there is no real reason to prefer a .com domain other than someone else might catch it and tries to sell it to you expensive. There is no reason to think it will rank better and there is no reason to think that a competitor could overcome you with worse seo just because he has a .com domain.
I usually never use .com domains as it sucks looking for available domains. I rather make wordplays and therlike with alternative TLDs. In the end most of the traffic is coming from google anyway, so my focus clearly is on SEO.
There are non related sub-domains ranking better than any of their competitors because they have better backlinks and proper seo.
Edit:// Also a .com domain for a local business is most likely always a stupid choice.
I usually never use .com domains as it sucks looking for available domains. I rather make wordplays and therlike with alternative TLDs. In the end most of the traffic is coming from google anyway, so my focus clearly is on SEO.
There are non related sub-domains ranking better than any of their competitors because they have better backlinks and proper seo.
Edit:// Also a .com domain for a local business is most likely always a stupid choice.