Residential real estate is decidedly unprestigious, a business that hurts people-- just look at what house prices and rents have done over the past 20 years-- and the major benefit of working in it, as the OP argues, is that it lacks hard technical problems. There will still be hard problems to solve, but they'll be people problems: dealing with incompetent but powerful management companies, blowback from very rich entrenched interests, etc.
Smart competition isn't that scary. I'd rather have smart competitors and learn a lot even if I lose, than work in a world where stupid people have all the power. If you go into the dark recesses of residential real estate, you'll find that it's not smart-people-friendly. Residential RE might be one area where average-to-stupid people have an edge, because they're closer to the animalistic instincts (i.e. the 86th floor being twice as valuable than the functionally equivalent 85th because it's "the top") that drive it.
It might be attractive to business co-founders looking to build something boring and flip it, but it's not going to get class-A technical co-founders.
This space has the lack-of-upside that would cause VCs to deride it as a "lifestyle business", but because of all the un-fun shit that humans throw up when it comes to land and housing (people get really ugly when that stuff is at stake) it wouldn't have the subjective benefits.
Smart competition isn't that scary. I'd rather have smart competitors and learn a lot even if I lose, than work in a world where stupid people have all the power. If you go into the dark recesses of residential real estate, you'll find that it's not smart-people-friendly. Residential RE might be one area where average-to-stupid people have an edge, because they're closer to the animalistic instincts (i.e. the 86th floor being twice as valuable than the functionally equivalent 85th because it's "the top") that drive it.
It might be attractive to business co-founders looking to build something boring and flip it, but it's not going to get class-A technical co-founders.
This space has the lack-of-upside that would cause VCs to deride it as a "lifestyle business", but because of all the un-fun shit that humans throw up when it comes to land and housing (people get really ugly when that stuff is at stake) it wouldn't have the subjective benefits.