Interestingly, I noticed that you flagged out higher grade assets as a possible exception, did I understand that correctly? 

This subsection applies to all county-held tax certificates and all individual tax certificates except those with an interest rate bid of zero percent."

I government guaranteed loan at a time...except under rare circumstances which your plan will not qualify for.

Tenants pay all utilities except for common area which is about $500 annually.

I have not seen a castle for sale this big except in Europe.

Foreigners are still a relatively small player in most cities in the US (except NYC and some areas in SF and LA) so the domestic buyer remains critical to prevent a potential correction in the US real estate market.

c) any further communication (we all have lives and work...except the tenant-wife apparently)?

I could probably list out skills that I have, except they pertain mostly to repairing the body on cars.

Oh @Christopher Winkler...I really feel sorry for you that you have nothing better to do except spread lies about my note mastermind and Eddie's training.    

There was very little damage, the place is fairly clean, except it needs a new coat of paint, and repainting the baseboards and closet doors, and mopping the floors, and general light cleaning.