Every single year over one million properties are foreclosed on because owners could not pay their taxes or mortgages anymore. When these properties are sold at auctions for more than what was owed to the county or the mortgage company there are surplus funds. As an example, let’s say a property owner has $100,000 in property taxes or mortgage that they could not pay, and the property was foreclosed on and later sold at an auction for $150,000. The county or the banks will use that money to pay the debt owed, and there will be surplus funds of $50,000.
One attempt will be made by the county clerk or a trustee for the mortgage company to notify the previous owner by sending a written notice to the address of the property that was auctioned off. The owner of that property usually has already been evicted and no longer living there to receive any mail and may not of left a forwarding address to receive the notification, so most of the time the property owner has no idea about a potential of surplus and unless they or somebody they know have been through something like this, they may have no knowledge that there are surplus funds owed to them from the foreclosure sale.