Unfortunately, location drives price and if you pay the premium for location because you want to live in a desirable location you can't necessarily add granite and tile and new this and new that without making a marginal return head negative.  

@Todd Rasmussen also there was wood rotten on some of the fascia boards House Built in 1955 Tile flooring throughout.

Samsung appliances, tile backsplash, granite, and a gorgeous island.

I buy all the materials, he does all the work.Right now I'm getting a house fixed up, which includes ripping up carpet in 3 bedrooms and replacing it with laminate, removing the flooring from a kitchen and hallway and replacing it with ceramic tile, ripping out old cabinets in a kitchen and putting in new ones, installing a new vanity, toilet, and bathtub in a bathroom, putting in a garage door opener, replacing the flooring in another bathroom with ceramic tile and also replacing most of the sheetrock in that bathroom, installing a couple new doors, putting in a new gas oven, and few other little tasks.  

I use a Rumba at home.The lower priced units are louder (whistling noise), and may not have as good of a guidance code as the higher priced units, making them run longer over the same space.The make quiet ones with better guidance systems (extra cost).The ones that do not empty their own trash, will just shut down and sit there, verbally telling you the bin is full.If they get caught up on the edge of a rug, or a sheet hanging down from the bed, they are disabled until a human comes and rescues them.Some do carpets, some do tile floors, some do both.Mission critical cleaning with no human present, seems like it has some risk.Co-cleaning with someone present seems like it works better, due to having someone to rescue it from the dreaded sheet edge hanging off the bed, or the T-shirt on the floor getting stuck in a wheel--and then it's Rumba Code xxxxxx Please Fix Me...For home use, it works great, and the whistle is less loud than a commercial vacuum cleaner.If your lifestyle is more on the messy side, with clutter all over, this is probably not a solution, because it needs to access the floor and cannot move things.For convenience (they dock to charge and memorize where they are at) have one on each floor.Just my 2 cents.

It was a relatively smooth start, but the homes seem to have major repairs (Such as drainage issue, kitchen tiling etc).

The best way to hold tile to real estate is in a "disregarded entity."  

No way you can see things like copper pipe tied into cast iron, asbestos tile or asbestos wrapped piping in the basement, lead paint, and many other issues that can cost thousands.

You can also do stick-up acoustic ceiling tiles, and you can also do dropped acoustic ceilings on a grid.4.

And wants to use smaller tiles...not the 12x12 porcelain I wanted.