Montana · Law checked October 19, 2026

Montana tax sale: your deadline, your office, your money

Behind on property taxes in Montana? Your house can be sold at a tax sale — here's how much time you have to stop it. Your house was sold at a tax sale in Montana? The extra money from the sale may be yours to claim — and there's a deadline. Both answers are on this page, from the statute.

Count my Montana deadline

How Montana sells

The machine, in four lines

Door one: getting the house back (redemption)

Your window: 36 months from the first day of the tax lien sale (or 60 days after the statutory redemption notice, if later), counted from the tax lien sale date. Being double-checked

What it costs to redeem: Delinquent taxes, penalties, interest and costs + later taxes paid by the buyer, with interest and penalty. (A specific redemption percentage was not pinned in the sources read — the treasurer's payoff statement has it.)

Source: MCA 15-18-111; 15-18-112

Before any sale: your quieter doors

Payment plans: No statutory delinquent-tax installment right found.

Deferrals (senior / veteran / disability): None found as a deferral. (The Property Tax Assistance Program and the elderly homestead credit are relief programs, not deferrals.)

Door two: the extra money (surplus)

Who holds the money: the County treasurer.

Your claim window: For residential property sold at a tax-deed auction under MCA 15-18-220/221: the surplus is retained for the people the statute notifies — senior lienholders first, then junior lienholders, then the former owner — and claims are made by notarized claim within 30 days of the auction. County sales of tax-deeded land follow a different, older track (MCA 7-8-2306) under which excess was credited to the county — which track your property is on changes everything; ask the treasurer, in writing. Being double-checked

If nobody claims it: No escheat text was pinned for the auction surplus in the sources read.

Source: MCA 15-18-220; 15-18-221

The county figure rule. This page gives you the law — the window, the formula, the office. The exact payoff or surplus figure lives in the County treasurer's books and changes as interest runs. Ask that office for the figure, in writing, and keep the letter.

Included in the $49 TaxSaleDecoded Kit

  • The surplus claim pack: how to prove the house was yours (deed records, address history, ID), the claim-form path in your state, and what to do when the county says it has no record of your money
  • The redemption playbook: your state's window and cost formula worked step by step, who to pay, how to prove you paid, and the traps in the payoff figure (added fees and interest)
  • The heirs page: the house was a parent's — what changes, which papers prove you are an heir, and the point where it stops being simple
  • The scam shield: how surplus-recovery companies work, the fee caps your state sets for them, and the assignment papers you should never sign
  • The lookback module: what Tyler won, what Pung limited (the extra money is the sale price minus the debt — not your home's value), and the dated state lookbacks, including Illinois claims that die in July 2028

Get the TaxSaleDecoded Kit — $49

One payment of $49. No subscription. The kit is a web page you can return to and print — the claim pack, the redemption playbook, the heirs page, and the scam shield.

All 50 states · The surplus, explained · Redemption, explained