Cozy.co reviews
Real Estate Investor · Cary, NC · Member since 2014 · 27 posts · 3 votes
I bought my first property a year ago (a triplex with 8 total bedrooms). I inherited renters and used Cozy for the first set of leases I created after the legacy tenants left. I'm currently setting up leases for the second time.
Just wanted to weigh in on Cozy from my limited experience:
On the ACH payments: I shared @Matthew David's perception on the timing, but I recently went back and looked at the calendar for every payment I've received, and the variability was actually due to weekends, holidays, etc. In every case, the deposit was exactly 5 days after tenant payment.
They've added an express payment feature, which reduces that to 2 days or so, and is the first pay option service that has been offered to landlords. I cocked an eyebrow at their explanation (5 days due to obsolete bank network technology, express uses new tech), but am taking them at their word.
As a small property owner, the extra 3 days of waiting really isn't making enough difference to justify even the modest fee. I just keep a month's mortgage buffer in the account so it doesn't matter if that payment comes out before rents come in.
But I'm considering signing up for it anyway, just to support their move to a monetized model. I like them and want them to make it. (They make some money now from brokering tenant-paid screening reports, but I think that's it.) The expedited payment would just be a bonus for me.
So, on balance an endorsement for sure. Just know that some others may have more complete feature sets so you know what to expect. But in my survey of the other ones, they look sort of old school in ways that aren't always great, so I'm putting my money on the startup.
John. Just checked my bank statements and ACH payments were posted to my accounts on 12/7/15. It is inconvenient that the transfer takes so long, but that's really all it is, an inconvenience. Cozy let's me know if a transfer is not going to go through immediately (1st/2nd), so I know before the 7th if I need to chase a tenant. Overall have been really happy with Cozy (6 of my 7 tenants are using it now). Hope that helps.
btw. I have not used the credit/debit card service.
I've been testing out Cozy for a couple months now. I'd like to roll it out to my tenants. One big concern I have is knowing which tenant has paid. The transaction on my bank account only shows up as:
ACH Dep: STRIPE INC CO: STRIPE INC
Since I have several tenants paying the same amount for their unit, how can I verify which tenant has paid? I know that within Cozy it shows "Payment from John Doe tenant" once their payment has been submitted. However, what if they don't have sufficient funds when Cozy tries to pull the payment? Is there a notification of this? Or if they ACH payment is processed and then kicked back. I also work at a financial institution and I've seen ACH payments get reversed before. How would I know which payment was reversed?
Unlabeled deposits would be a major concern for me, due to the inability to quickly verify the source of each deposit payment. Has this been resolved?
I dont think this has been resolved. As of 2/5/16 my deposits are unlabeled. My statement reads "STRIPE INC STRIPE I 160204". The six digit number is not unique for each deposit. I don't use Intuit but rent amounts vary so I can determine who's paid. I can see how that would be a major problem with similar rents.
Hi @Jon S.and @Andre Janusz,
We absolutely recognize the need for a useful statement descriptor to be able to reconcile your bank account statements with your owed rent. While banks and particularly credit unions will often show incomplete payment descriptors, we have been working with our payment processor, Stripe, to update these descriptors so they better reflect the payment details we pass to them for more banks.
We expect for this change to at least include a unique payment id ("Cozy #001234567") that is shown in the payment processing email we send each day when payments are sent, as well as in the payment details of each lease. We don't have a timeline for this update yet, but absolutely appreciate the urgency and the need by our landlords in this regard.
Best,
Taylor - Cozy
One initial thing that makes me wary is that it's "free". How do they make money?
They make money from charging for credit and background checks. Most of us have the tenants pay that anyway, so it's still free to us as landlords.
I am trying to read all the posts about Cozy. I really like what I have been hearing. I will give it a try. I think what I will do is setup one of my checking accounts, as tenant, to our business account we recently opened. Of course one tenant is going to that personal account via direct deposit bank to bank. However they have our routing number and account info. This is what I want to avoid in future. We did not make tenant switch account just cause of the hassle, so I need to transfer anyways. So this will give me a test to see how it works. @Gino Zahnd did you say in one of these threads that it does bill out monthly and will bill daily for late fees. That is what I am looking for. Example. Rent is due on 1st, tenants late, so Cozy will send a statement everyday with accruing late fee until paid?
Hey Jon,
While I think it definitely needs improvement and it makes me want to keep looking at other options, Cozy does provide a unique number via email for each transaction. My credit union does not list it on the transaction. After way too long on the phone (30 mins to an hour) a supervisor was able to locate the unique number that Cozy uses for the transaction. It was a major pain point to try and locate. However, it is out there and possible to find.
In addition, to Cozy's credit, when one payment was returned NSF they did shoot me an email to let me know. However, the flip side of that coin is that due to the LONG lag time between payment initiation and receipt (it take 1 week to receive payment) and then subsequent notification of NSF and another payment being submitted with a late fee....the month was half way over before I received payment. I can empathize with a tenant who "thought" the payment was made, even checking with me to be sure it was going through, only to find out that it didn't and then getting stuck with a late fee. This doesn't make for good landlord tenant relations when I can't tell them that the payment was good until several days later.
Additionally this makes me concerned for a potential eviction scenario where the tenant doesn't intend to pay, but it gets strung out for a long time. I believe that I may change the contract to be that any payment after a NSF Cozy payment must be made via cashiers check (similar to what I had in place prior to utilizing Cozy).
To wrap it up, I have a love hate relationship with Cozy. Its mostly love, but they still have some bugs they need to work out. The website could use some improvement, but it is functional. The initial setup for the tenant continues to be a pain point, but I have worked through it. And the difficulty in reconciling payments due to missing a unique tracking number in my transaction history is an issue. However, it has definitely cut down on my time spent collecting rent. It makes it so I don't have to coordinate schedules to collect rent..or worry that the check they deliver to my home mailbox will go missing for one reason or another. I like that convenience, a lot. And as I've ramped up my rental business it has been essential to utilize a rent collection company like this. I did a lot of research on the different options. I was tempted to try out Intuit at .50 per transaction, but Cozy has come through for me just fine up until now. I look forward to seeing their continued improvements. They definitely seem to be on the ball with trying to make the experience better. I just need to stay up to date on what changes they are making so I am aware of all the tools they have available. Best of luck finding a payment solution that works for you!
Hi @Chris Sukala The answers to your questions are in our Help Center, which is here: https://support.cozy.co/
In addition, our Support team (we're all in Portland, Oregon) is also highly responsive, and can be reached seven days a week via email. That, combined with our free educational site, Landlordology (https://www.landlordology.com), are powerful resources, and a nice compliment to what the awesome folks at BiggerPockets do for the community.
The short answer: yes, Cozy payments can be recurring and automatic. Late fees aren't in the product yet, but that feature is on our near term roadmap. Frankly, we haven't prioritized late fees because the vast majority of the hundreds of millions of dollars we process are on time. The product just works in nearly all cases. And, our Support team works hard with both managers and residents to resolve things when they don't. That said, it's coming.
A couple more notes:
Like you all, we hate the lack of specific tenant/unit information on bank statements. It's something we're working as fast as we can to remedy with Stripe. There is a light at the end of this tunnel, but I can't put a date on it yet. We can't wait to clear this up.
Like you all, we think the ACH payment system should be faster. We will soon be launching a feature to speed payments up to 1-day payouts. It will be a paid feature, and like everything we build, will be very fairly priced and provide a ton of value for those who need it.
I wish I could spend more time here in the BP community - I love chatting with you all. We do watch and monitor these conversations, and we pipe up when we think it makes sense. In the future, for those who have feature or support questions, I highly recommend contacting our Support team directly. We place a ton of energy and focus on providing the best support anywhere, and are proud of the quality of support we provide. It's just hard for me to answer every support/feature question when we have over 125,000 people using our product in 9,200 ZIP codes around the country. In the future, don't be surprised if someone else from Cozy answers questions here on BP.
Thanks for the support and curiosity everybody. We all agree that Cozy can be improved, and we're working as hard and fast as we can to continue improving Cozy, every single day.
Best,
Gino
CEO and Founder at Cozy
@Dawn Anastasi Are you still using Cozy? Have there been any of the improvements you were hoping to see? Can you update us on your overall experience with Cozy?
Thank you!
@Dawn Anastasi Are you still using Cozy? Have there been any of the improvements you were hoping to see? Can you update us on your overall experience with Cozy?
Thank you!
Yes I'm still using Cozy and for every tenant I sign up, I'm trying to get them all on Cozy. Overall my experience has been good. I was with Cozy before they had "offline payments" and "one time charges" and those are two of my favorite features.
@Dawn Anastasi Thank you so much for your reply. I am using them for the first time, I like them so far but wanted to get feedback on your experience before going deeper with the rent collection. Good to know that they have been improving as they grow.
@Dawn Anastasi Thank you so much for your reply. I am using them for the first time, I like them so far but wanted to get feedback on your experience before going deeper with the rent collection. Good to know that they have been improving as they grow.
You can also take applications online and use their rental property advertising tool. I haven't done those parts yet. Also it sounds like they are rolling out faster ACH payments for a fee in the future. So it sounds like they keep on adding features which is a good thing!
BiggerPockets editing failure (reposting)
@Robert Lenfestey I just started using cozy to advertise my property & its not bad. I've received a lot of emails. I'm going to start using it soon.
@Dawn Anastasi I'm not sure if you're a clairvoyant, but I'd like to give everyone here in the BiggerPockets community a little early access for a feature we're announcing tomorrow. As I mentioned 2 months ago in this thread, we were working on a faster ACH solution. Today I'm happy to announce that less than an hour ago we rolled out Cozy Express Pay.
Express Pay lets property managers receive ACH payments in about half the time of normal ACH payments. So if your tenant pays Monday before 2pm, it’s in your account Wednesday.
Here’s how Cozy Express Payouts works:
• $2.99 per month per unit
• You can enable Express Payouts for any of your units, or all of them
• No limits on rent amounts
• No limits on number of transactions per unit
• If your tenant pays with a card, we won’t charge you for Express Payouts because card payments can be processed faster (and your tenant pays 2.75% to use a card).
So that’s it! Nothing about paying rent through Cozy is changing. Express Payouts is an optional paid feature that moves your cash flow forward each month.
Express Pay is available in your account under the new Paid Services tab, which is located in the menu under your name: https://home.cozy.co/paid-services
@Ayodeji Kuponiyi I must have missed the place where you can advertise! I have only used it to process credit and background checks. I'll have to go back and look at the advertising feature.
Thanks for sharing!
@Pyrrha Rivers under the listings tab, you can list your property. Once you've input the necessary information, you can choose to have Cozy syndicate your listing to doorsteps.com, realtor.com and oodle.com Through this, I've been receiving emails from prospects interested in my listing and most of them tell me the saw it from realtor.com which surprised me. I'm used to getting my prospects from Craigslist.
@Ayodeji Kuponiyi Thank you for the guidance. Currently I'm waiting for three background checks and the wait has been a bit long 4/22 and it is now 4/28. As I said before the wit was worth it, so I guess 1 week is not unusual wait? Just wanting to know what to tell prospects when they're checking back to see where we are with their application. What do you think?