A public auction is an auction

Auction

An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder...

 held on behalf of a government

Government

Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

 in which the property to be auctioned is either property owned by the government, or property which is sold under the authority of a court of law or a government agency with similar authority.

Sale of property owned by the government

Government property sold at public auction may include surplus government equipment, abandoned property over which the government has asserted ownership, property which has passed to the government by escheat

Escheat

Escheat is a common law doctrine which transfers the property of a person who dies without heirs to the crown or state. It serves to ensure that property is not left in limbo without recognised ownership...

, government land, and intangible assets over which the government asserts authority, such as broadcast frequencies

Broadcasting

Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio visual medium. Receiving parties may include the general public or a relatively large subset of thereof...

 sold through a spectrum auction

Spectrum auction

A spectrum auction is a process whereby a government uses an auction system to sell the rights to transmit signals over specific bands of the electromagnetic spectrum and to assign scarce spectrum resources. Depending on the specific auction format used, a spectrum auction can last from a single...

.

Public auctions of government property may be conducted by whichever agency is auctioning the property. Some substantial items have been sold at public auction. For example, the United States Navy

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

 cruiser

Cruiser

A cruiser is a type of warship. The term has been in use for several hundreds of years, and has had different meanings throughout this period...

 USS Philadelphia (C-4)

USS Philadelphia (C-4)

The fourth USS Philadelphia , also known as "Cruiser No. 4", was a cruiser of the United States Navy.She was laid down 22 March 1888 by William Cramp and Sons, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, launched 7 September 1889, sponsored by Miss Minnie Wanamaker, daughter of merchant and philanthropist John...

 was sold at such an auction at the Puget Sound Navy Yard in 1927.

Sale of private property in a public auction

Private property may be sold in a public auction for a number of reasons. It may be seized through a governmental process to satisfy a judgment rendered by a court or agency, or to liquidate a mortgage foreclosure, tax lien

Tax lien

A tax lien is a lien imposed by law upon a property to secure the payment of taxes. A tax lien may be imposed for delinquent taxes owed on real property or personal property, or as a result of failure to pay income taxes or other taxes....

, or tax sale

Tax sale

A tax sale refers to property being sold by a taxing authority or the court to recover delinquent taxes. In the tax sale arena, the taxing jurisdiction is usually the county .Two main methods are used by...

. Usually, prices obtained at a public auction to satisfy a judgment are distressed - that is, they are much lower than the price which would be obtained for that property if the seller were free to hold out for an optimal time to sell. In the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, public auctions to satisfy judgments are usually conducted under the authority of the sheriff

Sheriff

A sheriff is in principle a legal official with responsibility for a county. In practice, the specific combination of legal, political, and ceremonial duties of a sheriff varies greatly from country to country....

 of the county or city in which the property to be auctioned was seized pursuant to the judgment, and an auction held for such a purpose is also called a Sheriff's sale.

Real property

Real property

In English Common Law, real property, real estate, realty, or immovable property is any subset of land that has been legally defined and the improvements to it made by human efforts: any buildings, machinery, wells, dams, ponds, mines, canals, roads, various property rights, and so forth...

 may be subject to a public auction in order to partition

Partition (law)

A partition is a term used in the law of real property to describe an act, by a court order or otherwise, to divide up a concurrent estate into separate portions representing the proportionate interests of the tenants. Under the common law, any tenant who owns an undivided concurrent interest in...

 the property between joint tenants

Concurrent estate

A concurrent estate or co-tenancy is a concept in property law which describes the various ways in which property is owned by more than one person at a time. If more than one person own the same property, they are referred to as co-owners, co-tenants or joint tenants...

 who can not agree as to how the property should be divided. An estate sale

Estate sale

An estate sale or estate liquidation is a sale or auction to dispose of a substantial portion of the materials owned by a person who is recently deceased or who must dispose of his personal property to facilitate a move.-Reasons for an estate sale:...

 conducted at the direction of a probate court may also be conducted as a public auction.