Finding auction dates at the local court: notice board, portal and the faster overview

Anyone looking for a property from a compulsory auction starts with the same question: which hearings does the local court in my city have coming up? The answer is regulated by statute – and still spread across several channels. This guide shows where auction dates are published, how to read an announcement, and how to skip the court-by-court search.

Who publishes auction dates – and where

Compulsory auctions are conducted by the local court (Amtsgericht) acting as enforcement court. Once the hearing date is set, the court must announce it publicly (§ 39 ZVG) – early enough that at least six weeks lie between the announcement and the hearing; otherwise the hearing must be cancelled and rescheduled (§ 43 (1) ZVG). In practice you will encounter three channels:

Channel	Where to find it	What it does
Court notice board	Inside the local court building	The traditional on-site announcement, one court at a time
zvg-portal.de	Select a federal state, then the court	Joint justice portal carrying the announcements of 14 states
Official gazette, newspaper	Varies by court	Supplementary publication, not universal

The most useful tool is zvg-portal.de: most state justice administrations use it as their electronic announcement portal. Two states – Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern – do not publish there; their dates are only available from the respective courts themselves.

What an auction announcement contains

The mandatory content is set by § 37 ZVG. Together with the details courts usually add, an announcement gives you:

• Case number (Aktenzeichen) – the court's file reference, e.g. 42 K 15/2026. The register letter K marks compulsory auction cases. Use it to request documents and to identify the case unambiguously.
• Description of the property – land-register details, location and usually a short description (such as detached house, apartment, plot size).
• Time and place of the hearing – date, time and the courtroom where the auction takes place.
• Market value – the value determined by the court (§ 74a (5) ZVG). It is the reference for the security deposit of ten percent and for the value thresholds at the first hearing – but neither a purchase price nor an offer.
• Call to register rights – addressed to creditors and holders of rights not visible in the land register; for you as a bidder it is a reminder that the land register may not tell the whole story.

The announcement frequently links the market value appraisal. It is your most important source of information before the hearing – how to work through it is covered in inspecting a property before the auction.

How to read the announcement correctly

Three points where beginners regularly stumble:

1. The market value is not a price. It states what the expert considers the property to be worth – not what it will sell for. Only the market value combined with the value thresholds tells you which bids can receive an award at the first hearing.
2. Dates change. Cases are postponed, temporarily stayed or cancelled – at short notice too, for instance when debtor and creditor settle. Check the status again shortly before you set off.
3. The announcement does not replace preparation. What happens at the hearing itself – calling the case, the minimum bid, at least 30 minutes of bidding – is covered in the auction hearing step by step.

Why searching court by court is tedious

Around 410 local courts publish auction dates. On zvg-portal.de you query them state by state: pick a state, pick a court, scan the result list – and start over with the next state. There is no nationwide saved search, no stored filters and no notification when new dates appear. Anyone watching several regions repeats the same query by hand week after week – and still misses hearings that were published and cancelled between two visits.

Every local court in one overview

ZVG Melder ingests the official announcements of all 14 participating federal states every night and bundles them into a searchable property overview. Every local court has its own page with all ongoing cases, hearing dates and market values – for example compulsory auctions at the local court of Cologne. Instead of querying one court after another, you filter by location, property type and price; a saved search notifies you as soon as a relevant hearing is published.

And once you have found a property: the guide compulsory auctions for beginners takes you through the eight steps from the announcement to the award.

Note: General orientation, not legal or financing advice. The official announcement and the information provided by the competent local court are authoritative.

Sources

• § 37 ZVG – content of the hearing announcement
• § 39 ZVG – public announcement of the hearing
• § 43 ZVG – announcement period before the hearing
• § 74a ZVG – determination of the market value
• zvg-portal.de – official auction announcements