Calaveras County Tax Sale, November 13–16, 2026: 44 Parcels on Bid4Assets

Calaveras County's 2026 tax-defaulted property auction runs on Bid4Assets from Friday, November 13 through Monday, November 16, 2026. The Board of Supervisors approved a list of 52 parcels; as of September 22, 2026, 44 lots remain to be bid on. This guide covers the deposit terms, how the list got from 52 to 44, where the parcels are, which ones are inside the 2015 Butte Fire perimeter, and one caveat about the assessed values that matters more here than in the neighboring counties.

The sale at a glance

	As of September 22, 2026
Parcels on the board-approved list	52
Redeemed since	4
Withdrawn	1
Parcels combined into paired sets	6 (three sets of two)
Lots to bid on	44
Opening bids	$1,600 to $91,000
Median opening bid	$13,150
Combined opening bids	$854,100
Assessed at 5× the opening bid or more (2020 roll)	23
Inside a mapped fire perimeter	14, of which 7 in the 2015 Butte Fire
No mapped road frontage	7
CAL FIRE Very High hazard zone	34

Source: the county's published list and Trelys enrichment against the Calaveras parcel layer, queried September 22, 2026. Redemption stays open until the close of business on the last business day before the sale under California Revenue & Taxation Code §3707, so expect more parcels to drop off. The Calaveras County page tracks removals.

Deposit and registration

Per the county's registration notice as of September 22, 2026, bidding is on Bid4Assets and a $2,000 deposit plus a $35 processing fee is required to bid. Bid4Assets collects deposits in advance of the sale window, usually with a cutoff several days before bidding opens, and the exact cutoff and the settlement deadline for winning bidders are on the Calaveras listing at bid4assets.com/calaveras. Confirm both there before you wire anything. One deposit covers bidding on any lot, but a winning bidder who fails to settle forfeits it. How Bid4Assets tax sales work covers the mechanics.

From 52 parcels to 44 lots

The board list had 52 assessor's parcels. Since it was approved, four owners have redeemed and one parcel has been withdrawn. The other change is structural: the county has bundled three pairs of adjoining parcels into single lots that must be bought together.

Lot	Opening bid	What it covers
Lot 6	$19,200	Two adjoining parcels
Lot 15	$20,000	Two adjoining parcels
Lot 18	$9,000	Two adjoining parcels

The county's list is explicit that the minimum bid covers both parcels in each set and that they cannot be bought separately. Counties do this when one parcel is useless without the other, typically a house on one parcel with its driveway, well or septic on the neighbor. If you bid on one of these, you are buying two tax deeds, paying two sets of future tax bills, and you should read the enrichment on both halves.

That leaves 47 parcels in 44 lots. All figures below count lots.

Where the parcels are

Area	Lots	Opening bids
Copperopolis	12	$2,000 to $91,000
Arnold	5	$1,600 to $44,000
Burson	4	$4,000 to $11,500
Angels Camp	3	$7,000 to $38,200
Mokelumne Hill	3	$15,000 to $43,000
Mountain Ranch, Railroad Flat, Sheep Ranch, Tamarack	2 each	$6,200 to $44,000
Glencoe, Hathaway Pines, Wallace, West Point, Wilseyville	1 each	$8,900 to $68,000
No community on the county layer	4	$1,600 to $22,500

Copperopolis, on the Lake Tulloch side of the county, carries the most lots and the highest opening bid: a parcel in the county's planned-community zoning assessed at $715,000 opening at $91,000. A 31-acre Hathaway Pines parcel opens at $68,000 against $469,712, a five-acre Wallace parcel at $46,500 against $312,292, an Arnold parcel at $44,000 against $419,731, and a 20.3-acre Sheep Ranch parcel at $44,000 against $328,008.

The ratios at the bottom of the list are the ones that get attention: a 21.92-acre Angels Camp parcel assessed at $370,000 opening at $7,000, and a 0.33-acre Copperopolis parcel assessed at $309,000 opening at $6,000. Read the next section before treating either number as a value.

The 2020 roll caveat

Calaveras County's public parcel layer carries assessed values from the 2020 roll. Every assessed figure in this article, and on our Calaveras pages, is six years old. Under Proposition 13 an assessed value only moves with inflation, capped at two percent a year, until the property changes hands or is newly built on, so for a long-held parcel the 2020 figure is close to what the assessor carries now. But a parcel that sold or was built on between 2020 and 2026 could be assessed far higher today, and a parcel damaged since 2020 could be lower. The ratios below are still the right way to sort the list; they are just not current.

Opening bid vs 2020 assessed value	Lots
Under 0.25×	31
0.25× to 0.5×	8
0.5× to 1×	2
1× to 2×	3
Over 2×	0

Thirty-one of 44 lots open below a quarter of the 2020 assessed value; 23 have a 2020 assessed value at least five times the opening bid. No lot opens above twice assessed, which is unusual for a California list and partly a product of the roll year: an opening bid accrues taxes and penalties every year, while a 2020 value does not.

The county's layer also lacks building square footage, so we cannot say how many of the 44 lots are improved. The assessor's use codes suggest most are vacant; the Copperopolis $91,000 parcel and the Arnold $44,000 parcel are the likeliest to carry structures. Fifteen lots show zero acreage on the county layer, which means the field is blank, not that the lot has no area.

The Butte Fire parcels

The 2015 Butte Fire burned about 70,000 acres in Calaveras and Amador counties and destroyed several hundred homes around Mountain Ranch, Mokelumne Hill and Railroad Flat. Seven of the 44 lots sit inside its mapped perimeter:

Area	Opening bid	Acres	2020 assessed value
Mokelumne Hill	$43,000	9.94	$33,309
No community	$21,000	40	$124,848
Railroad Flat	$20,000	13.09	$108,242
Mokelumne Hill	$20,000	40	$25,534
Mokelumne Hill	$15,000	39.85	$140,830
Mountain Ranch	$9,000	4	$43,296
Mountain Ranch	$8,000	1	$47,083

Two things stand out. The Mokelumne Hill lots with 2020 assessed values of $33,309 and $25,534 on ten and forty acres are consistent with land whose improvements were removed from the roll after the fire; the opening bid on the first is above its assessed value. And three of the seven are 40-acre parcels opening under $21,000, which is why Butte Fire land keeps appearing on tax sale lists eleven years later: owners who lost a house and could not rebuild often stopped paying.

The Butte Fire is within the window that Fire Check flags as a current risk signal rather than as history. Seven more lots sit inside older perimeters, from 1992 back to 1955, which are shown as informational.

Fire hazard, access and flood

• Fire hazard. Thirty-four of the 44 lots are in a CAL FIRE Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone and nine are High, all in State Responsibility Area; one has no rating. Insurance on any structure will be a FAIR Plan conversation.
• Road access. Seven lots have no mapped road touching them; 37 front a public road.
• Flood. All 44 are FEMA zone X, outside the mapped floodplain.
• Screening. Three lots carry a critical flag, 41 a caution flag.

What last year's results show

Calaveras publishes only the parcels that sold. Its results for November 2025 list 13 sold parcels totaling $395,342, from $6,700 to $105,200 with a median of $17,000. The county also publishes excess proceeds per parcel, which is the sale price less what was owed; one parcel sold with $45.21 in excess proceeds, meaning it went for roughly its opening bid, while the top sale produced $93,864.53 in excess. Because unsold parcels are not published, no sell-through exists for Calaveras. The Calaveras results page has the published list.

What the deed gives you

A parcel is eligible for sale under §3691 five years after it first defaults. The tax deed under §3712 conveys title free of most prior liens; what survives includes taxes and assessments owed to other agencies, certain special assessment and bond liens, easements and recorded restrictions, and federal tax liens with the IRS's 120-day right of redemption. On planned-community lots that list can include road-maintenance or water-district assessments, so pull the tax bill, not just the auction line. Plan on a quiet title action or a waiting period before a title company will insure it.

Every lot, with both halves of the paired sets, is on the November 16 sale page. For the Placer, Nevada and El Dorado sales in the weeks before, see the auction calendar.

This article is informational, not legal or investment advice. Deposit and settlement terms belong to Calaveras County and Bid4Assets; confirm them on the listing. Assessed values are from the county's 2020 roll. Figures are as of September 22, 2026.