We buy houses in Hancock County, MS.

Hancock County has one Chancery Clerk, at 152 Main Street in Bay St. Louis, and that one office holds land redemption for the whole county. The number is 228-467-5406. Ask for the redemption figure on your parcel, the date the period ends, and every year that is open rather than only the latest one. Those answers are public record and the office gives them out all day.

Mississippi Code 27-41-59 sets the tax sale for the last Monday in August and also allows a first Monday in April sale, so confirm with the clerk which day your parcel sold; the two year clock runs from it. The county sells the lien, not the property. A bidder pays your unpaid taxes and the Chancery Clerk issues that bidder a certificate. Until somebody applies for a tax deed at the end of the redemption period, you still hold title, you still control the property, and the certificate holder has no right to enter it or collect anything from you.

Mississippi Code 27-45-3 gives two years from the sale date to redeem, at the taxes the land sold for, the costs of the sale, five percent damages, and one and one half percent per month interest, where any part of a month counts as a whole month. We will not put an example number on this page. The only figure that means anything is the one the Chancery Clerk quotes for your parcel on the day you call, and it is free.

Hancock has more second homes, camps and out of state owners than the counties east of it, and that is exactly the profile that falls behind without knowing. The clerk is required to search for the record owner and give notice before the redemption period ends, but that notice goes to the mailing address the county has on file. For a camp in Pearlington or an inherited place in Waveland, that is often an address nobody has used in fifteen years. Update it with the tax assessor this week.

Mississippi foreclosure is non-judicial and there is no statutory right to redeem after the trustee's sale is concluded, which makes a loan default the faster emergency of the two. Every closing here goes through a licensed Mississippi title attorney, who orders the county payoff, settles liens out of the proceeds, and clears the title before you are paid. On a raised or rebuilt house the attorney also checks that the permits and the record agree.