As you can guess, this is an imperfect method for reducing shower times.

To illustrate, there was a time where I had the opportunity to get braces for FREE, and I convinced myself that braces would be too embarassing and so I was better off just hiding my imperfect smile.

Essentially, the owner has an imperfect credit score, but stable income.

I paint all my units ceiling and walls with white satin paint b/c its wipe-able yet  dont show as many imperfections.

Any imperfections will show up after painting.

An advantage of it is that I could fill the imperfections of the wooden floor (and there were tons of them).

Don't worry so much about little imperfections in that room. you will be keeping an original architectural detail of the home. buyers love wood floors. refinish in that room will cost same as cheap laminate.    

Sounds like "Imperfection" to me.  

This is what I would do, as well as others who have offered advice on this.If you're determined to go through with the knockdown texture, you won't have to work quite as hard smoothing the walls, as imperfections will be hidden by the texturing.

Go for it Arnie, you never know what you might find.This deal may have something fishy, however, investor behavior and psychology is imperfect, and lots of valuable deals pass by because of some of the reasons that you mentioned.