On-line Rental Manager Platforms: Zillow vs. Apartments.com

[Mike S.]

I'm curious if anyone has thoughts on either/both of the Apartments.com Rental Manager or Zillow Rental Manager. I think the Apartments.com one used to be Cozy and it seems like it has additional functionality (especially around maintenance requests)

Second question: Anyone used the applications feature (credit score, background, eviction, criminal, etc) of either of those two sites? I was kind of set to use the Apartments.com one because it seemed more robust, but all of my listing's interest is coming from the Zillow site and I'd hate to have to refer them over there.

Appreciate the help!

[Joe Splitrock]

Zillow and Apartments.com (owned by CoStar) are the two largest companies in the rent collection business. They are bot publicly traded. Apartments.com had a rent collection service before they purchased Cozy. The new service is a blend of features from both services. I used Cozy for years and have been using Apartments.com for almost a year after transition. There are more features available now than Cozy had. They also have live phone support (Cozy had no phone number). They also reduced the cost of a credit/background check from $39.99 to $29.00 for tenants.

I have also used Zillow, which is my preferred platform for advertising. On my recent listings, I have used Zillow for applications and screening. The Zillow credit report is from Experian and Apartments.com is from TransUnion. I like the Apartments.com report better for two reasons. You can save a copy and it shows monthly payment break down. The Zillow report cannot be printed or saved. Zillow only shows if there were late payments, but you can't tie it to specific months to know if recent payment history is better. Most tenant screening software uses TransUnion as the base report.

I also use Zillow for lease signing. I am able to upload my own lease and have the tenant digitally sign. This is a huge time saver. Apartments.com has lease signing, but they force you into using their own lease. That may sound great, but their lease sucks. It was written to be used in any state, so you have all sorts of tenant friendly junk that doesn't apply in my state.

I have never tried Zillow for rent collection, but I am sure it is fine. I used Cozy and now Apartments.com. I have never had any payment problems other than tenant generated NSF type issues. Although I do think Apartments.com could improve the interface a little bit, it works fine and reliably. I am not sure why so many people get outraged about the move from Cozy. I would say Cozy was far from perfect and it is clear Apartments is putting more resources into the platform than Cozy ever did. I believe Apartments.com is the largest rent collection platform in the USA right now by dollar volume. 

I don't love everything Zillow does, but I am also not a Zillow hater. Their failure in the house flipping market has nothing to do with their core business. In fact, the house flipping business always lost money. Their services and lead gen business has always been very profitable. Dropping the flipping business will help them refocus, so it is a good thing. The loss they are taking on the flipping business is basically a years worth of profits on their core business, so not hard to recover from. 

Quick Summery of what I do, but you could could use either one for all these things and it would be fine:

Zillow for listing

Apartments.com for application and screening

Zillow for lease signing

Apatments.com for rent collection