In pure capitalism, it is inevitable that randomly, one competitor in an industry eventually gets so big such that they can acquire, squash, and price out any future would be competition.

But, as a turnkey company owner, I share the roll of representing the industry in a positive light with a lot of our competitors that I respect a great deal.

I definitely recommend competitive research to see what your competitors are doing and how you can do it better on your website.

When hotels want to build a new hotel they know the competition and the announced new competitors. 

You can see exactly what your competitors are getting for every season.

If you subscribe to Airdna, you can look at your nearest competitors and see their gross revenue in the last 12 months and their occupancy.

Nothing too fancy, but just a suite of tools that could help streamline your investment process or give you an advantage over competitors.

It's also important to think about the unit mix around you – if you buy one of the rare duplexes, will that affect your rentability and resale value relative to SFR competitors? 

I have not done any investments with the competitors to compare, but I have had relatively few complaints with Homeunion and now have two properties that have been performing quite well. 

I would absolutely learn it, become a master at it, understand it better than anyone else, and then hire someone (so it is part of your  team) teach him and show him how it is done, and manage him.If you hire a business to do this for you, they will use the same strategies to do it for your competitor.