10/13/2026
Nick Arenson never set out to be a homebuilder. He just always built things, Legos, Lincoln Logs, whatever was in reach, and being good at math pointed him toward engineering instead. That path took him to Berkeley, then onto a job site at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel, where he learned something that still shapes every community he designs today, that a building isn’t really about the structure, it’s about how people feel standing inside it.
From there he moved through some of the biggest names in homebuilding, D.R. Horton, Meritage Homes, Century Communities, before 2008 handed him a different kind of lesson. For nearly 3 years he had to keep letting go of people he respected, and watch good people rebuild their lives from nothing. What he saw in them eventually gave him the nerve to make a massive change in his own.
Today Nick co-founded Rurka Homes and runs Mountain House, a major master planned community on the edge of the Bay Area, and he’s spending a lot of his time untangling one of the toughest regulatory environments in the country, California’s entitlement process.
This conversation covers a lot of ground, construction, capital, a trick or two from Disney, and the decision that pulled an entire family out of their routine for a year.
Watch the full episode here:
https://youtu.be/2XIJLsnnizE
