Commodities are where dreams of profit go to die. Apartments suffer from the same disease as gravel pits: indistinguishability. Every "luxury" building looks the same—similar paint colors, wood, tile, vinyl flooring, and “resort-style” pools few residents use. Buyers don't gush about your building; they pick it because it's close, cheap, or available. Without distinction or loyalty, you're competing on price alone, and that’s a knife fight in a phone booth. This quote from a great book I read made me think of this... "With this in mind, we began deep diving on brick-and-mortar businesses. Driving around town, noting successful businesses and researching each industry. Heating and ventilation. Bottle depots. Elevator repair. Gravel pits. Even porta potty rental and funeral homes. Without exception, we’d meet the owner and we were shocked by how difficult their businesses were to operate. Hundreds of employees and massive complexity, for a small profit at the end of the year, which often had to be reinvested into fixing equipment or buying a bigger facility and hiring more employees. These businesses, we quickly realized, were not only difficult to run, but they were commodities. They lacked those beloved moats. People don’t say, “I want to buy my gravel from Acme Gravel Pit because they have the finest gravel!” They say, “I want gravel at the cheapest price possible.” It doesn’t matter where it comes from, only that it’s as inexpensive as possible. Not exactly the best business to invest in." Never Enough Andrew Wilkinson