Tax-Delinquent Vacant Land in 2026: Who Falls Behind on Property Taxes

Key findings

• 62,382 vacant-land owners appear on the delinquent-tax lists of 60 counties in Texas, Florida, West Virginia, Mississippi and Wisconsin — out of 831,818 vacant-land owners in those counties.
• In the 18 counties whose lists show amounts, they owe a combined $96.4 million. Dallas County, TX alone accounts for $48.0 million; 1,687 owners owe $10,000 or more.
• Across the 15 counties with a current delinquent roll, 12.6% of owners whose tax bills go out of state were behind, against 9.0% of owners at an in-state address.
• Small lots fall behind most: 11.0% of vacant parcels under 1 acre were delinquent, against 2.6% of tracts of 40 acres or more.
• The longest list is Putnam County, FL: 10,487 vacant-land owners (19.6% of the county's vacant-land owners).

By state

Counts depend on how many counties in each state publish a usable list, and on what each list measures — see how this was measured.

The longest county lists

Where vacant land falls behind most often

Among counties with a current delinquent roll and at least 5,000 vacant-land owners, these have the highest share of vacant-land owners behind on their taxes:

Where the most money is owed:

Who falls behind

Across the 15 counties with a current delinquent roll, owners whose tax bills are mailed out of state were more likely to be behind than owners at an in-state address:

And the smaller the parcel, the more likely it was delinquent:

The pattern isn't uniform: in Dallas County, in-state owners of small city lots were the ones most often behind (see the Texas report). Each county's page has its own current numbers.

How this was measured

• Vacant land: each county's vacant parcels from its state's public parcel data (no improvement value, or a vacant land-use code), counted once per owner and mailing address. Government, church, railroad and utility owners are excluded.
• Delinquency comes from each county's own published list, matched to parcels by parcel number. The lists measure different things:
  • Unpaid balance on the county's current delinquent roll — 15 counties.
  • Advertised for the county's annual tax sale — 3 counties.
  • Certified to the State Auditor; no bid at the lien sale — 42 counties.
  Rates by owner location and parcel size use the current rolls only, so the definitions match.
• Lists are dated by the county (“list as of”); some are annual, so an owner may have paid since. Amounts are what each list reports — some include penalties and interest, some only base tax, and some include very small leftover balances. West Virginia's list carries no amounts.
• Out of state means the owner's tax-bill mailing address is outside the state where the land is.
• Milwaukee County's list comes from the City of Milwaukee and covers city parcels only, so its share understates the county as a whole.

Cite or reuse this data

Journalists, researchers and bloggers are welcome to quote these findings and use the county table, with a link to this page. Suggested credit:

Source: Land Lead Directory, “Tax-Delinquent Vacant Land in 2026: Who Falls Behind on Property Taxes” (https://landleaddirectory.com/reports/tax-delinquent-vacant-land-report-2026), analysis of county delinquent-tax lists and state parcel records.

Keep exploring

• Dallas County tax-delinquent land owners
• Highlands County tax-delinquent land owners
• The 2026 Texas Land Ownership Report
• Build a tax-delinquent mailing list