El Dorado County Tax Sale, November 6, 2026: 38 Parcels and 131 Timeshare Weeks

El Dorado County's 2026 tax-defaulted property auction opens on Friday, November 6, 2026, at 8:00 a.m. on Bid4Assets. The county's list runs to 175 items, and the first thing a buyer needs to know is that most of them are not land. As of September 22, 2026, 131 of the 169 items still active are fractional timeshare interests at South Lake Tahoe resorts, and 38 are real parcels. This guide separates the two and then goes through the land.

The list at a glance

	As of September 22, 2026
Items on the county's list	175
Withdrawn or redeemed since publication	6 (5 land, 1 timeshare)
Timeshare interests still offered	131
Land parcels still offered	38
Land opening bids	$900 to $395,600
Timeshare opening bids	$800 to $5,100
Land parcels assessed at 5× the opening bid or more	23
Land parcels with a building	10
Land parcels with no mapped road frontage	7
Land parcels in a Very High fire hazard zone	32

Source: the county's published auction list and Trelys enrichment against the county's parcel layer, queried September 22, 2026. Owners can redeem until the close of business on the last business day before the sale under California Revenue & Taxation Code §3707, so both counts will fall before November 6. The El Dorado County page tracks withdrawals.

Registration and terms

Per the county Treasurer-Tax Collector's tax sale page as of September 22, 2026, bidding is on Bid4Assets and prospective bidders register there (how Bid4Assets tax sales work). The county publishes its bidder information, terms and conditions, and right-of-redemption notice as separate PDFs on that page, and the deposit amount, deposit deadline and settlement window are in those documents and on the Bid4Assets listing rather than on the county's main page. Bid4Assets deposits are typically due several days before the sale and the platform charges a processing fee; confirm both figures on the El Dorado listing when it goes live rather than assuming they match Calaveras or another county.

The timeshare split, plainly

A timeshare interest on a tax sale list is a deeded fraction of a resort unit, usually a fixed or floating week, that carries its own assessor's parcel number. It is assessed and taxed separately from the rest of the building, so when its owner stops paying, it defaults and goes to sale on its own, exactly like a lot. That is why 131 of them can appear on one county's list: a single resort can contribute dozens.

What you are buying is the right to occupy a unit for a week or so each year, subject to the resort's recorded declaration. What you are not buying is freedom from the resort's dues. The tax deed under §3712 clears most prior liens, but the recorded covenants that obligate every owner to pay annual maintenance fees and special assessments survive as restrictions of record, so from the day the deed records you owe them. Some associations also try to collect the previous owner's arrears from the buyer; whether they can is a legal question to settle before bidding, not after.

The opening bids are small because the minimum under §3698.5 is the back taxes, penalties and costs, and the annual tax on an interest assessed at a few thousand dollars is tiny. On this list, 90 of the 131 open at $2,000 or less; the median is $1,600 and the highest is $5,100. Annual dues on a resort week are often larger than the opening bid, and the resale market for tax-deeded weeks is thin. Timeshare weeks at California tax sales goes into how to spot them and what happens after you win one.

For the rest of this article, the 131 are set aside.

The 38 land parcels

The county's list carries no city, so the areas below come from the parcel layer. Opening bids on the land run from $900 to $395,600, with a median of $7,750 and a combined $799,100.

Opening bid vs assessed value	Land parcels
Under 0.25×	23
0.25× to 0.5×	8
0.5× to 1×	0
1× to 2×	2
Over 2×	5

Twenty-three of the 38 have an assessed value at least five times the opening bid. The five opening above twice assessed value are mostly tiny: a 0.01-acre piece assessed at $30 opening at $1,500, a zero-acreage parcel classified as environmentally sensitive restricted-use land assessed at $120 opening at $1,300, a 0.03-acre strip assessed at $383 opening at $2,700. These are remnants, and they are the kind of item that a county's own map often cannot draw. There is also a two-acre rural parcel assessed at $1,951 opening at $27,800, where the debt has outgrown the land many times over.

The improved parcels

Ten of the 38 carry a building in the assessor's record. That is where the ratios are widest:

Description (assessor use code)	Opening bid	Assessed value
Retail building over 15,000 sq ft on 1.04 acres	$395,600	$3,413,484
Single-family residence, 0.4 acres	$35,700	$324,900
Single-family residence, 2.34 acres	$30,000	$293,682
Rural residence with one unit, 103.06 acres	$27,800	$226,669
Single-family residence, 0.43 acres	$25,300	$237,430
Single-family residence, 0.17 acres	$24,900	$195,928
Multi-residential, 2 to 3 units, 0.12 acres	$22,900	$235,000
Rural residence, 3.06 acres	$20,600	$176,069
Single-family residence, 0.28 acres	$20,800	$51,630
Single-family residence, 1.98 acres	$16,000	$140,653

The retail building is the one item on the list that will draw a different kind of bidder, and it accounts for half the combined opening bids on the land side. The residences are the reason people register for a sale like this. A house opening at a tenth of its assessed value is not a house you will get for a tenth of its value, but it is a house that will get bids. In our statewide results study, sold parcels went for a median of 1.9 times the opening bid with a very wide spread, so the opening bid is a floor and nothing more.

The vacant land

The other 28 parcels are vacant residential and rural land. The larger pieces open low: 40.08 acres at $14,400 (assessed $150,671), 44.83 acres at $14,000 (assessed $112,567), and several 9- to 10-acre rural parcels between $6,700 and $11,000. Fourteen parcels open under $3,000, and most of those are under an acre.

Access, fire and flood

• Road access. Seven of the 38 land parcels have no mapped road touching them; 31 front a public road.
• Fire hazard. Thirty-two are in a CAL FIRE Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone (26 in State Responsibility Area, six under local jurisdiction), three are High, two Moderate, and one has no rating. Insurance on any structure in a Very High zone is the first phone call.
• Burn history. Five sit inside a mapped historical fire perimeter. Two were inside the 2021 Caldor Fire, opening at $1,200 and $3,700; the others burned in 1996, 1979 and 1961. Fire Check draws the perimeters.
• Flood. One parcel is inside a FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area (zone AE); eight are in zone D, undetermined; 29 are zone X.
• Screening. Eight parcels carry a critical flag, 30 a caution flag.

What last year's results show

El Dorado publishes only what sold. For the November 5, 2025 sale the county's results PDF lists 11 sold items totaling $644,615, with prices from $2,800 to $256,300 and a median of $33,400. Because the county does not publish the unsold items, no sell-through can be computed for El Dorado, and any figure you see quoted for it is not from the county. The results list also does not say which items were timeshares, so it cannot be read as a land-only number. The El Dorado results page shows what was published.

What the deed gives you

A parcel reaches this list under §3691 five years after it first defaults. The tax deed under §3712 conveys title free of most liens, but taxes and assessments owed to other agencies, certain bond and special assessment liens, easements and recorded restrictions survive, and a federal tax lien carries a 120-day IRS right of redemption. For a timeshare, the surviving restriction is the resort declaration. For land, it is usually a road or utility easement. Expect to need a quiet title action or a waiting period before a title insurer will write a policy.

Every item, with the timeshares filtered out, is on the November 6 sale page. Nevada County sells the day before and Calaveras a week later; the auction calendar has the dates.

This article is informational, not legal or investment advice. Terms belong to El Dorado County and Bid4Assets; read the county's posted terms and conditions before registering. Figures are as of September 22, 2026.