Arkansas Pays for Improvements Through an 1883 Betterment Statute, Not the Tax Code

Every other state in this series answers this question somewhere in its tax statutes. Arkansas does not answer it there at all. Title 26 gives a purchaser a limited warranty deed from the Commissioner of State Lands and ninety days during which the conveyance can be attacked; it says nothing about what happens to money spent on the building. The protection exists, but it is in Title 18, it dates from 1883, and it is not a reimbursement scheme. It is a defence to eviction.

Redemption Happens Before the Sale

Arkansas routes tax-delinquent land through the Commissioner of State Lands. Under A.C.A. § 26-37-301(a)(1), after receiving the land the Commissioner "shall notify the owner, at the owner's last known address as certified by the county, by certified mail, of the owner's right to redeem by paying all taxes, penalties, interest, and costs, including the cost of the notice."

The section builds in a notice ladder. All interested parties identified by the Commissioner are sent notice of the sale by certified mail. If certified mail comes back unclaimed or refused, the Commissioner mails by regular mail. If it is returned undelivered for any other reason, a second notice goes to any additional address "reasonably identifiable through the examination of the real property records properly filed and recorded" in the county.

All of that precedes the sale. The owner's statutory redemption is exercised against the Commissioner, not against a purchaser, and it pays taxes, penalties, interest and costs - never anyone's expenditure on the building.

Ninety Days, Then the Deed Is Settled

A.C.A. § 26-37-203(a): "If the tax-delinquent land is sold, the Commissioner of State Lands shall convey the tax-delinquent land by issuing a limited warranty deed to the land." Limited warranty, not general - the Commissioner warrants against their own acts, not against the world.

Then the window. Subsection (b)(1): except as provided in (b)(2), "an action to contest the validity of a conveyance under this section or a negotiated-price sale under § 26-37-202 is barred if not commenced within ninety (90) days after the date of the conveyance." Ninety days from conveyance - against Oklahoma's twelve months and Texas's two-year redemption, this is the fastest route to a settled position in the footprint.

Two things keep it from being absolute. Subsection (b)(2) extends the period for a person suffering a mental incapacity, a minor, or a person serving in the United States Armed Forces during time of war during the ninety days, each of whom has two years after the disability ends, majority is reached, or active duty during time of war concludes. And subsection (d) preserves a standing ground of attack: nothing in the section "prevent[s] a taxpayer from contesting the validity of a deed issued by the Commissioner of State Lands on the ground that taxes have actually been paid."

Running the other way, subsection (c) is a substantial comfort: "A deed issued after January 1, 1987, by the Commissioner of State Lands is not void or voidable on the ground that the county did not strictly comply with the laws governing tax-delinquent land." County procedural error, by itself, does not unwind the deed. The section carries amendments through Acts 2021, No. 447.

The 1883 Statute That Actually Pays

Because there is no redemption, there is no redemption price to load costs into. What Arkansas provides instead sits in Title 18, Chapter 60, among the ejectment and trespass provisions, and it is called recovery for improvements and taxes paid on land of another.

A.C.A. § 18-60-213(a): "If any person believing himself or herself to be the owner, either in law or equity, under color of title has peaceably improved, or shall peaceably improve, any land which upon judicial investigation shall be decided to belong to another, the value of the improvement made as stated and the amount of all taxes which may have been paid on the land by the person, and those under whom he or she claims, shall be paid by the successful party to the occupant, or the person under whom, or from whom, he or she entered and holds, before the court rendering judgment in the proceedings shall cause possession to be delivered to the successful party."

Four conditions are built into that sentence, and each is evidentiary. The improver must have believed themselves the owner. That belief must rest on colour of title - which a Commissioner's limited warranty deed supplies. The improvement must have been peaceable. And the land must afterwards be adjudged to belong to someone else, because the statute only operates when the purchaser loses.

The Remedy Is Possession, Not a Cheque

What makes § 18-60-213 powerful is the mechanism rather than the measure. Subsection (b)(1) requires the court or jury trying the case to assess the value of the improvements in the same action in which title is adjudicated - no separate suit. Subsection (b)(2) requires the damages from waste and any mesne profits allowed by law to be assessed in that action too.

Then subsection (c)(1): where the value of the improvements and the taxes paid exceeds the damages and mesne profits combined, the court "shall enter an order as a part of the final judgment providing that no writ shall issue for the possession of the lands in favor of the successful party until payment has been made to the occupant of the balance due him or her for the improvements and the taxes paid."

The winner of the title fight does not get the keys until they pay. And subsection (c)(2) backs it with security: "This amount shall be a lien on the lands, which may be enforced by equitable proceedings at any time within three (3) years after the date of the judgment."

Two setoffs cut the other way. Subsection (d) allows no account of mesne profits "unless they shall have accrued within three (3) years prior to the commencement of the suit." And subsection (e) lets the court allow the owner, as a setoff against the value of improvements and taxes, "the value of all rents accruing after the date of the judgment" - so a purchaser who keeps the property let while the lien is enforced sees the balance eroded.

The statute's history line is Acts 1883, No. 69, §§ 1-4, p. 106, carried through the digests into the current code without substantive change. It predates the tax sale machinery it now backstops by a century.

Why That Changes How You Document

In Texas the question a purchaser must be able to answer is how much was spent, itemised within ten days. In Alabama it is what the preservation improvements were worth, defended to a referee. In Arkansas it is something different: whether you believed yourself the owner, held colour of title, and improved peaceably - and then what the improvements were worth, assessed by the court or jury in the title action itself.

Belief and peaceableness are proved by conduct and records, not by invoices. A recorded limited warranty deed from the Commissioner, condition photographs from the first visit, a documented sequence of work with dates, and an absence of disputed or forced entry are what make the § 18-60-213 claim straightforward rather than contested. The invoices establish value; the record establishes standing to claim it at all.

It is also worth being plain that the statute only pays when you lose. A purchaser whose deed survives the ninety days and is never successfully attacked has no betterment claim and needs none - the property is theirs and the spending is ordinary ownership. The betterment statute is insurance against the narrow case, not a reimbursement scheme for the ordinary one.

What This Means If You Do the Work

• There is no post-sale redemption in Arkansas, so there is no redemption price and no itemisation deadline of the Texas kind
• The contest window is ninety days from the date of the conveyance under § 26-37-203(b)(1) - the shortest in the footprint
• County procedural error does not void a post-1987 Commissioner's deed, but a claim that the taxes were actually paid survives regardless
• Minors, persons under mental incapacity and servicemembers in time of war get two years after the disability ends
• If you lose a title fight, § 18-60-213 pays the value of improvements plus all taxes paid - and blocks the writ of possession until it is paid
• That balance is a lien on the land, enforceable in equity within three years of the judgment
• Mesne profits against you are limited to the three years before suit, but post-judgment rents you collect are set off against your claim
• Colour of title, good-faith belief and peaceable improvement are the gateway conditions, so keep the deed, the dated first-visit condition record and a clean sequence of works

For the states that price the work into a redemption, see Texas, where only itemised costs are allowed and Alabama, which defines preservation improvements and pays eight per cent. For the states that pay nothing, see Ohio, which sells a lien rather than a house, Oklahoma, where redemption ends at the auction, Louisiana, which moved to tax lien certificates in 2026 and Pennsylvania, which answers it two opposite ways. Arkansas's other regimes over a building someone else owns are separate: there is no blighted-property receivership, and a city's clean-up lien takes priority only by court order, a personal representative's repair power is permissive and a chapter 7 homestead is capped at $2,500 but never below a quarter acre. Field capability is on our Arkansas page.