Cozy users: Cozy is now Apartments.com. What are your thoughts?

Question

As the owner of a small rental portfolio, I took over my own property management duties in 2019.
Cozy made this transition extremely smooth and easy for someone who has never managed rentals prior to this.
As a seasoned IT Professional, I was actually impressed that the migration was actually seamless to tenants and me and without interruption to payments etc.
This question is for Cozy users like me who are now (or soon will be) Apartments.com users.
What are your thoughts so far? Have you needed to market/find another tenant since this change?

I have not been into it too deep but, I haven't found a way to do some things (like background checks) that were included in Cozy's service. While I don't immediately need it, I'm wondering about how this will be during a tenant transition.
I would appreciate your input.

Nicholas D. · Answer

I had been using Cozy for two years prior to it migrating to apartments.com

I have been slowly experimenting with the platform and have some units that will become vacant within the next couple of months. My first impression is that I am not a big fan. I have been looking into avail as well as members have spoken very highly about this platform, but that I have noticed to waive ACH fees passed on to tenants and experience a premium package it costs 5$/unit/month. I will continue to look into this and in my opinion the fee is still very small in respects to what they offer and the smoother feel of their website experience etc. But again, this is just my personal opinion and still very limited.

Joe Splitrock · Answer

@Gary Pilkington I used Cozy for years and my properties were transitioned over two months ago. We have collected two months worth of rent. The only difference I noticed is with Cozy some payments came faster. It seems now everything is 6 days which is fine but faster is better.

I used Apartments for listings, even prior to them acquiring Cozy. The advantage of Apartments is the listing site actually gets traffic and generates leads. Cozy was never popular for tenants looking for a place to live.

Apartments uses a different credit report and application, but it looks similar. I was excited that Apartments has an app, but unfortunately the property management portion just opens a browser version in the app. They really need to spend some money on updating the app.

Overall I don't like how restrictive Apartments is with certain things like censoring certain key words in property listings. You can't use the word "responsible" when you list a property. They have lease signing capability but you have to use their lease. That doesn't work for me because they include all sorts of watered down nonsense for tenant friendly states in their lease. I understand they want a national lease, but I prefer my own terms that my attorney approves.

I will stay for now, but I would look at other companies if I was coming in new. Zillow is pretty compelling with everything they offer and in my market they drive most the volume on listings. There are a couple low cost paid options with nice apps and specialty features. My only fear on some of these small startups is the risk of having my finances with them. If they closed up shop mid rent payment, it could be really bad. I am taking in considerable money every month.

Ron Brady · Answer

We were 2 year cozy users.  With switch to apartments.com, we're still experimenting between apartments and rentler.  At present, we prefer rentler but we'll see if apartments can keep our business.

Steve Bracero · Answer

I have been using cozy for quite some time now. Very easy to use , no issues with tenants using it as well !

Carolyn Fuller · Answer

@Gary Pilkington I think Joe's experiences are much more pertinent to your needs than mine but I'll add my voice because I've gone through the "new tenant" scenario, and who knows... Maybe someone else benefits from my scenario.

I used Cozy for both applications and rent collection but once I heard the issues with applications requiring the tenant pay for background checks, I went with a DIY solution for the applications. It is against the spirit of the law in Massachusetts to collect any application fees and many of my applicants are foreign nationals which makes US background checks useless.

So the only functionality that I'm currently utilizing is rent collection. I actually like the fact that they are using the same ACH service that Venmo is using. I also like the fact that they provide the tenant with 3 choices: (1) Credit card (2) Providing their online bank credentials (3) Providing their bank routing & account numbers.

One of my first tenants to use this functionality after my account was migrated was from a startup company specializing in international digital finance. The new apartments.com process totally met his inspection. He had no problems initiating a payment and scheduling future payments.

That works for me!

Gary Pilkington · Answer

Thank you very much for the good info. I'm staying for now as well but, I'm looking into what I need to do for listings when that time comes. Zillow has a similar type of rent collection mechanism?

Cozy users: Cozy is now Apartments.com. What are your thoughts?

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