%). That is less than the state as a whole: more of the delinquent bills here sit on mortgaged homes, where the lender often steps in.
5.5% of all housing units in Porter County are vacant. The figure that matters for a lien buyer is the Census “other vacant” category — not for rent, not for sale, not a holiday home, but a catch-all that includes foreclosures, homes held up by legal proceedings or family reasons, homes needing repairs, and abandoned ones. Here it is 1.5% of all units (Indiana: 4.3%, U.S.: 3.6%). That is below the state rate: fewer empty properties on the list than elsewhere in Indiana.
Half of the homes in Porter County were built in or before 1982 (Indiana: in or before 1976). The typical tax bill is 2.6% of the median household income of $87,972 (Indiana: 2.2%).
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year estimates (tables B25077, B25103, B25081, B25002, B25004, B25035, B19013) — see the figures on data.census.gov. Survey estimates with margins of error; anything too uncertain to state is left out.
Before you bid: The notice publishes no deposit or payment deadline — read the Porter County rules of sale on Zeus before registering. Results are available only in person at the Auditor's office, 155 Indiana Avenue, Valparaiso (219-465-3400).
Official source: portercountyin.gov — checked October 14, 2026
More sales: 43 other county sales are on the calendar in October 2026 — see them by date; or the upcoming sales in Indiana.
Guides: how to buy tax lien certificates, redemption periods and payoffs, what it really costs and the risks.
This page reflects publicly posted county auction notices as of publication and is general information, not financial or legal advice. Sale details can change — always confirm current terms with the county directly.