Nevada County Tax Sale, November 5, 2026: 40 Parcels on GovEase

Nevada County's 2026 tax-defaulted property auction runs online on Thursday, November 5, 2026, through GovEase. As of September 22, 2026, the county's list holds 40 parcels, spread from Grass Valley and Nevada City to Truckee and the Donner Summit cabins. This guide covers what is on the list, how to get registered, what the fire-hazard map means for a buyer, and what the county's own results from 2024 and 2025 do and do not tell you.

The sale at a glance

	As of September 22, 2026
Parcels offered	40
Opening bids	$2,356 to $609,269
Median opening bid	$17,916
Combined opening bids	$2.42 million
Median assessed value (2026 roll)	$172,902
Assessed at 5× the opening bid or more	25
With a building on the assessor's record	10
No mapped road frontage	8
CAL FIRE Very High hazard zone	33
Inside a mapped fire perimeter	9

Source: the county's published 2026 auction list and Trelys enrichment against the county's parcel and assessor layers, queried September 22, 2026. Nevada County's assessed values are from the 2026 roll, which is as current as it gets. Owners can redeem until the close of business on the last business day before the sale under California Revenue & Taxation Code §3707, and the county's own page puts it as 5 p.m. the day before the auction, so the list will shrink. The Nevada County page tracks removals.

Registration and deposits on GovEase

Per the county's Auction Property Tax Sale page (nevadacountyca.gov/957) and its posted terms as of September 22, 2026:

• Registration opens in October 2026 on GovEase. The county's own site does not carry the registration form; it links out.
• Deposits are due by 12:00 p.m. PST on November 4, 2026, the day before the sale. Nothing about the sale is more important than this line. A deposit posted at 2 p.m. on November 4 means watching the auction without bidding.
• The deposit amount and payment terms are in the GovEase terms of sale, which the county posts when registration opens. Read them there rather than relying on last year's figures.

GovEase runs a timed online auction rather than a room, so there is no morning-of registration and no cashier's check at a counter. If you have only used Bid4Assets, the mechanics differ enough that it is worth reading how GovEase auctions work before November.

What is on the list

Where the 40 parcels are, by the post office on the county's address layer:

Area	Parcels	Opening bids
Nevada City	16	$2,356 to $49,969
Grass Valley	11	$3,169 to $307,004
Truckee	4	$6,785 to $609,269
Soda Springs	3	$5,017 to $27,438
Penn Valley	3	$6,554 to $32,161
North San Juan	2	$2,917 to $10,300
Smartsville	1	$9,531

The list is mostly land: 30 parcels are vacant or rural land under the assessor's use codes, and 10 carry a building. The improved ones are where the opening bid sits furthest below assessed value. A Grass Valley house of 1,928 square feet on 0.24 acres opens at $64,101 against an assessed value of $392,388. A 1,374-square-foot Grass Valley house opens at $32,849 against $283,024. A 2,016-square-foot house on five acres in Penn Valley opens at $32,161 against $307,660.

The top of the list is Truckee acreage: a 14.76-acre vacant parcel at $609,269 (assessed $697,197), an 11.77-acre parcel at $479,148 (assessed $557,756), and a 6.86-acre parcel at $305,225 (assessed $535,446). Those three account for $1.39 million of the $2.42 million in combined opening bids. Below them is a 4.53-acre Grass Valley parcel opening at $307,004 against an assessed value of $166,537, which is one of only four parcels on the list opening above assessed value.

There is also real acreage at low opening bids: 128.32 acres near Grass Valley at $59,092 (assessed $606,139), 72.6 acres near Nevada City at $36,399, and 30.44 acres in Penn Valley at $31,154. The smallest item is a 0.04-acre sliver; the Soda Springs lots run 0.17 acres and up, with the smallest opening at $5,017.

Opening bid against assessed value

The ratio between the opening bid and the assessor's value is the single most useful sort on any list. Under §3698.5 the minimum bid is the taxes, penalties and costs owed, which has nothing to do with what the land is worth.

Opening bid vs 2026 assessed value	Parcels
Under 0.25×	30
0.25× to 0.5×	2
0.5× to 1×	4
1× to 2×	4
Over 2×	0

Thirty of 40 parcels open below a quarter of assessed value, and 25 have an assessed value of at least five times the opening bid. Compared with Placer's list two weeks earlier, where 10 of 33 parcels open above twice assessed, Nevada's is a list of parcels that mostly stopped paying recently rather than parcels where the debt has outgrown the land. Statewide, parcels in the under-0.25× band sold about nine times in ten in our results study, but that figure is dominated by San Bernardino and says nothing about Nevada County specifically.

33 parcels in Very High fire hazard zones, and what that means

Thirty-three of the 40 parcels sit in a CAL FIRE Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone: 30 in State Responsibility Area and three in local jurisdiction. Three more are High, one Moderate, and three have no rating. That is the western Sierra foothills; it is not a surprise, but it has consequences.

For a buyer, the practical effect is on insurance. Property in Very High zones is where standard carriers have pulled back hardest in California, and where the California FAIR Plan, the state's insurer of last resort, is often the only option for a structure. FAIR Plan coverage is more expensive and narrower than a standard policy. For a vacant lot this matters less on day one, but it matters the moment you or a future buyer want to build, and any lender will ask. A Very High designation also brings defensible-space requirements under Public Resources Code §4291 and, on resale, a seller disclosure obligation. Before bidding on any of the 10 improved parcels, get an insurance quote on the address, not a guess.

The 1988 fire parcels: history, not a warning

Nine parcels sit inside a mapped historical fire perimeter. Five of them were inside the 1988 49er Fire, which burned across the Grass Valley and Penn Valley area. Two were inside a 1960 fire near North San Juan, one a 1955 fire, and one a 1951 fire. Only one parcel, opening at $3,010, burned within the last ten years, in the 2017 Lobo Fire.

On Fire Check, fires older than the thresholds we use are shown as informational rather than as a risk flag. A parcel that burned in 1988 has had 38 years of regrowth, and the 49er Fire tells you more about the neighborhood's fuel load than about that lot. The current hazard-zone rating above is the forward-looking figure; the perimeter is context. Treat the two differently.

Access, flood and slope

• Road access. Eight parcels have no mapped road touching them, one fronts a private road, and 31 front a public road. No mapped road is a prompt to pull the title report and look for a recorded easement, not a verdict.
• Flood. One parcel is inside a FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area (zone AE). Twelve are in zone D, where FEMA has not determined the hazard, which is common in rural Nevada County. The remaining 27 are zone X.
• Slope. One parcel averages 30 percent or steeper.
• Screening. Four parcels carry a critical flag, 36 a caution flag.

What the county's results show, and why there is no sell-through

Nevada County publishes only the parcels that sold. It does not publish the ones that did not. That means no sell-through rate can be computed for this county, and any figure you see quoted for it is invented. What can be said, from the county's published results and the assessor's values as of September 22, 2026:

Sale	Parcels sold	Total	Median sale price	Median sale price vs assessed
November 7, 2024	7	$769,807	$40,103	0.79× (6 with assessed value)
November 13, 2025	17	$409,735	$6,831	1.03× (15 with assessed value)

The 2025 sale is the more instructive. Seventeen parcels sold for a median of $6,831, and the median parcel sold for almost exactly its assessed value. The middle half ran from 0.75× to 1.03× assessed. Five of the 17 sold with excess proceeds of $0.00 in the county's results, which means they sold at the opening bid with no competing bidder. In 2024 one parcel sold for $619,691 and carried most of that year's total.

Two things this does not tell you: how many parcels were offered in either year, and what happened to the ones that were not on the sold list. The Nevada County results page shows what was published.

What the deed gives you

A tax deed under §3712 conveys title free of most prior liens, but not all of them. Liens for taxes and assessments by other agencies, certain bond and special assessment liens, easements and recorded restrictions all survive, and a federal tax lien carries a 120-day IRS right of redemption after the sale. A parcel becomes eligible for sale under §3691 five years after it first defaults, so every parcel here has been in arrears since at least 2021. Most title insurers will want a quiet title action or a waiting period before writing a policy.

For each parcel's ratio, access and hazard flags, see the November 5 sale page. El Dorado sells the next day and Calaveras the following week; the auction calendar has all three.

This article is informational, not legal or investment advice. Registration and deposit terms belong to Nevada County and GovEase; confirm them on the county's site when registration opens. Figures are as of September 22, 2026.