Comp Set, Market and Submarket

Three words for “the competition,” at three different zoom levels. Owners routinely use the wrong one, and it is always the one that makes them feel better.

Market — useful for direction, dangerous for underwriting

Market data is what projection tools sell you. “Orlando STR average ADR: $218.” That number blends a $95 studio condo with a $900 twelve-bedroom party house.

Submarket — where the rules actually live

This is the level that matters, because it is where the rules, the amenity fees and the guest expectations are set. Windsor Hills and Storey Lake are the same “market” on any spreadsheet and price materially differently, because the amenity sets and the drive time to the parks are not the same.

Two communities four miles apart can differ by twenty points of occupancy. Nothing in a market-level report will ever tell you that.

Still with me? Then here is the one that actually decides your price.

Comp set — the listings you are really losing to

A guest searching for your dates does not see Orlando. They see a filtered list: four bedrooms, sleeps ten, private pool, inside a gate they have already chosen. Your comp set is whatever comes back from that search.

For a 4-bedroom ChampionsGate pool home, that is the twenty to forty other 4-bedroom pool homes inside that gate. Not the 4-bedrooms in Winter Garden. Not the 6-bedroom down the street, which shows up in a different search entirely.

Owners build comp sets that flatter them — the tired listing with bad photos, the one priced $80 too high. Your real comp set is smaller, cheaper and better-looking than you would like.

How to build an honest one

• Search the platform as a guest, for your own dates, with your own filters. That list is the answer. Not a tool’s list — the actual results.
• Take the first fifteen results. Note their nightly rate, their review count and their photo quality.
• Be honest about where you sit. If twelve of them have better photos than you, that is your problem and no pricing strategy will fix it.
• Redo it quarterly. New listings arrive, and the gate that had eighteen competitors in January has twenty-nine by June.

The filter trap

There is no single ranking. You can be first for a six-guest week in March and invisible for a two-guest weekend in September, and that is usually a minimum-stay or a filter problem rather than a price problem.

Also defined: Listing Rank