Hi Leigh!

You're conflating the successful bid with the receiving of fee simple title.  The winning bid and the title are unrelated from your perspective, except that one generally leads to the other.  Joe Blow held a winning bid but never title.  As Carol observed, you could suggest he holds an interest in property, but that could only create a cause of action against the value of that property right and not one impacting title to this real estate (which, again, Joe Blow never owned). If you're not seeing a deed or court order explicitly vesting title in Joe Blow I'd caution against making an analysis that constructively places him in title, as that is only going to happen very, very rarely (and does not happen in this case).

TL;DR, Robert's answer as to Ohio does also apply here.  If you'd like to discuss it further though I think it's interesting and I can entertain it a bit with some research.