You may have to use a little creativity and research your competitors and offer different amenities that they do not offer. 

We subscribe to the online sources for an initial overview of a sub-market, but a lot of the research requires some boots on the ground or at minimum, phone calls to competitors & planning/zoning. 

If so, what is the competitive gain in proximity to competitors?

Canaan, you are wise to consider adding a chatbot, it's something that very few investors have caught on to yet and will distinguish your site from the vast number of competitors you'll have in your market.There are a few different ways you can go as far as chatbots are concerned, some better than others. :)Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to help. 

I know about real estate express as a competitor.

With no outside method of creating deal flow and with competitors driving up prices it’s been hard to scale.

This could make us slight competitors now :P, but glad to help out a peer.

No competitors will threaten your investment as much as your own lack of interest, laziness, or ineptitude. 

I basically look at the competitors that are performing well to see what they’re doing right, find the average word count, recommend some keywords and phrases to incorporate, and then structure an outline for the writer to go off of.

You're slave to your competitor landlords and the lease for its life.However, assuming your competitors charge for water, I'd do it yesterday.