Alabama court reverses redemption ruling in sheriff’s sale property fight
On July 11, 2024, he sold it to a second buyer for $4,600, who later conveyed it back. Then, on November 13, 2024, he sold it again, this time for $9,200, and recorded that deed the next day.
The former owner surfaced weeks later. On December 20, 2024, she asked the buyer about redeeming the property – her right to buy it back at the sale price. She kept trying for months, got nowhere, and in June 2025 took him to court.
The trial court agreed. It voided the sale to the third buyer, found she had “timely asserted her right of redemption,” and gave her 30 days to reclaim the property for $4,600. When the buyer pushed back, the judge leaned on a statute governing redemption of property sold for unpaid taxes.
That was the error, the appeals court said. This was not a tax sale but a sheriff’s sale to satisfy a judgment, and the difference matters. A tax-sale buyer gets only a certificate and cannot hold clear title for three years. A sheriff’s-sale buyer under a judgment gets a deed that conveys title “as effectually as if” the former owner had sold it herself.
So the buyer owned it the day he bought it, and the November sale was valid.
