The trial judge applied the wrong redemption law - and the appeals court flipped the whole case
An Alabama appeals court reversed a lower court: a former owner cannot redeem property from a buyer who sold it and recorded the deed.
On July 31, 2026, the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals ruled for a buyer who had bought a Huntsville property at a forced sale - reasoning that matters to anyone buying at foreclosure or other court-ordered sales.
Redstone Federal Credit Union won a judgment against a property owner and collected by having the sheriff sell her real estate. At that sale, on June 10, 2024, a buyer paid $4,600 and left the same day with a sheriff's deed.
On July 11, 2024, he sold it to a second buyer for $4,600, who later conveyed it back. Then, on November 13, 2024, he sold it again, this time for $9,200, and recorded that deed the next day.
The former owner surfaced weeks later. On December 20, 2024, she asked the buyer about redeeming the property - her right to buy it back at the sale price. She kept trying for months, got nowhere, and in June 2025 took him to court.
The trial court agreed. It voided the sale to the third buyer, found she had "timely asserted her right of redemption," and gave her 30 days to reclaim the property for $4,600. When the buyer pushed back, the judge leaned on a statute governing redemption of property sold for unpaid taxes.
That was the error, the appeals court said. This was not a tax sale but a sheriff's sale to satisfy a judgment, and the difference matters. A tax-sale buyer gets only a certificate and cannot hold clear title for three years. A sheriff's-sale buyer under a judgment gets a deed that conveys title "as effectually as if" the former owner had sold it herself.
So the buyer owned it the day he bought it, and the November sale was valid.
The outcome followed. In Alabama, a person seeking to redeem can only redeem from whoever currently owns the property. By the time the former owner came calling, the buyer had already sold and recorded the deed, which the law treats as notice to everyone. He no longer held title, so she had nothing to redeem from him.
The court reversed the judgment and sent the case back to the circuit court for further proceedings.
The takeaway for forced-sale buyers is direct. Buy, resell, and record the deed, and a former owner's redemption claim no longer runs against you. It follows the title to the next owner.
