What are my fears?

Fear produces fire sale prices and these are fire sale prices. 

I've never had a tax sale turn out to be void, but it is my biggest fear with Alabama tax sale investing.

Doesn't mean they give terrible advice but I find it often comes from a place of fear or inexperience and discourages action taking rather than encouraging action taking.  

Both are completely legitimate strategies, and there is no reason to avoid these strategies out of fear of an audit.

I bought my first home in 2021, which was quite the roller coaster, and in 2022, I closed on a small piece of vacant land all by myself, despite some fears.

Your feeling FEAR, and understandably so, our media keeps pumping you full of FEAR 24-7 every which way you turn, because fear SELLS. 

Cape Fear (Fay) is tier 3 but am interested in it (Fort Liberty might also be a source of MTR tenants). 

I have always been fearful of failing in real estate, so I found reasons to drag my feet.

More often than not, when people really start digging in to the data, it becomes a rabbit hole and creates fear- you start looking for some random piece of data that will confirm that there is no risk, which of course, does not exist.