The notice statute says one thing and the county's practice says another

Reading a state's tax foreclosure chapter next to the county treasurer's own procedure sheet and they don't line up on who gets served. The statute lists record owner, mortgagees of record, and anyone with an interest appearing in the record. The county's sheet describes mailing to the address on the tax roll and publishing. Those are not the same population, and whether the county's narrower practice satisfies the statute is a question for a lawyer in that state, not something I can settle by reading.

What I care about as a certificate holder is who carries the consequence. In some states the county's notice work is what ripens my certificate into a deed and defects in it are the county's problem. In others the certificate holder does the noticing, or has to prove the county's was adequate, and a due process challenge years later lands on my title.

So here's the split I keep hitting. Do you treat the county's stated procedure as sufficient because they do this hundreds of times a year and their process has survived challenges, or do you do your own record search and your own supplemental mailings on every certificate you intend to foreclose, at real cost, on the theory that a title you can insure later is worth more than the interest you gave up.

The cost side isn't trivial. A title search plus certified mailings ran me a few hundred per parcel the last time I did it properly, and that eats a lot of statutory interest on a $1,400 certificate. All of this varies by state, which is most of the reason the question stays open.