The Los Angeles County excess proceeds file, ranked by value, with the fee math done and the traps flagged — built by people who read the statute.
California Revenue & Taxation Code § 4675(a). That is the whole rule, and getting it wrong is how operators lose files they already paid to work.
We have seen surplus lists sold to California buyers stating the claim window is two to five years. It is not. A buyer acting on that number works a file that expired before they mailed the first letter.
Two more timing facts that change how you plan a California file:
LA County's listing prints the parcel and the amount. It does not print the tax deed recordation date — which means the exact deadline cannot be computed from the public file.
Our file does not fill that column with a guess. It leaves it blank, tells you the earliest date it could possibly be, and tells you exactly who to call to confirm it per parcel. A blank you can trust beats a date you can't.
Transcribed from the county's own published listing for the online auction held April 18–21, 2026.
That last number is the one that should change how you work this list. The median parcel holds $5,955.60 — at a 25% contingency that is $1,489 gross, before costs, on a wait of over a year. Meanwhile eleven parcels hold $2.65 million between them, and the largest single surplus is $591,757.15.
Most operators work this list top to bottom. The file is sorted and tiered so you don't.
| Tier | Parcels | Total proceeds | Fees at 25% |
|---|---|---|---|
| A — Priority ($100k+) | 11 | $2,650,849 | $662,712 |
| B — High ($50–100k) | 3 | $176,937 | $44,234 |
| C — Mid ($20–50k) | 13 | $389,993 | $97,498 |
| D — Low ($5–20k) | 32 | $356,689 | $89,172 |
| E — Marginal (under $5k) | 44 | $91,168 | $22,792 |
Computed from the county's published amounts. Fee column is a formula in the workbook — change the rate on the Assumptions tab and the whole file recalculates.
These are columns, not opinions. They tell you which files are workable before you spend a dollar on postage.
If the owner's address of record is the foreclosed parcel itself, your letter is delivered to the person who bought it at auction — who now knows there is unclaimed money attached to their purchase. That is not a wasted letter. That is a letter that arms a competitor. Suppress it.
A deceased owner is a probate file, not a mail file. Death certificate, probate order or trust documents, an heir who has to be found and persuaded. Completely different work and a completely different timeline. Knowing which rows those are before you mail is worth more than the postage you'd have spent.
§ 4676 requires the county to mail notice to every party of interest at their last known address within 90 days of the sale, and to deduct the cost from the proceeds. Every parcel still unclaimed is one where that exact mailing already failed. The address is not your edge. Knowing which addresses are dead is.
Owner name, mailing address, situs match, deceased status, deed date and deadline are laid out as marked input columns. Fill them from the assessment roll — which is public under § 602 — and the workbook carries your work forward with the fee math already wired.
Every file is built the same way. What changes is how many you get.
One county, one sale
Your choice, 2018–2026
Everything, always current
Questions before you buy? hello@overagevault.com or (949) 739-8858. We answer questions about California procedure whether or not you buy — if we talk you out of a file that was already past deadline, that was worth the call.
Tell us which one. If the county publishes the list, we can build the file. Los Angeles publishes a clean per-parcel listing; most California counties do not, so ask before you assume it exists.
We are not selling you contact data. Everything in this file comes from the county's published record and the public assessment roll. We do not run skip traces for you, and we will not pretend that a phone append is a public record when it isn't.
We also work our own claims. You should know that before you buy from us. What we will not do is sell you a file we are simultaneously working — if you buy a sale, that sale's priority tier is yours, and we say so in writing on the invoice.