The tool finds King George County property owners who have a problem they can't easily fix on their own. This guide explains each tab in plain English, with a real case for each, what to check before you call, and what to say.
People sell a house for cash because something happened. Someone died and the house is still in their name. The taxes stopped being paid. Four cousins inherited a lot none of them wants. The house has sat empty for years. Each tab finds one of those situations in public records, so you can reach the owner or the heirs with a real answer. The tool is built property-first: it reads every parcel in the county every night and asks what is wrong with it.
data/obits/manual.csv and is matched the same night.Every lead says verify before contact for that reason.
Sales that left money owed to the person who lost the property, and sales that have not happened yet where the owner still has equity.
Strong: the price clears the high end of the estimated payoff by $25,000 and by 30%. Possible: $10,000 over the middle, or thin evidence. Unconfirmed: known only from a deed note; behind the "Deed-scan candidates" box. Not rated: a sale in a neighbouring county, where there is no parcel data to measure equity.
Nobody publishes that. The panel gives a verdict by the age of the sale and tells you who to ask. When one of you has checked, set the status to Verified – money still unclaimed or Already paid out – dead so the other does not check it again.
The county's record shows a special commissioner's deed "on behalf of" the former owner, a price of $165,000, and about $1,466 of taxes on the county's delinquent list. Her tax bill went to an address in Arlington. If the price is right, well over $150,000 is sitting with the Clerk in her name, and the clock runs out two years after confirmation.
Pointing a former owner to the Clerk is free and safe. Anything beyond that, such as a fee, an assignment of the surplus, or filing for them, goes to a Virginia attorney before you offer it. Filing a court petition for someone else without a license is a crime in Virginia, and an up-front fee from a homeowner in foreclosure is a prohibited practice. The lead's own panel lists the sections.
Only two trustee firms publish a sale list that their terms let a program read. The newspaper notices and most firms' lists forbid it. When you see a King George sale in the paper or on another firm's list, type it into data/surplus/notices.csv with the loan amount from the notice, and it joins the board the same morning.
Owners with more than one thing wrong at once. One row per owner, with every signal side by side: a death, unpaid taxes, how the title reads, and what the assessor wrote about the house. An owner also shows here alone when the assessor notes a house as unsafe, abandoned, burned, unlivable or vacant.
One signal can be a mistake or already handled. Two that agree rarely are. A death plus unpaid taxes means nobody has taken charge of the property.
Title reads "Swenson Helen L Estate". The bill goes to Minneapolis. The Treasurer shows $8,516 unpaid going back to June 2002, on a half-acre lot assessed at $80,000. Two signals: an estate nobody closed, and taxes nobody pays.
King George County does not publish code violations, unsafe-structure orders or liens. The Condition signal comes from the assessor's field notes, which is the nearest free record. A request you can send the county for the real list is in the repo at docs/code-enforcement-request.md.
Parcels where the name on title tells you ownership is unresolved: an estate, "heirs of", a life estate, "et al", or a will reference. No death record is needed. The county is telling you directly.
"Harvey Willie Estate", deed book 46 page 34, last transfer 1935, assessed at $577,150. The bill goes care of a relative at a different King George address. Ninety-one years of heirs, none on record.
"DB 46 PG 34" is a deed book and page. "Instr. 216 of 2023" is an instrument number; the Clerk stopped using books about 2006. Type either into the Clerk's land-records search by hand. "Undated (old deed book)" means the county has no sale date and the deed is in one of its oldest books.
People with a published obituary who are still the owner of record today. Every name on a title is checked separately, so "A OR B" finds a death of either one.
The death is a fact. Whether the person who died is the person on title is a judgment from name, middle initial, town and dates. High means several of those agree. Medium means check before you do anything. Open the row to see why it matched. Matches on name alone are never shown.
"Died 2+ years ago, title unchanged" is the one. Nobody filed anything, and nobody else is looking.
Dorothy E. Stevens of King George died August 12, 2019. The house has been in her name alone since 1980 and still is, seven years later. Assessed at $272,200. Taxes were current when checked.
Recent deaths (the last few months) are on this tab too. Wait, write before you call, and never open with what you know about the death. If a Medium match turns out to be a different person, you have just told a stranger their relative died.
Owners with a prior year's taxes unpaid. Each row shows the amount past due, how many half-year payments are behind (bills are due each June and December), and the date it has been unpaid since. Owners who are only late on the current bill are not shown.
When the Treasurer's name on the bill is not the owner the county map shows, one office knows something the other doesn't. Look at both.
A husband and wife took title in 1972. The bill is mailed to a rural route in Boerne, Texas. $17,855 is past due across 49 payments on a lot assessed at $80,000. No obituary, no estate on title. This is what an unreported death looks like in county data.
Balances can be paid any day. Before you call, look the parcel up on the Treasurer's Real Estate Public Inquiry. Do not tell an owner a sale is scheduled unless a banner at the top of the dashboard shows a King George auction.
Not a lead list. Type a name, a street or a PIN and see every parcel that matches. Use it when you hear a name somewhere else (an obituary in another paper, a court notice, a neighbor) and want to know what that person owns in the county. The PIN links to the county's property card.
Choose Westmoreland in the box under the title. Title Leads, Death Leads, Delinquent, Stacked Distress and Parcel Lookup all work the same way. Notes and statuses are kept apart from King George's.
Westmoreland's public parcel record has the owner, the mailing address and the deed book and page, and nothing else. No assessed value, no sale date or price, no assessor notes. So:
Not from a parcel-by-parcel check. Westmoreland's Treasurer publishes the whole delinquent list as one document, and the tool reads it every Monday. The line above the table says which list the numbers are from.
The county posts a one-year list (tax year 2025). The older years on a parcel come from the full list the Treasurer sent in February 2026, so those may have been paid since. A parcel that is not on the newest list has paid and is dropped.
When the Treasurer sends a newer full list, send it over and it is added the same day.
The list is weeks old by the time you read it. Westmoreland's Treasurer's office will tell you the current balance on a map number.
Fauquier's parcel record says what kind of document last moved the title. That gives three lead types the other counties cannot show this cleanly:
It also has sale date, sale price and assessed values, so title age and equity work here.
Fauquier publishes nothing about unpaid taxes. The Delinquent tab shows only the parcels from the 2025 list you supplied, with the amount due then. It is not re-checked. Treat every one as possibly paid until the Treasurer's office confirms it.
Local funeral homes block automated reading, so recent deaths are not matched automatically here. Deaths come from federal records through 2007, and from anything you add to data/obits/manual.csv.
A foreclosure sale listed in Fauquier shows on the Surplus Funds tab with an equity range, because the parcel record has the owner's purchase price.
Public agency records about a property, attached to the parcel and shown on every tab: 🔥 FIRE, 🏚 VACANT / DERELICT, 🏛 SPOT BLIGHT, ⚠ CODE CASE, ⚠ NUISANCE, 🧱 DEMO PERMIT, ⚠ REPEAT CODE CASES, and ⚡ STACKED when two or more kinds land on one owner. Only open records add points. Use the header filter (Distress signal, Fire-damaged, Stacked, Repeat code cases) on any tab, or the Stacked Distress tab's "Signal + deceased owner" and "Signal + tax delinquent" buttons.
None of the three counties publishes a code-enforcement case list. The FOIA letters asking for one are written and ready in docs/foia-requests.md; they must go from a Virginia resident or business, and the county has five working days to answer. When a response arrives, the rows go in data/distress/manual.csv and match the next morning.
A record is not a condition. An open case means the agency has a file. A closed or old record says nothing about the house today. Every lead's panel shows the date, status, whether an inspector confirmed it or it is still a complaint, and whether the match to the parcel was exact.
A 💧 on a lead means one of its parcels reaches the water. The tool measures this from the map: the county's own lot lines against the Census Bureau's map of rivers, creeks, bays and lakes. The tag names the water and gives a rough shoreline length.
waterfront potomac or waterfront nomini to list every parcel on that water, lead or not.It means the lot line reaches the water's mapped edge. It does not see marsh between the lot and open water, a high bank, or whether a pier is allowed. Small creeks the Census does not draw are missed, and ponds under two acres are ignored. Look at the aerial before you price it.
Nothing needs starting by hand. The "Runs" button at the top right shows each run on GitHub.
Four sources forbid automated access, so the tool takes what you look up by hand. Each is a small file in the repo on GitHub: open it, click the pencil, add a line, commit. The board rebuilds within minutes.
| File | What goes in it | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| data/obits/manual.csv | A death you found anywhere: last, first, middle, date, age, town. | Matched against every owner like any obituary. |
| data/obits/legacy.json | Obituaries from another source, in the format shown in the README. | Same. |
| data/heirs/import.csv | A List of Heirs or heirship affidavit from the Clerk's index: decedent, date, book, page, heirs. | The heirs appear on the matched lead. |
| data/scc/status.csv | A company's status from the State Corporation Commission. data/scc/worklist.csv lists which to look up first. | Inactive companies still on title become X1 leads. |
| data/sales/parcels.csv | Tax map numbers from a King George tax-sale list. | Those parcels are flagged with the sale date. |
The county sues in circuit court, a special commissioner auctions the property, and the buyer gets a deed. This is not Maryland: there is no lien certificate and no investor to buy out.
Taxes must be unpaid on December 31 after the second anniversary of the due date. One year for condemned or blighted property. The county must mail a 30-day notice and publish first.
The owner or heirs can pay everything off only before the sale date. Your window is from the first notice to the day before the auction.
The Treasurer may suspend a sale on a plan of up to 72 months. An owner who says "I'm on a plan" may be right.
Sale money above taxes, costs and liens goes to the former owner or heirs. Unclaimed after two years from confirmation, it goes to the county. Talk to a Virginia lawyer before offering to recover surplus for a fee.
It is recorded in the will book when someone qualifies as executor or administrator, or probates a will. No filing, no list, and the heirs take by law. Those are the deals nobody else finds.
The Code sections behind each rule are in docs/virginia-law.md in the repo. None of this is legal advice.