Investor · Milpitas, CA · Member since 2013 · 12 posts · 12 votes
11y
I have 2 rentals using cozy for about 3 months now. The collection is free, but is rather slow, the money will be in my account on the 8-12th day of the month. There is no phone support, only email support and they are responsive.
This is Jordann from Cozy's support team -- I'm happy to help out here! Tenants can choose to pay bi-monthly, or even weekly if they prefer. To do this, they would just set-up one-time payments instead of automatic, recurring payments.
Just as a note, tenants can either login and set-up their payments each time, or they can set them up as far in advance as they'd like, depending on what they're more comfortable with. I hope that information helps out!
Rental Property Investor · NW, PA · Member since 2014 · 174 posts · 39 votes
9y
Are use cozy rent collection for all of our units. I've adjusted all my loan payments to be due on the 15th of the month so the slow deposit time doesn't affect me much.
Contractor · Fort Worth, TX · Member since 2015 · 379 posts · 740 votes
9y
We use ACH payments through the our bank, or we now also use eRentPayment.com.
The ACH payments are pretty simple. We started using eRentPayment.com because they have an option to report payments to the credit bureaus, and several of our tenants have liked that option for helping rebuild credit after a divorce or some other life event.
Property Manager · Grants Pass, OR · Member since 2009 · 429 posts · 201 votes
9y
@Michael Hayworth - just fyi. Rent payments with the bureaus that accept them are treated separately from all other credit accounts and don't affect their fico score or general creditworthiness. It's also not uniform across all credit bureaus like credit accounts are and most don't even accept or pay attention to rental data. It's a bit misleading if any company suggests it helps tenants build their credit.
This is Jordann from Cozy's support team -- I'm happy to help out here! Tenants can choose to pay bi-monthly, or even weekly if they prefer. To do this, they would just set-up one-time payments instead of automatic, recurring payments.
Just as a note, tenants can either login and set-up their payments each time, or they can set them up as far in advance as they'd like, depending on what they're more comfortable with. I hope that information helps out!
Does Cozy allow landlords to send monthly invoices like Paypal?
Professional · Portland, OR · Member since 2016 · 24 posts · 12 votes
9y
Hi @Douglas T. -- We send out a notification 5 days before a tenant's rent payment is due so you don't have to send out a monthly invoice, just as a friendly reminder in case they need to set-up a payment, or make any changes.
Just as a note, if you add a one-time payment for other charges like late fees, or utility bills, Cozy sends a notification to your tenant letting them know, so they can login and set-up a payment for those.
Your tenant can always login to their account and review their ledger too, in case they want to review any charges or payments as well. I hope that was helpful!
Seattle, WA · Member since 2015 · 7 posts · 0 votes
9y
@Jordann B., does Cozy have or plan to have an option for rental/eviction history? Also wanted to know if Cozy reports to the credit bureaus. It'd be nice to help tenants build credit!
Investor · San Jose, CA · Member since 2015 · 246 posts · 183 votes
9y
@Richard Le When you are screening tenants, you can have the pay for credit/background check. It is about $40. Cozy does not report to credit bureaus. There are services that report to credit agencies, such as PayLease, eRentpayment and Rental Kharma.
Sherwood, OR · Member since 2016 · 23 posts · 25 votes
9y
Hi @Richard Le! This is Kayla from Cozy's customer support team.
Applicants who have been tenants through Cozy can share their previous rental payment history when they apply to new properties. As @Jennifer L. mentioned, our background checks include eviction records searches as well.
It's funny that you should ask about reporting payments to credit bureaus--stay tuned! :)
Property Manager · Miami, FL · Member since 2016 · 62 posts · 15 votes
9y
I use Rentigo (www.rentigo.com) for rent collection. I manage personal/family properties in SoFla and its fairly easy for me. I agree with @Jeff Gates - I wouldn't pay for this type of service - at least not until I needed some sort of accounting software or something.
I have used Cozy for a while now. All of our tenants are on it and I dont think I want to ever go back to checks. Upside it is free to both sides. Improvements needed - you can not refund security deposit, deposits take 4-6 days (which is ok other then move in charges), lease changes are not as easy as they should be. All and all it is a great experience for the landlord, but I hear Truerent.com is better and offers more features that Cozy Lacks.
I'm looking into Cozy mainly for background and credit check purposes but your comment has me wondering what you mean by "you can not refund security deposit."
That sounds like a pretty serious problem. It's their money unless they've done something to warrant keeping it. What if a refund of their money is justified?
Investor · San Jose, CA · Member since 2015 · 246 posts · 183 votes
9y
@Tom Ray I'm guessing that the poster means that Cozy transactions only go in one direction: from tenant to landlord. When it comes time to refund a security deposit, then you have to cut a check or generate the transaction from your bank.
My single frustration has been with initial security deposit and first month rent payment. You cannot expedite this with a new tenant (I tried), so if you are going to accept these payments from a new tenant, the transaction has to begin in plenty of time before turning over the keys. I managed to make this work last time as my tenants were moving from out of state and had a lag time between lease signing and move in, but in the future, I would probably go back to taking a cashiers check for the initial payment.
Rental Property Investor · Plano, TX · Member since 2015 · 59 posts · 41 votes
9y
In my leases I tell them that I'm going to charge them $3 for Cozy's express pay feature. Never had any pushback from tenants. So if the rent is $1,000. In Cozy, I set it up for $1,003.
Albany, NY · Member since 2016 · 3 posts · 3 votes
9y
I've been using Cozy with my 4 unit for about a year; yes, the *free* ACH payment takes 4-6 biz days, but they have a 48hr expedited payment option for a few bucks a month (per rental unit). The free one works or me.
I've only had one opportunity to use the tenant screening feature, but it was quick, cheap, and seemed pretty thorough (though dont have much to judge it by).
I *really* liked that I didn't have to do squat, other than click a button requiring screening for this unit: the tenant gets a link to fill everything out and gets charged directly; I got site and email notification when it was available.
Fort Myers Beach, FL · Member since 2016 · 225 posts · 124 votes
9y
I have been using Cozy.co for my first investment Duplex, works great for rent collection, I will try its listing service this summer if my tenant decide to move out.
I'm looking at different options for rent collection and screening. Any updates on some of the programs listed above? For those who have done research what did you feel were the PROs and CONs?
Northern, CA · Member since 2014 · 674 posts · 444 votes
9y
Ive been using cozy.co for about 6 months, I'm happy with it and don't plan to change. Rent takes about a week but if that is an issue you may have bigger problems if you're running your business that thin financially.
I did have a problem running one credit check, had to use an alternate service to avoid delay.
La Jolla, CA · Member since 2013 · 2 posts · 4 votes
9y
When I find a service that's so reliable and sensible I'm very unlikely to change. I've found eRentPayment.com to be such a service for our rental properties in San Diego and Los Angeles. All of our tenants use this service and love it. I pay the $3 fee per month for each rental so it's free for our tenants. If there's ever an issue, I get amazingly fast responses from the support team, sometime directly from the founder Rick Sands.
(mentioning of your website is not allowed - removed the content)
Are you in a position to address any of the concerns raised by the problems at erentpayments? Namely if the payment process utilized by cozy is different?
I'm looking for alternatives including setting up direct ACH between my tenants and my accounts. I did like the online applications like erentpayment, credit / background checks and the reporting functions.
How is Cozy different? Could you end up like them as well (withholding funds by their vendors) ?
It should be noted to anyone coming late to the thread that @Lucas Hall did reply. I apologize for puting him on the spot like that because in doing so he is unable to properly respond without it being deemed "self-promotion"
I am a Cozy customer and I am confident going forward.
Investor · Colorado Springs, CO · Member since 2015 · 4 posts · 0 votes
8y
I have not used the tenant screening feature but have been using cozy.co for 10 months now with no problems. The funds take about 5 days to transfer which can be disappointing but the upside is you decide when the rent is due and it shows a status of the funds as it occurs. I had one month's rent fail due to 'Insufficient funds' and it let me know immediately so I could follow up with the tenant (i think it was getting the account set up for the first time that caused problems).
The next time it failed was as I renewed the lease and attempted to give a credit back to the seller. I think I failed the system and ended up doing a refund in person. In general I like the fact that cozy goes through the bank accounts and shows a status of the payment. With a fee for credit cards, your tenant is persuaded into connecting their bank account and saving money on their rent.
Durham, NC · Member since 2017 · 74 posts · 15 votes
8y
I use Cozy as well and I'm generally happy with it. I do wish it had more robust features to handle things like maintenance requests and integrated with accounting software better. For a free product though I've found it to work pretty well.