Nassau County carries tens of thousands of parcels with unpaid property taxes at any given time. Unlike most of New York, Nassau does not wait for a tax-deed foreclosure — each February the County holds an annual tax-lien sale, selling the liens on delinquent parcels to third parties. The owner keeps the property but now owes the lienholder, with interest, and can lose title if the lien is not redeemed. That makes the arrears list Nassau's earliest public signal of financial distress on a property.
This report presents the picture as a public reference — the town-by-town breakdown, the share of liens that have already sold, and a brief look at what the numbers mean for owners, investors, and local government.
The typical delinquent parcel owes a modest amount — the median is $6,380, and 78% of parcels owe under $20,000. Across all 71,319 parcels the unpaid taxes sum to roughly $1.40B, but that total is concentrated in a small number of large commercial parcels — a handful of shopping centers and office properties each carry seven-figure balances — so the county-wide dollar figure reads much larger than the everyday homeowner picture. The parcel count and the median above are the honest measures of how widespread the distress is.
Town-by-town breakdown
Nassau's arrears are not evenly distributed. The Town of Hempstead, by virtue of its residential parcel scale, carries the largest share by both parcel count and total dollars owed. The table is sortable, so each reader can rank by the slice they care about.
| Town | Parcels | Total arrears ↓ | Avg / parcel | Liens sold |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hempstead | 38,527 | $709.1M | $18,406 | 33,114 |
| Oyster Bay | 12,801 | $290.4M | $22,687 | 11,093 |
| North Hempstead | 8,828 | $219.5M | $24,867 | 7,643 |
| Long Beach | 1,993 | $23.9M | $12,013 | 1,788 |
| Glen Cove | 1,224 | $4.1M | $3,363 | 1,135 |
Figures reflect the most recent unpaid-tax records across 71,319 delinquent parcels — 59,360 liens have since been redeemed and 3,850 remain open. A small share of parcels are not yet mapped to a town and are excluded from the table but included in county totals.
How Nassau's tax-lien system works
When a Nassau property owner falls behind on taxes, the parcel lands on the County's unpaid-tax list. Each February the County sells the liens on those parcels at its annual lien sale. Most owners redeem — they pay the lienholder back, with statutory interest, and clear the lien. A minority do not; an unredeemed lien can, over a period of years, ripen into a deed and a loss of the property. The full step-by-step progression lives in our Nassau foreclosure guide.
Why arrears matter
Property-tax arrears are the earliest publicly visible sign of financial pressure on a parcel — visible well before a lis pendens or a court filing. For investors, the per-town distribution is a map of where motivated sellers tend to appear over the following one to three years. For local government, it is a leading indicator that helps prioritize tax-assistance outreach and budget planning. For journalists and researchers, it is one of the most concrete public measures of financial distress in the Nassau housing market.
Coverage and scope
The report covers the towns and cities of Nassau County — Hempstead, North Hempstead, and Oyster Bay, plus the cities of Long Beach and Glen Cove. Figures are drawn from the County's published unpaid-tax records and lien-sale results. For the current parcel-level view of Nassau's tax-delinquent inventory, see the tax-delinquent homes index, or browse the live distressed-property feed.