Validating a idea before building — small landlord software, would love brutal feedback

So I've been doing a lot of research for the past couple weeks on a problem that seems pretty common but weirdly underserved. Quick background — I started looking into the landlord software space and what I found was kind of surprising. The free tools that exist (Innago, TurboTenant, Avail) are decent but pretty passive — you still have to do everything manually, set your own reminders, track maintenance through texts, hope you remember lease renewals are coming up. The paid options start at $100+/month and are honestly built for property management companies not someone who owns 3-5 units on the side. The gap I kept seeing was the landlord with 2-15 units who has a regular job and just wants their rentals to take up less mental space. Not someone trying to build a property empire, just someone who bought a couple units as an investment and doesn't want it to feel like a second job. What I want to build is something more proactive than what exists right now. Instead of you logging in and doing everything yourself the tool would surface what needs your attention — maintenance requests get auto triaged and drafted so you're not writing the same responses over and over, it reminds you about lease renewals 60 days out, flags when an inspection is due, that kind of thing. Less a database you manage more like a second brain for your rentals. Here's where I'm being honest with myself though — free tools exist. That's a real problem for charging money. So I'm genuinely trying to figure out if the AI and proactive angle is different enough that someone would pay $25/month for it or if people are just happy enough with free. If anyone here has gone through something similar — building in a space where free competitors exist — I'd love to know how you thought about it. And if anyone here actually owns rentals and has an opinion on whether this is a real problem or I'm overthinking it, that would help a lot too. Not selling anything, no landing page, nothing built yet. Just trying to figure out if this is worth