Actually you are in fact pretty wrong, however, he should have laid it out for you.

First, call the court and find out if this ticket would be an in rem (against the property) or in persona (against the person) if its in rem, fuck it, it will be tacked on against the property.

The ticket is going to be against both the person and his property, insofar as it could be collected against any of his property in the county once recorded in the land records, but he will be personally liable as well for the duration of the statute of limitations (15 years for municipal liens in MI?).

I would then contact the treasurer and see if they already foreclosed on it, if not, tell them you abandoned the property and ask if they would take a quitclaim to take the property instead of the cost of foreclosure.

That's not going to happen but there's likely a circuit court search where OP could locate the proceedings against him and see whether a final judgment were ever issued.

In the interest of full disclosure, I work in the foreclosure industry and have dealt with foreclosures in a lot of states, but not in Michigan. And I do understand they have a pretty strange tax sale process and unfortunately I can't speak directly to it.

That said, it's quite possible title is already vested in the Wayne County Treasurer by operation of the law. There are two ways this works--generally, if your property is sold at a tax sale, you'll have something recorded in the land records stating that after thus and such period of time, the creditor will be entitled to a deed vesting title in itself. That's by far the most common way. However, in some jurisdictions the notice will read--much like the one OP received--after thus and such a time "title will vest absolutely" in the creditor. Generally in those cases no deed will be recorded but title will be taken to pass, and frankly, the county/municipal authorities lag substantially in their recognition of the precise ownership of properties in most states that aren't Ohio. So it's more than possible they're wrong about who owns the place.

Sorry I can't give OP anything directly on point, but contrary to most of the other posters here, I think he needs to determine with precision whether he in fact did have title to the property at the time the lien was recorded.