Cozy???
Saco, ME · Member since 2015 · 34 posts · 16 votes
If you use Cozy, what are your thoughts on it? How do you like it? Have you found any setbacks? OR if you use something else other than Cozy what do you like and not like about that platform. I am a new Landlord that is "house hacking" and I am trying to figure out what will work best way to manage everything is.
Thank you
I own and manage 9 rental units. I started using Cozy in January 2016. My decision to use Cozy has been one of the best property management decisions I’ve made. Cozy has completely streamlined my rent collection, property listing and tenant screening process. I have also been extremely impressed with the quality and speed of their customer service. Here are my big 4 for Cozy.
1. I’m collecting all my rents through Cozy. No more going to the post office to pick up rent checks and going back a 2nd or 3rd time to get the one that’s late. No more going to the multiple banks to make deposits. I also haven’t had a single argument with a tenant about why their rent shouldn’t have been late and why they shouldn’t have to pay a late fee. The payment date is all electronically documented. Best of all it’s free!
2. Once you list a property once, it’s permanently stored in Cozy. My pictures, property descriptions and details are all permanently saved. If I want to relist a property, all I have to do is click “activate” on the property listing page and Cozy creates an add on multiple websites. Best of all it’s free!
3. Screening my tenants has never been easier. When a prospective tenant comes out to look at one of my properties, the first thing I do is hand them a sheet of paper with my rental requirements on it. At the bottom of the sheet is the address to the application page in Cozy for my specific property listing. The prospective tenant can go to Cozy, fill out an application and approve and pay for a credit and background check. I get an email when everything is complete and I go to Cozy to review everything and decide if I want to rent to them. Best of all it’s free!
4. One last and very important thing to me is their customer service is a 10 on a scale from 1 to 10. They are quick and thorough with responses to questions. I recently had an issue with an ACH transfer not being processed properly by my bank. Cozy notified me to inform me of the issue before my bank. Cozy also provided me with all the information I need to straighten out the deposit with my bank. Big thumbs up to customer service rep Kayla!
Cozy has more to offer than the items I listed here. But these are the four things most important to me. I tried Buildium prior to Cozy, but found it to be too cumbersome and too pricey for my situation and needs. If you are looking for a property management website I would not hesitate to try Cozy. You really can’t go wrong, it won’t cost you anything and it’s really a user friendly site to use and setup.
@Jason Dismukes The real difficulty comes with the lack of a legal agency that you wouldn't have if you're self-managing from a distance. Sometimes you'll need to post notice to access a unit for repairs, and a tenant can frustrate those efforts if they're not very cooperative, and you can't ask a handyman to do that if they have to go fix a leaking sink.
Landlords that manage from a distance really rely upon having someone they trust to handle basic repairs and having well-qualified, reliable tenants, If either of those slip you can get in some hot water. I'd never advise trying to self-manage properties you're unable to drive to in a reasonable timeframe, for that reason -- it's asking for a lot of liability for things that are routine parts of being a landlord.
@Lucas Hall is there a way to decline in applicant through Cozy?
By the way, this question for anyone who has an answer. Thank you!
@Lucas Hall is there a way to decline in applicant through Cozy?
By the way, this question for anyone who has an answer. Thank you!
Hey Keith, Cozy used to send out a standard decline message to applicants who were not choosen but the vast majority of our landlord customers didn't use it. In focus groups, they said they wanted to deliver that rejection news personally, and certainly didn't want a system doing it. I know from first hand experience, there's usually more to a situation when someone is rejected, and that's often discussed in a conversation. I hope that answers your question.
@Lucas Hall Yes, it does. Thank you for your help.
I have been using cozy for three years. Honestly, it’s been great. It’s a free service to track payments, applications and properties. Definitely an advantage to be able to text the application link to prospective tenants for background and credit checks.
It’s very easy to onboard tenants, modify leases, charges and fees. Tenants are grateful for the online access, control and convenience. Online payments save lots of time. No worries about checks and deposits.
Used for up to 25 units with little hassle. I should note that I steer all new tenants to cozy from the beginning.
I have twice had issues with failed payments, and cozy was responsive and resolved the issues satisfactorily.
Hope this helps!
Hello!
So a quick question for those of you who use Cozy for your background/credit checks.
Do you have each of your adults in the unit (maybe not necessarily the applicants) fill it out? It seems that it might become a little bit overwhelming monitarily for potential applicants if you have between 2-4 adults living in a unit and the process costs between $80-$160 (especially if they don't end up qualifying).
Do you do anything to offset those costs?
I like cozy fine for applications and payment so far, but for tenant screening they frankly suck. I answered my questions wrong 3 times per experian (not wrong per me, the actual person, I'm wondering what experian screwed up). So now I can't even try to log in for 72 hours. My tenants are not interested in waiting 72 hours for a reply right now.
Transunion is MUCH better
I've been using Cozy for over a year now. Their platform is great. Tenants love paying rent and online and I love that I don't have to worry about how I'm going to get my money. Cozy also seems committed to improving their platform. You can now track expenses, maintenance requests, rental insurance, and load up documents.
This is what I do when I have a vacancy. I advertise using Zillow Rental Manager (which sends to Trulia and Hotpads as well), I put an ad on Craigslist with a Google Voice number they can text for the application link, and I turn on syndication on the Cozy listing so it syndicates to Realtor.com and Doorsteps.com. I find that most of my leads come from Zillow, but I don't even show the property unless they fill out an application so I can make sure they're not wasting my time by not making enough money. Once I have an application and verify their income, I'll schedule a showing. If they're still interested after the showing, I'll ask them to do a credit and background check through Cozy. If everything checks out, then we'll sign the lease and they'll move in on the date stated on the lease.
We’ve been using Cozy for a few months now with inherited tenants and love it. And we just screened our first 2 batches of new tenants. The credit and background check process went flawlessly except the people with records on their background checks took longer than a week to get back.
Now on the third group of tenants 2 of the 4 applicants claim they can’t verify their identity with Experian for the credit and background check. They supposedly have called in and customer support couldn’t verify them either. Has anyone had issues with this? Are these applicants just trying to hide their credit and background from me? Or are just not answering the questions right?
Even though we tell our applicants not to do the background/credit check and we do not request the background/credit check with the application, somehow they still end up paying the fee and doing the background/credit check. This is frustrating to me so we've gone back to paper applications for now until we figure out how to not have them pay for the background check when we already know they will not qualify.
I've been using Cozy for over a year now. Their platform is great. Tenants love paying rent and online and I love that I don't have to worry about how I'm going to get my money. Cozy also seems committed to improving their platform. You can now track expenses, maintenance requests, rental insurance, and load up documents.
This is what I do when I have a vacancy. I advertise using Zillow Rental Manager (which sends to Trulia and Hotpads as well), I put an ad on Craigslist with a Google Voice number they can text for the application link, and I turn on syndication on the Cozy listing so it syndicates to Realtor.com and Doorsteps.com. I find that most of my leads come from Zillow, but I don't even show the property unless they fill out an application so I can make sure they're not wasting my time by not making enough money. Once I have an application and verify their income, I'll schedule a showing. If they're still interested after the showing, I'll ask them to do a credit and background check through Cozy. If everything checks out, then we'll sign the lease and they'll move in on the date stated on the lease.
This is very helpful information. Can you describe how you communicate this process to prospective tenants? Do you just make this clear during your prescreening call? I'm a new landlord so I'm still learning. I was expecting that I would be showing the property before any applications were processed. Can anyone else confirm if they are using a similar timeline in their application process?
I pre-screen based on the applications. I post in the ad that the application is free and respond to all leads with the application link and instructions. I've found that this also helps me narrow down potential candidates. It helps to have lots of people interested so your unit has to be priced right. Mine is usually just a hair under market. Once I have the applications, if they meet my criteria, I'll call them to schedule a showing. If they are interested, I will have them pay for the credit and background check through Cozy. If they pass my minimum requirements for that, I will send them the lease to sign and have them pay the deposit. Then I'll set them up on a lease in Cozy with the date that first month's rent is due. I realize that filling out a free application first is not the "normal procedure," for renters, but I also work full time as a government contractor, so it allows me to spend minimal time on the phone. This process still needs a LOT of fine tuning to be seamless, but it's been working for me so far through my last four tenants.
I pre-screen based on the applications. I post in the ad that the application is free and respond to all leads with the application link and instructions. I've found that this also helps me narrow down potential candidates. It helps to have lots of people interested so your unit has to be priced right. Mine is usually just a hair under market. Once I have the applications, if they meet my criteria, I'll call them to schedule a showing. If they are interested, I will have them pay for the credit and background check through Cozy. If they pass my minimum requirements for that, I will send them the lease to sign and have them pay the deposit. Then I'll set them up on a lease in Cozy with the date that first month's rent is due. I realize that filling out a free application first is not the "normal procedure," for renters, but I also work full time as a government contractor, so it allows me to spend minimal time on the phone. This process still needs a LOT of fine tuning to be seamless, but it's been working for me so far through my last four tenants.
Thank you for taking the time explain your process. This is one of the best tips I've read on landlording since I started my research!
Cozy has been good to me. Only issue I have is the turn around time it has for the payment to hit your account, I believe it 5 business days which can be a long time if they are any holidays or weekends. I like the automatic late fee they have after the 5th business day, they should add a daily late fee after that as I have that in my lease. I see this post is from 2 years ago, let us know your thoughts on Cozy.
@Joshua S. Are you running the application and the background/credit checks all through Cozy? I am just starting to look into Cozy and love how you're screening tenants. I'm just curious if you do the application separate from Cozy of if they have the option to go back to Cozy and request the background/credit checks after refusing them during the initial application process.
@Joshua S. Are you running the application and the background/credit checks all through Cozy? I am just starting to look into Cozy and love how you're screening tenants. I'm just curious if you do the application separate from Cozy of if they have the option to go back to Cozy and request the background/credit checks after refusing them during the initial application process.
Sorry for the delayed response. Yes, you can separate the application from the actual screening. You just make it optional. I would recommend contact their support team with any questions. They were super helpful for me when I started using it. I still need to work out some kinks in my process, but I allow them to fill out a free application and if their application makes the cut, I'll show them the property. And if they seem like they'd be a good fit, I have them pay for and complete the credit/background check at their expense. If that checks out, we move on to lease signing. Which I use a service called Digisigner.com for that. It's free for up to 3 documents per month.
Does anyone know how to temporarily stop Cozy from sending automatic emails to tenants? I want to add past bills and offline payments to the ledger for record keeping but I do not want to all these actions to be automatically emailed to the tenants. I don't want them to freak out. I couldn't figure this out. Thanks!
I "joined" BP months ago and this is really my first forum and post. I am so impressed by the quality of the information. I will be using Cozy because of a podcast I listened to, but all the little details from all of you are great!
A key feature of Cozy is its ability to allow tenants to pay rent via credit card. This is not a feature that you are allowed to turn off. I had a tenant who made good income and was a pleasure to speak to.
My tenant (lets call her Jane) was paying rent on time for many months, until all of a sudden she wasn't (for simplicity lets say her last payments was for December). Jane knew that credit cards allow their patrons to dispute charges up to 90 days. Jane decided to not pay January, and by end of January I was trying to do everything I could to get her back on track (she was very convincing that it was life circumstances). Later that month Cozy reached out to me to inform me that her previous 3 payments had been disputed as fraud. They attempted to pull that money out of the bank account that was linked to my profile (which you must do in order to receive rents). I managed to block that attempt, although it took many emails and conversations back and forth with Cozy.
So by the end of January, I wasn't short one month rent, I was short 4 months rent. I eventually managed to evict the tenant (after several more months). I thought my troubles were behind me. More than a year later, I received 3 collections on my credit statement, 1 for each month. Now, not only have I lost many months of rent, but also my credit is dinged and I am on the hook for those 3 lost months.
I warn all investors, DO NOT use Cozy. Its simplicity comes at a terrible cost.
COZY does not stop partial Payments. Thats my only problem with there platform. I don't accept partials.