Rental Property Investor · Colorado Springs · Member since 2019 · 5 posts · 2 votes
I used to use Buildium to manage my rental houses, and then I switched to Tenant Cloud to save money (only have 5 rentals and didn't need to pay $500+ per year). It worked great at first, until Zillow started charging money for syndication. Now, I must manually email Zillow to set up the syndication, wait for a response, and I've lost automation between Zillow and Tenant Cloud. I.e., if someone responds to a Zillow ad, it doesn't go to Tenant Cloud for me to respond, set up a tenant screening, or manage applications. Also, you can't put a listing link within the Zillow ad (they'll scrub it). Has anyone cracked this nut? It's a real Sh*t show now, and very frustrating to manage properties through one portal, but still take advantage of Zillow's vast marketing network. I feel like it's Zillow's way to forces out the smaller companies and further dominate the market. Any way to have a symbiotic relationship between your management software and Zillow's advertising power, or are we destined to have to switch completely to Zillow Rental Manager?
@Craig Cude I can speak from experience that Zillow is making it difficult to continue syndicating. I would not be surprised if they entirely sunset that offering in the near future. I would echo what @John Warren said and encourage you to try out other platforms. We've seen a lot of success with Facebook Marketplace recently. We also have a great relationship with Apartments.com.
I know finding renters is a pain, but I wouldn't structure your entire management system around it. There are other places to find renters than Zillow! (or continue to list manually when needed)
@Craig Cude you are correct that zillow took away the ability for most of these software to interface. I use Cozy to manage almost 30 units here in the Chicago area and Cozy syndicates to almost no where now that Zillow stopped working with them. I manually enter each listing on Zillow as well as on Apartments.com. At this point, I think it is important for all land lords to continue using as many sites as possible so that we don't end up with an Amazon.com type situation where one player dominates. Then we will be paying through the nose for ever.
Different states may have different rules, but my understanding is once you post it on MLS, it could be syndicated to Zillow without any charge. Of course, you have to have a real estate license or have to hire someone with a license. Regardless, if you have 5 rentals, the amount of extra work you have to do or extra cost should be minimal.
@Craig Cude I can speak from experience that Zillow is making it difficult to continue syndicating. I would not be surprised if they entirely sunset that offering in the near future. I would echo what @John Warren said and encourage you to try out other platforms. We've seen a lot of success with Facebook Marketplace recently. We also have a great relationship with Apartments.com.
I know finding renters is a pain, but I wouldn't structure your entire management system around it. There are other places to find renters than Zillow! (or continue to list manually when needed)