I personally believe there is no such thing as expensive laminate flooring, that is just my opinion. To try and help answer your questions, 1) Approximately $5.00 a square foot, buy engineered hardwood, guaranteed not to squeak. 2) Ask the contractor. 3) Depends on the product, read the instructions.

We’ve chosen SuperCore, an SPC ( stone polymer composite) flooring for most of our home. We haven’t installed it yet, but I did order a full box, click it together and live on it for a few days in my kitchen. I love it. It has a rustic look with knots and graining and is not slippery. I have a 15 pound cat and he was playing on it with his flying feather toy and there were no scratches from his long claws. SuperCore is sold only online at WeShipFloors.com. You can order from them, and it is shipped to your home. It seems to be very DIY friendly. My husband and I are retired and plan to install ours. If you look at their website, there is some really good info about the stone composite floors and why they are preferable to WPC (wood polymer composite) flooring. The SPC, which has a limestone core, is more dimensionally stable and has better compression strength than the WPC which has a wood fiber core. The SPC is not affected by water. We decided on the SPC because we have several very heavy pieces of furniture, and the SPC will not be damaged by them. You will still need to put floor protectors on chairs and sofas to prevent scratching when moving them and have mats at your doors, but that would be the case with any flooring except maybe porcelain tile which is super hard and very hard on your feet, legs and back. When you go to their website, read SuperCORE 101. It has some good info. There is also a very long thread here on Houzz that has good info on SuperCORE —-Adura Max versus Coretec. It has some good photos of installs and reviews by actual homeowners. Good luck in your search. I’ve been looking at flooring for 14 months and am so happy I found the SuperCore.

#1....Good luck with LVP in a condo. #2. I hope you have a second option other than LVP As you have just discovered, LVP is HORRIBLY difficult to get into a condo. The reason: it does NOT LIKE underlayment/underpad. The attached underpad is 'nothing' in the acoustic world. The only product that has a hope in H3LL to get anything close to 'decent' numbers = mass loaded vinyl (MSV) underpad specifically designed for LVP. It cannot be anything thicker than 2mm. This is hard to find. You will often find 1.2mm - 1.5mm. If you can find the 2mm stuff it will be quite expensive. The QuietWalk is 1.4mm. And then you have to convince the condo board that what YOU want is going to meet THEIR requirements. You need to KNOW the type of building construction it is. Then you have to find out what the condo board WANTS TO SEE (STC/IIC/Delta IIC). If your condo is currently 70% carpet, you will most likely need to provide documents that PROVE your choice of LVP (withOUT underpad) plus QuietWalk underlayment MEETS or EXCEEDS the requirements by the HOA or condo board. I used to sell cork flooring and cork underlay and use to help clients and condo boards SET requirements that were REALISTIC for their situation. Vinyl RARELY made it into 'up-down' apartment buildings. Especially if they were wood construction.

I've said all along that a VERY GOOD laminate (8mm - 12mm WITHOUT underpad) will out perform a medium grade LVP. I like using 6mm cork underlayment for sound and heat. As a former cork flooring sales person, I've done laminate + cork many many times. A 6mm cork underlay underneath a HORRIBLE laminate ($0.79/sf...as an example) feels VERY solid underfoot. So long as you do NOT need it in a kitchen or bath, there is no reason to use LVP throughout. No reason at all (other than you can tell your friends you used it).