Rental Applications through Zillow Rental Manager vs. Avail.co

[Evan Hamamoto]

Are the applications through Zillow rental manager good enough for people who use a different property management software/website? A lot of potential tenants have found my property through Zillow, but I use Avail.co to manage my properties. Avail has an application that is $55 (credit check, eviction history, income, criminal history, etc.), but Zillow has an application that is $29 and the potential tenant can use it for multiple properties within 30 days. It seems like it has the same information, but I'm not familiar enough with Zillow rental manager to know for sure. Any thoughts? I hate for people to spend $55 who I don't end up renting to, even though I list all of my screening criteria on my listing.

[Phong Bui]

Quote from @Evan Hamamoto:

Quote from @Feng Zhang:

Quote from @Phong Bui:

I've tried zillow application system and tbh it is junk. The only thing it's good for is as a listing platform. Whenever I get interest from there, I direct them to apply through a different site.

 New guy here wanting to try out Zillow. Would you please elaborate on why you think the Zillow application system is junk?

 Yea, I'm interested to hear some of the downsides of the Zillow applications. I would mainly use them for the credit check, background check, and eviction check. The landlord references and income verification I can do myself if needed.

 @Evan Hamamoto @Feng Zhang

The most important aspects of an application and screening for zillow is trash. Ive had applicants who show no eviction history, but a search on the municipal court in JUST our county showed several.

Ive had applicants who falsified their paystubs, which i get is possible, but if you compare to other options like smartmove, it at least attempts to analyze whether the reported income makes sense for their credit.

Overall, i have no trust in its application system. Plus, as a property management site, its even more horrendous. Compare it to free options like apartments.com and innago.com, that has a lot of functionality for partial rents, tenant and maintenance communication, and overall the u/i for the site, idk why anyone would even consider using zillow.

Like i said this, i like the reach of zillow, so i post vacancies on there, and then direct interested applicants to a different site to apply, one that is better and they i trust more than zillow.