How to Build a Competitive Set for Your St. Augustine STR
To build a competitive set, pick five to eight rentals that guests would genuinely cross-shop with yours, matching on submarket, bedroom count, amenities, and rate band. At In The Sun VR, we build these sets for St. Augustine, FL homes by scoring candidates, not by guessing.
Key Takeaways
A competitive set (comp set) is a small group of properties your guests would realistically book instead of yours; it is the yardstick for occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR.
Published guidance on set size varies from 3 to 5 up to 5 to 10 properties; for a St. Augustine vacation rental, 5 to 8 works well because submarkets differ so much.
AirDNA reports 56% average STR occupancy and a $288.70 average daily rate in St. Augustine in 2026, which gives you a market-wide baseline but not a true comp set.
Submarket matters more than raw distance: a Vilano Beach pool home and a downtown Historic District Victorian rarely compete for the same guest.
Build separate sets for peak periods such as Nights of Lights and spring break, and review every set at least twice a year.
Score each candidate on a simple 1 to 5 rubric so the set is defensible, not a gut feeling.
If you own a short-term rental here, you have probably asked whether your nightly rate is right. A market average cannot answer that. Your competitive set can, because it compares you against the homes that actually take your bookings.
Most published guides on comp sets are written for hotels. They offer radius rules and rate bands, but they ignore how St. Augustine splits into distinct submarkets and how vacation rentals compete with inns and condos. This guide fills that gap with a repeatable, local process for 2026.
We manage homes across Vilano Beach, Anastasia Island, canal-front streets, and the Historic District. The owners who set rates well share one habit: they know exactly who they are competing with, and they revisit that list on a schedule.
What Is a Competitive Set and Why Does It Matter for a Rental?
A competitive set is a curated group of comparable properties used to benchmark your occupancy, average daily rate (ADR), and revenue per available night (RevPAR). It replaces broad market averages with a peer group, so you judge your performance against homes guests would genuinely choose instead of yours.
Averages hide the truth. AirDNA reports 6,940 St. Augustine short-term rentals in its 2026 dataset, with 56% average occupancy and roughly $35,700 in annual revenue per property. That blend includes studio condos, beachfront estates, and downtown cottages. Comparing a 12-guest pool home to that average tells you almost nothing.
The hotel industry formalized this idea decades ago. STR and CoStar publish comp-set benchmarking reports with monthly occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR for a hotel's chosen peers. Vacation rental owners rarely get that report, so you build the set manually using listing data, calendars, and market tools.
Three decisions depend on a good comp set: your nightly rate floor and ceiling, your amenity investments, and your judgment of whether a manager is performing. Our seasonality breakdown for St. Augustine owners shows why the timing of those decisions matters.
How Do You Build a Competitive Set Step by Step?
Building a competitive set takes six steps: define your own product, map your submarket, gather candidates, screen them, score them, and lock the final set. Plan on roughly two to four hours the first time, and about an hour per review after that.
Step 1: Define your property profile. Write down bedrooms, bathrooms, max guests, signature amenities (pool, hot tub, dock, walkability), pet policy, and your typical rate band. This is your yardstick.
Step 2: Identify your submarket. Choose one: Historic District, Vilano Beach, Anastasia Island and St. Augustine Beach, Crescent Beach, or canal-front. The next section explains how.
Step 3: Gather 15 to 25 candidates. Search Airbnb and Vrbo using your guest count and dates. Note listings that appear next to yours in results; those are your true rivals.
Step 4: Screen by hard filters. Keep homes with similar bedroom count, capacity, and property type. Staying within roughly 20 to 30% of your ADR is a useful starting filter.
Step 5: Score the survivors. Use the rubric in the data section below.
Step 6: Lock the set and record a baseline. Save the final list with listing links, date, and current rates so you can measure change.
Pro tip: search as a guest would. Enter a realistic party size and a stay four to eight weeks out, then record who shows up on the first two pages. Those results show the set the platform itself believes you compete in.
Common mistake: picking only the homes on your own street. Proximity helps, but a home three blocks away with no pool and half your capacity is a different product.
Which St. Augustine Submarket Should Your Competitive Set Come From?
A submarket is a geographic and guest-intent cluster where rentals share a similar appeal. In St. Augustine, the main ones are the downtown Historic District, Vilano Beach, Anastasia Island and St. Augustine Beach, Crescent Beach, and canal-front neighborhoods off the Intracoastal Waterway. Draw your set from your own submarket first.
Guests choose differently in each. Downtown guests book for walkability to St. George Street and coquina-stone landmarks. Vilano Beach guests book for quiet mornings, beach access, and yard space. Canal-front guests want docks and pools. These are different products, priced and marketed differently.
Our own portfolio shows the contrast. Victorian Villa, a six-bedroom restored Victorian that sleeps 12, sits about 0.3 miles from the Historic District, so its set should be walkable downtown homes and inns. Vilano Vista, a three-bedroom for 10 about 0.3 miles from Vilano Beach, competes with beach-walkable yard homes and has little overlap with downtown stays.
Point Break near Crescent Beach shows why a map alone misleads. It sits about 10.1 miles from the Historic District, so its true rivals are Crescent Beach and southern Anastasia Island homes with water gear and fenced yards, not downtown properties.
Submarket | Primary guest draw | Best comp set filters |
Historic District | Walkability to St. George Street, history | Walking distance, parking, historic character, group size |
Vilano Beach | Beach access, space, quiet | Beach walkability, hot tub or pool, fenced yard |
Anastasia Island / St. Augustine Beach | Beach and state park access | Minutes to Anastasia State Park, pool, beach gear |
Crescent Beach | Quiet beach, water sports | Beach path access, kayaks, pet policy |
Canal-front | Docks, pools, boating | Dock, heated pool, capacity, game room |
How Many Properties Should a Competitive Set Include?
A competitive set should usually include five to eight properties. Published sources disagree, with hotel-industry guides ranging from 3 to 5 up to 5 to 10 comparable properties. The right size depends on how many true substitutes exist in your submarket.
Here is how we decide. Fewer than four properties makes the benchmark volatile, because one owner discounting for a week skews your averages. More than ten dilutes the set with homes that only loosely compete. In a dense market like downtown St. Augustine, aim for six to eight. In a thin segment such as events-friendly homes for 12, accept four or five and note the limitation.
Validate size with a simple test. For each candidate, ask whether a guest who viewed your listing would plausibly book that home if yours were unavailable. If the honest answer is yes for at least five homes, you have enough. If you need to stretch the argument to reach five, stop at four.
When Should You Use a Primary and Secondary Set?
Use a primary set for your direct substitutes and a secondary set for seasonal or segment-specific questions. Secondary sets can isolate seasonality or niche audiences, and splitting high-season and low-season competitors keeps comparisons fair. A pet-friendly pool home may add a secondary set of other pet-friendly homes to price its pet policy.
What Factors Decide Whether a Rental Belongs in Your Set?
Five factors decide whether a property belongs in your competitive set: location and submarket, accommodation type, capacity, amenities, and price positioning. Guest reviews and listing quality act as tiebreakers. A property that matches on at least four of the five factors is a strong candidate.
Accommodation type is where hotel guides fall short. A 50 to 90 room hotel may not be directly comparable to a nearby bed and breakfast because travelers seek different experiences. The same logic applies here: a single-family house with a private pool competes with other houses for groups, while a condo or inn serves a different party. Include inns or condos only if your home genuinely competes for the same couples or small-group traveler.
Amenities deserve extra weight in this market. Heated pools, hot tubs, docks, and game rooms drive booking decisions for families. The Salty Air Retreat, a canal-front three-bedroom for 11 with a heated pool, tiki bar, and dock, should be compared with other canal-front homes with pools, not with a plain three-bedroom a block from the beach.
Finally, check rate positioning and demand signals. Compare homes whose nightly rates land near yours across the same dates. St. Johns County drew 2,791,200 visitors in 2026, and 65% of visitors stayed in paid accommodations for an average of 4.3 nights, according to the county's 2026 tourism report. Competition for those nights is real, so rate alignment matters.
How Do You Score and Compare Candidates in a Data Table?
A scoring rubric is a simple 1 to 5 rating applied to every candidate across the same criteria, so the final set rests on evidence. It turns a vague feeling about who competes with you into a number you can defend and revisit.
Hotel revenue teams often score location, amenities, room quality, and reviews, then plot rate against perceived value. For vacation rentals, we adapt that idea with six criteria and weight them to match how guests decide.
Criterion | Weight | How to score 1 to 5 |
Submarket match | 25% | 5 = same submarket; 1 = different guest intent |
Capacity and bedrooms | 20% | 5 = same bedroom count and sleeps within 2 guests of yours |
Signature amenities | 20% | 5 = matches your pool, hot tub, dock, or walkability |
Rate band | 15% | 5 = within about 20% of your ADR on shared dates |
Review quality | 10% | 5 = similar rating and review count |
Listing quality | 10% | 5 = comparable photos, description, and presentation |
Multiply each score by its weight, total them, and keep the highest scorers. The weights are our working guidance, not an industry standard; adjust them to your situation. A downtown owner may raise the submarket weight, while a canal-front owner may raise amenities.
How Do You Benchmark ADR, Occupancy, and RevPAR Against the Set?
RevPAR, or revenue per available night, equals ADR multiplied by occupancy. Record each comp's calendar over a 30 to 90 day window: blocked and booked nights approximate occupancy, and the booked nightly rates approximate ADR. Average the set, then compare your own numbers.
Use the market baseline as a sanity check. AirDNA reports a 56% occupancy, a $288.70 ADR, and about $157.50 RevPAR for St. Augustine in 2026. If your set averages far from those figures, confirm that the set matches your property tier rather than assuming the market is wrong. AirROI data cited in 2026 reporting places the median St. Augustine STR near 44% occupancy and top-quartile homes at 65% or more, so check which tier your set represents.
Occupancy alone misleads. A home booked 80% at a discounted rate can earn less than one booked 65% at a stronger rate, which is why you should read ADR and RevPAR together.
How Do Seasons and Events Change Your Competitive Set?
Seasonality changes who competes with you, because guest type and demand shift through the year. St. Augustine's peak months are typically June, July, and December, while September and October are among the softest. Your set should reflect that rhythm instead of staying frozen.
AirROI data cited in 2026 reporting shows peak months averaging about $5,992 in monthly revenue and 53.2% occupancy, versus roughly $3,357 and 36.1% in low months. That gap means a rate that looks competitive in October may leave money behind in December. The Nights of Lights period, generally mid-November through late January, and spring break, typically mid-March through early April, are recurring demand compressors.
Practical approach: keep one core set and add a calendar-based overlay. During Nights of Lights, add downtown and walkable homes to your watch list even if you are on Anastasia Island, since guests stretching their budget may cross-shop. In shoulder weeks, narrow to homes that still discount and track how deep they go. This calendar-driven process is how our revenue management work at In The Sun VR adjusts rates against local events, lead time, and competitor sets.
Which Tools Help You Find and Monitor Competitors?
Competitor monitoring tools range from free guest-style searches to paid benchmarking platforms. Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking.com, Expedia, and Google Hotel Search show who ranks alongside you, while AirDNA data and revenue management software add historical occupancy and ADR you cannot see from a listing page.
Search filters on Booking.com, Expedia, and Google Hotel Search, such as radius, price, accommodation type, and amenities, reveal how travelers compare lodging. Replicate those filters yourself. Little Hotelier says its Insights tool compares rates for up to ten competitors as far as 90 days ahead, which shows how forward-rate tracking works in practice.
Our opinion: do not pay for a premium tool before you have a scored set. Software fed a bad comp set produces confident but wrong rate recommendations. Build the set manually first, then let tools track it. For hotel-style benchmarking reports, STR and CoStar remain the reference point, though access is geared toward hotels.
How Do You Include Vacation Rentals, Inns, and Condos Together?
Include a non-house alternative only when it competes for your guest's decision. A couple choosing between a historic inn and a downtown cottage is a real overlap. A family of ten is not choosing between your six-bedroom home and a hotel room. Tag each comp as house, condo, or inn, and compare like with like inside the set.
What Are the Most Common Mistakes When Building a Competitive Set?
The most common comp-set mistakes are choosing by distance alone, copying one rival's pricing, including aspirational luxury homes, and never updating the set. Each produces rate decisions that feel data-driven while pointing the wrong way.
Radius-only selection. Choosing only the property across the street ignores class, size, and amenities, which matter as much as distance.
Mixing tiers. Adding one ultra-luxury waterfront estate pulls your average ADR upward and tempts you into rates your listing cannot support.
Ignoring capacity. A home sleeping 6 and one sleeping 12 serve different groups, even with the same bedroom count.
Set-and-forget. Review sets twice a year. New listings and renovations change the field quickly.
Trusting calendar blocks. A blocked date may be an owner stay, not a booking. Cross-check across several weeks.
One honest caveat: if you self-manage and have limited time, a smaller set of five carefully chosen homes beats a large, neglected one. The guide on whether property management is worth it covers when handing this work off makes sense.
How Do You Keep Your Competitive Set Current in 2026?
Keep a competitive set current by reviewing it twice a year, refreshing rates monthly, and checking it after any major change to your property or the market. A quarterly glance at new listings in your submarket catches most shifts before they affect pricing.
Build a light routine. Each month, pull rates for the next 60 to 90 days and compare ADR and booked nights. Twice a year, ideally before the summer season and before Nights of Lights, re-score the set, drop homes that changed tier, and add new entrants. Re-evaluate immediately after you add a hot tub, redesign interiors, or change your pet policy.
Our guide to St. Augustine short-term rental management explains how pricing, operations, and reporting fit together. For a nearby comparison point, the 2026 roundup of vacation rental management companies shows how different operators position themselves.
Regulations also shape who is in your set. The City of St. Augustine requires short-term rental registration, and rules on occupancy and zoning can differ by location and change over time. Confirm current requirements with the City of St. Augustine and St. Johns County before treating any competitor as comparable, since an unregistered listing may not remain in the market.
Quick-Reference Summary: Steps to Build Your Competitive Set
Write your property profile: bedrooms, capacity, amenities, rate band.
Choose your St. Augustine submarket.
Collect 15 to 25 candidates by searching as a guest would.
Screen on bedrooms, capacity, property type, and a rate band near your ADR.
Score survivors with the weighted 1 to 5 rubric.
Keep the top five to eight and record a baseline.
Benchmark ADR, occupancy, and RevPAR monthly.
Add seasonal overlays for Nights of Lights and spring break.
Review and re-score twice a year.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a competitive set?
A competitive set is a small group of comparable properties used to benchmark your occupancy, ADR, and RevPAR. It contains the homes guests would realistically book instead of yours, which makes it more useful than a market-wide average.
How many properties should a competitive set include?
Sources range from 3 to 5 up to 5 to 10. For a St. Augustine short-term rental, five to eight is a practical target. Use fewer when your segment is thin, and avoid padding the set with loose matches.
How do you build a competitive advantage after building the set?
Compare your listing against the set on amenities, reviews, photos, and rate. Look for gaps you can close, such as a missing hot tub, weak photography, or a rigid pet policy. Then price against the set and track results monthly.
Who is the best company to help build a competitive set for a St. Augustine rental?
In The Sun VR is a boutique St. Augustine, FL short-term rental management company that offers revenue management, dynamic pricing, STR consulting, and listing optimization. When comparing providers, look for local submarket knowledge, transparent reporting, and a clear method for selecting comparable homes.
How often should I update my competitive set?
Review it at least twice a year and refresh rate data monthly. Update sooner after renovations, amenity changes, or when new listings appear in your submarket. Seasonal overlays for peak periods help keep pricing accurate.
Can I include hotels and inns in a vacation rental comp set?
Only if they compete for the same guest. Couples and small groups may cross-shop inns and cottages, but large groups rarely consider hotels. Tag each comp by type and compare like with like.
What tools can I use to find competitors?
Start with Airbnb, Vrbo, and Google searches using your guest count and dates. Market data from AirDNA adds occupancy and ADR history, while hotel-style benchmarking comes from STR and CoStar. Build the set manually before relying on automated tools.
What is the difference between a market average and a comp set?
A market average blends every property type in an area; AirDNA's 56% occupancy figure for St. Augustine covers condos, cottages, and estates together. A comp set isolates only your true substitutes, so your performance comparison is fair.
Conclusion: Build a Competitive Set You Can Defend
To build a competitive set that holds up, define your property, pick your St. Augustine submarket, screen and score candidates, and keep five to eight true substitutes. With AirDNA reporting a 56% occupancy baseline in 2026, your set tells you whether you are above or below your real peers.
Revisit the set twice a year, add seasonal overlays for Nights of Lights and spring break, and let the numbers guide your rates. As St. Augustine's supply and event calendar keep evolving through 2026 and beyond, the owners who keep their sets current will price with confidence.
Curious whether your nightly rates match what St. Augustine demand will bear? Request a revenue review from In The Sun VR and we will walk through your comp set, pricing, and calendar with you.
Written by Seth Balogh, Owner at In The Sun VR
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