Glossary / Over-the-counter (OTC)

Over-the-counter (OTC)

Every auction leaves leftovers; governments park them with themselves (struck to the county, bid in for the state) and sell them over the counter. There is no bidding war and no rate compression — the terms are the statute's — but selection is adverse: the market already passed. OTC is therefore a research product: screen the shelf at volume, verify survivors against county records, and buy the misfits that fit.

OTC timelines can differ from auction paper: Indiana commissioners' certificates carry 120-day redemption instead of one year. Availability also changes silently as inventory sells and owners redeem — confirm the specific instrument is still held before paying.

One more structural point: OTC purchases are administrative transactions, not auctions, so the buyer's protections are paperwork — confirm the instrument, the amount and the redemption terms on the county's own documentation at the moment of purchase. OTC inventory has a life cycle investors can exploit. It is freshest — and least picked-over — immediately after the sale that created it, then degrades as the good parcels are bought and the structural lemons accumulate. Serious OTC buyers therefore work on restock alerts: Florida's struck certificates after the June 1 sale close, California's 90-day reoffer window, Indiana's winter/spring commissioners' list, DC's post-sale bid-off postings. They also keep a standing filter file — property types, value floors, exclusion zones — so a fresh list can be screened in hours, not weeks. The shelf rewards the prepared exactly because it offers time; spending that time slowly is the one way to lose the OTC edge.

In practice: Arizona resells state-assigned liens (struck at the full 16%) through Bid4Assets; Minnesota sells forfeited parcels first at market-value-based prices, then reoffers at taxes-and-costs minimums.

Definitions verified 2026-10-30 against the sourced state-law dataset. Educational only, not legal advice.