You may also have a professional network that can more easily be leveraged.

Ceramic tile typically is much more costly to install, and can fairly easily be cracked or chipped.

After the auction if a bank buys the property back you can always make an offer to them and get a loan... but in these cases the bank will hold out for more money whereas in a short sale situation you can more easily negotiate for a lower price.As an alternative to getting a loan for youself you can offer to buy a house "subject to" the original loan.

Both programs has restrictions but if you carefully do all the calculations can be done easily. 203K loan can be used if the property is not in livable condition. 

You can do this very easily in Lansing. 

@Richard Poitras The tools are in dollars, but I think you could easily convert your final number to Canadian currency. 

when you say things you need to “not like” is very broad in scope— are you stating many investors who do this tactic could easily use the inspection to get out of an offer?

Pros--can be easily automated which frees you up to do other things

They realize they could easily lose it all to expropriation and they're ok with it.

I would probably just use regular drywall, more importantly is type of paint, minimum of satin, preferably semi gloss, flat and eggshell are no good as the mold/mildew grows easily on them.