How to find out if you have surplus funds

Step 1 — Pin down the sale

You need the date and the county. Foreclosure sales in Texas happen on the first Tuesday of the month at the county courthouse. A tax sale is a sheriff's sale ordered by a court. If you are unsure of the month, the recorded deed will tell you.

Step 2 — Find the recorded sale document

Search the county clerk's official public records for the property or the owner name. You are looking for a Substitute Trustee's Deed (foreclosure) or a Sheriff's Deed (tax sale). Most Texas counties have this online and free to search, though document images may cost a small fee.

The bid amount is generally recited in the body of the deed rather than in the index. The index often shows a consideration of $0.00, which means nothing — you have to read the document.

Step 3 — Work out what was owed

This is the step that stops most people. You need the payoff as of the sale date: the original loan amount, the origination date, the rate, and how far it had amortized, plus fees and costs. Old statements help. A servicer payoff letter, if you still have one, is better.

If the bid on the deed is comfortably above what you believe was owed, there was probably a surplus.

Step 4 — Call the clerk

For a foreclosure, call the district clerk in the county where the sale happened and ask whether funds have been deposited into the court's registry in connection with the sale. For a tax sale, call the clerk of the court that ordered the sale and ask about excess proceeds. Have the property address, the sale date and the cause or document number ready.

Clerks generally will not give legal advice, but they will usually confirm whether money is being held.

Step 5 — Check what is recorded against you

Search the same county records for liens in the owner's name: second mortgages, HELOCs, abstracts of judgment, HOA assessments, tax liens. A valid junior lien can reach the surplus ahead of you. Old and released ones frequently still appear in the index and are not necessarily live.

If you would rather not do all that

It is exactly what a free claim review is. We pull the deed, reconstruct the payoff, run the lien search and call the clerk, and tell you the number. If the answer is that there is nothing here, you have lost nothing but the two minutes it took to ask.