All Forum Posts by: Jason Duryea

@Jake Cowley I may allow it if they’re using neutral colors and plan on staying longer. I have covered painting in my lease as requiring written permission and the work must be done by a professional painter approved by the LL.

@Jerel Davis as others said, you’re limiting your pool of applicants. However, how and where you’re marketing your property has a lot to do with the quality of applicants. You can also focus on “essential” workers by doing things like advertising on sites for traveling nurses...etc.

Just keep in mind that however you market the property, you have treat all applicants the same regardless of their income or based other fair housing rules. Document your minimum requirements and apply them equally to all applicants.

@Brian Ennis you’ll need to turn off the requirement for the background and credit reports in the application. Otherwise they’ll have to process those before you can review their application.

Once you reviewed their application, you can manually send them a request to run the reports from the Screening menu. Just fill in their Name and Email address. The applicant has to initiate the reports from Experian and Checkr (via Cozy), then you’ll receive a copy of the reports through Cozy after they’ve come back.

@John Lanser Cozy is pretty popular because it’s simple to use, free (for basic services) and is overall great tool. Keep in mind that it was purchased by CoStar and is in the process of being moved into the apartments.com platform.

For a very similar service, I’ve been checking out Rentler and so far it seems very comparable.

@Ayne C. Not sure how an app would automate these types of notices. They usually require human decision to issue. Best you could do is schedule when it gets sent. You can send them to the tenant electronically via email or by posting them in the Tenants Cozy account. Careful with electronic notices though, some States may require 1st class snail mail for all or certain one’s.

In northern states, I doubt the cost is worth it for full central air. For the size of the property I’d look into a mini-split system, as the cost would be far lower. It would be an alternative to a window unit without the high cost of central air.

@Alexis Marie yes, Cozy only runs it with Experian. I don’t know of credit check services for rental properties that run credit against all 3 bureaus.

@James Kampmeyer at least in Greenville County we’ll get taxed at 6% if you’re not house hacking and you have another property as your primary residence. Plus, we lose the “discounts” on school taxes, so it doubles the property taxes in our county.

@Jeremy Blevins the less you say, the better. Keep it generic like the others said and just tell them you chose another applicant and wish them the best in their search. If you start giving specific reasons they weren’t chosen, you’re setting yourself up for a discrimination lawsuit.

@Rory Samuels find compare properties nearby. Try rentometer.com. Or start with the 1% rule and test the market from there.