That means real estate held for investment purposes must be exchanged for real estate held for investment purposes.

DSCR is a business loan and the property can be held / closed within an LLC. 

What would happen if you held onto this property for another 10 - 15 years?

The seller benefits from the spread between the interest rates of the old and new loans.Agreement: Ensure a clear agreement on who will be responsible for the existing mortgage payments and how any arrears or defaults will be handled.Seller Second Mortgage:Structure: The buyer gets a new first mortgage to pay off the existing loan and a second mortgage held by the seller for the remaining balance.Consideration: This may require refinancing the existing loan, which can be costly and may change the loan terms.I hope this helped.

Not only was the security deposit 'owner held', but January rent was sent as well. 

The title company that is located in the building were the foreclosures are held ( they are actually held in the parking lot of said building.)

Minimum distributions from any IRA are hard to do with non-liquid assets like a real estate investment held in a self-directed IRA.

Also, if you and your husband contribute the exchange property into an entity that is considered disregarded for income tax purposes so that it would still be considered as held by you and your husband, then the timing would not matter at all. 

If a property was sold at auction 2012, then again in 2016, and the tax cert is still held by the state, would that be eligible for a counter offer?

The money that is being held that you say is "refundable" won't be because you can't defer the capital gain on the 15% of gross that is being withheld because those funds are unavailable to be included in the next transaction within the timeframe required by the 1031 exchange. 121 home sale exclusion is not applicable to foreign owned investment property.