There are property management companies who will handle all those tasks. If you are smart, you don't need to worry about a phone call at 3 in the morning from a tenant about an overflow toilet.
Not everyone can become a business person or a property owner. If you know you can't handle it, get a team who can help you. It sounds like you have already given up on the idea of finances or investing. Of course mistakes will be made, that's how people learn, from finances, to property management, to other parts of their professional and personal lives. Not every property will have positive cashflow, that's why you have to educate yourself and do your research before you go into it, like the local economy, jobs moving away/to the area.
I can tell you is that the watch profitability is not a repeatable model. If it's a rare and high quality item, it may have some capital gain. But can you repeat that model by buying a few hundred or thousands of those watches, then one day, you decide to flood the market and sell them? The value of those watches will go down. With real estate cashflow, the model can be repeated. The more properties/units you have, the more money goes into your pocket, and you don't need to wait for decades before you start to get money in your pocket. Some property already have positive cashflow right from when you buy it. But this is not something the average Joe can just do. It takes a lot of education. You can't just buy a property blindly and think it will have a guarantee positive cashflow.
For cashflow properties, I don't care which way the value of my property goes, up or down. If it goes down, that's would be a benefit to me because I'll just pay less in taxes. There's no need to sell the property for capital gain, unless I can get a benefit from doing so, like buying a bigger property that generates more cashflow and help people get more jobs. I haven't even mention all the tax benefits from improving the economy, putting a roof over peoples heads, and creating jobs by doing this.
You aren't the only who says "Your house is an asset.". It's a great place to live in and raise your family, but it's not an asset. An asset has to put money in your pocket. It may be your banks asset, because they are earning interests from it, but to the homeowner, it is a liability. Not only do you have to pay the bank interests on the money borrowed, but you have to pay property tax, maintenances and repairs, utilities, and so on. The only way you can turn that home into an asset is if you start making money from it, like renting it out to tenants.
This is a paradigm shift from the corporate programming. Your definition of an asset is something that has value (and might go up). My definition of an asset is something that puts money in my pocket (every month), no matter what directions the value goes, up, down, or sideways. With a property like rentals, business, hotels, you can increase your profit by improving it, build relationships, create more customers, and so on. With capital gain, you have no control on whether the value will go up or down, like the stock market. All you can do is buy, hold, and hope it will go up. When it comes to investing, hope is a losing strategy.
Your thinking is similar to a typical middle class person: Get a job/profession, buy an house, car, boat, luxury toys. Because those have value and might go up; therefore, it is an asset. You may also have money in the 401K/pension retirement account. There's nothing wrong with that.
I'm not here to insult anybody. I learn a lot from this discussion and how others see things, and I hope other readers learn a lot as well.
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