LOLBe careful ... if he sets up notifications for that he might accidentally create an infinite loop that could cause a rift in the space-time continuum and unravel the very fabric of the universe.

This will give you time to get it all unraveled and if the deal goes sideways you can have very little cash in it.

I have contacted ALL these companies and no one seems to hold the lien on this house.How can I unravel this mess and figure out who indeed owns the home, and then get someone to take responsiblity for the upkeep and subsequent sale of the home?

If you used a corporate entity to purchase the property then that entity would have to do the exchange and the unravelling of the partnership becomes a little more  problematic but doable.The other half of your issue is the reinvestment requirements.  

So sometimes they use a buyers broker and sometimes they go direct through their own resources when they are  a professional buyer.If you go direct just DO NOT ask a commercial buyer broker to come in mid deal and have to unravel the mess from mistakes made if you are not seasoned.

From the discussion above it appears from this list http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.htmlThat the FDIC is not merging many of these into the large institutions.I have also been reading lately that the Government has an overall plan to unwind and break apart the too big to fail institutions but that entire process is going to take years due to the complexity of unraveling the securtized portfolio, desecuritizing the MBS', etc .

Some identical looking deals on the glossy presentation level can quickly unravel during closer review of the contractual details and become drastically dissimilar on downside risk ratings.

Simply calling it a spec house starts to unravel that possibility. 

Going to be interesting to see how things unravel here by the end of the decade.

Would definitely be intrigued to hear how this project unravels!