Zillow Rental Manager Reviews

I really like the services that Rental Manager is offering to landlords. Potential tenants can interact with landlords for showing and view. Potential tenants to disclose their income and credit scores so as to help landlords preview the profiles of some tenants. Also, the pictures downloaded by landlords have a word description of the pictures, so that tenants understand better what they are seeing to help them decide to request a view appointment or not. Another feature is the 3D video, which I have not been able to record and subsequently download. I need more technical advice on how to do it although I have downloaded the software.
Overall, I am extremely impressed with Zillow Rental Manager.

Zillow is the best marketplace to advertise in my area but their app is very glitchy and struggles to upload pics and videos. On top of that they won’t let you upload your own vid file, they make you take it within ZillowRentalManager . So I bought some expensive lenses for my phone and worked for a couple years to switch all of my marketing video walkthroughs into the Zillow app.

Then last week I got an email from Zillow apologizing that they had lost ALL of the videos on their end. For me this is a huge loss because I can only take the best videos while my properties are vacant so now I have to go through a whole round of Re-leasing without videos which puts me at a disadvantage to any listings that do have videos!

Zillow went through all this trouble to get market share but their product is horrible. I can’t wait for the next company to take over so that I can delete Zillow forever, but until then I need to use it to be competitive...

ZillowRentalManager had so much potential - but it’s riddled with bugs. For example - 9 times out of 10 you can’t view a credit report for an applicant, ZillowRentalManager just fails to load it. Same thing with the background check. Messages stay unread even after reading them - the list goes on.

What’s even worse is that clearly there was little to zero thought put into the user experience - the most important thing to me as a landlord is to find out as much as I can about the applicant - some of this data is included in the emails (note: NOT ZillowRentalManager !) when a applicant first messages you - such as their bio and credit score - try to find this info within ZillowRentalManager - it’s impossible!

ZillowRentalManager had so much potential - but I’m considering just taking my properties off of Zillow all together so I don’t have to deal with ZillowRentalManager. Frustrating.

If someone wants to live in one of my properties-they must fill out an application. This way my time is not wasted on anyone who is just “looking” at properties and not really moving or is not qualified to live there! I can see very quickly if someone is a good candidate or not! If someone has a problem paying the fee Zillow charges...then they probably are not ready to pay the minimum $1100 security deposit on top of the rent that is required to move! Weeds out all the nonsense!

Has so much potential and I could use it as all in one solution in my landholding business but ZillowRentalManager has been so buggy ever since it came out and even after the update has more issues than the previous version that I am unable to use it.
The most notable issues that I’m dealing with now are the fact that I can create a listing but cannot activate it - keep clicking activate button but no response. Keep trying for days. One listing eventually got activated by itself. The other one sits as off-market. Support is useless with their no-solution responses days later.
Another annoying thing is that the new messages do not get marked unread when they arrive so I have to go to each message to see if I responded to the inquiry.

In concept, I love ZillowRentalManager is it such a great resource for our family’s rental properties. However, we have really had a lot of issues with ZillowRentalManager . There are spacing issues when you write up your property description Where it will not allow the simple ability to just put spaces in between bullet points or paragraphs. We’re also having a lot of sync issues with the photographs.

We’ll add different photographs or reorder them in a listing and they just won’t sync up properly even though they’re the right size. Both of these issues are not an issue in Hotpads or Trulia and look perfectly fine there but, not in the Zillow Rental app, the regular Zillow app or the Zillow Rental Manager app.

If reported some of these issues to Zillow support and they say that there’s nothing that can be done. That really isn’t an acceptable solution.

I have used rental manager for about a year now. A year too long. Every time I upload pictures, they either 1) don’t actually upload, 2) duplicate and have multiple of the same pictures or 3) completely screw up the order of the pictures previously uploaded. When you’re trying to reach out to leads, good luck swapping between different properties to contact the potential applicants who inquired about a specific property, your app will probably just crash or make every message disappear! For such a huge giant like Zillow, you’d hope there would be better quality control than this. And these are not new issues. These have been consistent since I started using this system. Unfortunately, it’s the one my boss chooses to use since he doesn’t actually have to use it himself. Please…. PLEASE fix ZillowRentalManager. No updates have ever addressed these issues.

When one of my properties came up for renewal this year, I found out Turbotenant no longer can provide listings through Zillow. Although I love Turbotenant, with Zillow being a favorite of so many users, I created my ad and set up an account with Zillow Rental Manager. I experienced several issues and waited days (instead of hours) for the help desks response. I received over 50 leads and numerous applications through their app (which was great and the reason for the 2 stars) but spent hours (instead of minutes) to manage them. As far as sending out denial letters (as required by the Fair Credit Act) you are on your own. What a mess, I will never let another applicant submit an application through Zillow! Let’s hope they are listening and make improvements.

I love the fact that I can list my homes for rent. It is easy to setup and work with. I do have a few issues I have faced..
1. Unable to single sign with Facebook. I tried access Facebook on ZillowRentalManager and browser and when I pull up the retail manager so I can use the application section it doesn’t single sign on with Facebook nor does it gives me another option.
2. Loading pictures takes too long to load. I am currently facing that I can’t view the pictures section. It acts like its opening and then it closes ZillowRentalManager . Very frustrating.
3. It would be ideal to get the URL that we can share with different apps and so forth with a simple click.
4. Ideally after someone has viewed the home, it would be nice to have an option that we could send to obtain feedback regarding the home.
5. The new sort on property is perfect
6. It would be ideal that we could export all the details that were provided for the potential clients on the homes. I have found myself copying and pasting into excel spreadsheet so that I can contact clients to come view the home.
7. The push notifications are the bomb! Love that feature.

Zillow, you’re embarrassing me as a landlord. The only thing that HASN’T glitched so far is the payment platform. But I’m looking for another service to handle applications and lease signing. I can use DocuSign for the signing as I’ve tried to get my 3 new tenants to sign twice now and it glitches with the last signer every single time. The application also glitched with one of my three tenants and after several days Zillow customer care wrote back to me and said they fixed it. But even the fix was messy. So we just moved on. And now the lease issue. I give up. I may use this for listing and payments but so far it’s garbage for everything else.

Does not sync well desktop. Does not always mark messages as read. Does not allow me to mass delete messages or notifications. Throws "read" messages back to to the top again. Does not allow for making a list. No search function to find someone that I interacted with already. Only allows me to perform certain actions on the desktop only. 3 messages sent to customer service and all replies were not helpful. 18 years a landlord and 2 years using ZillowRentalManager now.
Please scrap this one and start over. By the way, what's the purpose of a messages and a notifications button. Very unsatisfied. But Zillow does bring tenants for the $10/week which used to be free. I'd pay $15/week if this frustrating app and website worked smoother.
Matt

I have a ton of Applicants which is great, but no way to reject them or archive them after I review. I must have reviews the same applications 10 times now because I can’t archive the ones I’m not interested. I can only archive the message conversation, not the application itself. Feature Request #1: ability to reject or archive applications. Feature Request #2: ability to search messages. This includes: name, email, phone, and message content. Feature request #3: allow users to add a post-dated tour to the notes. I can’t add a note showing that an applicant did a tour last week. Feature request #4: the ‘Tour Scheduled’ filter only shows upcoming tours. Show previous tours as well. I want to follow up with people who have had a tour…

We own a duplex. I love the ease of using ZillowRentalManager for managing the applications and messages all in one place!
I also LOVE that the applications can be filled out by those interested and I get a notification of it and don’t have to worry about doing ALL the checks myself. This is a wonderful app to support those of us who don’t have a large business focused on rentals, so we don’t have a lot of time or money to spend but want to have quality renters. Thank you!

Wish I had Zillow rental manager 15 years ago when I was renting my property in California. I wouldn’t have had to deal with any unpleasant situation had I had this awesome management tool that takes care of screening of applicants to collecting rents on time and everything else that comes with it with a very good online support system. I thoroughly love using it for my rental propertiesAnd we’ll highly recommend this to anyone who would like to rent out their own property.

I’m a property owner/manger and this Zillow manager won’t allow me to do even the simplest of things!! I used ZillowRentalManager for one of my property’s that I just sold. It’s still listed under my property’s and I can’t remove it! This should be VERY simple to do! I call tech support and even they cold not delete it!! Next, I put a property for rent using ZillowRentalManager. I received almost no inquires at all. Ended up leasing to a guy who saw it on Craigslist two weeks ago. Well last night out of no where I received 17 inquiry’s from ZillowRentalManager on my phone. To make matters worse... I have NO WAY to view those on ZillowRentalManager... I had to use my PC to see them and respond to them! Then... once I responded to them... I had no way to delete them!! Zillow Rental Manager... PLEASE get your act together!!!!!

The Zillow app works well. Unfortunately the automatic listing on Trulia and Hotpats doesn't work so well. Trulia seems to just randomly pick any of the pictures as the intro picture without any recourse and hotpats lists random phone numbers as contact numbers when Zillow isn't showing a phone no. There also no manual recourse provided. Besides that and probably worse is the lag and in the messaging system and sometimes messages from the Zillow messaging system go to email only and not back to the messaging system causing confusion and missed opportunities.

From a Landlord’s perspective Zillow Manager works very well. The Zillow posting goes out onto several postings and allows the interested parties to apply online.
I really like how the potential candidates pay a one-time fixed fee for all of places they apply within 30 days. It is so much better than having to pay for each application as was done in the past. Thumbs up to Zillow for creating this user friendly portal.

I’m glad that I found ZillowRentalManager. We have rented quite a few apartments because of the leads from Rental Manager. I don’t use the credit report, rental application, or rent collections features because we are already set up with a different program but I would not hesitate to try them otherwise. Zillow has created a very helpful product, I have recommended it to friends, and it is definitely worth five stars!

I’ve been sending feedback thru ZillowRentalManager for weeks and they don’t fix the problem. It reloads the old messages I’ve deleted, every time I log in. Even for properties not listed anymore. It’s maddening. To constantly have to scroll thru old messages to make sure I don’t miss new ones. Done it will mark as read, others it won’t change. I have sent them countless messages about this over weeks and weeks. I’ve deleted ZillowRentalManager and downloaded it again. Nothing. I hate it. I only gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because it is nice to message everyone on the phone. But that’s it.

I am able to communicate back and forth with renters, however, ZillowRentalManager hardly ever works. Initially, I couldn’t even activate my listing. Once it “activated” on it’s own, things seemed okay. Then I was struggling to get certain buttons to work, I could not send feedback because ZillowRentalManager keeps saying it’s “having difficulty” and now I cannot view applications on ZillowRentalManager due to an error that says ZillowRentalManager is being developed... this is ridiculous. Dear Zillow, troubleshoot and fix your apps before making them live to customers who will not be able to properly use them.

Zillow (the website, not ZillowRentalManager) has a great tool in taking rental applications online, & you can send an invite to others for them to apply. When you receive a completed application, you get an email, and you can review it on the website- but not ZillowRentalManager. Why not? A step beyond that would be a display that compared key aspects of each applicant (occupation, # of months employed, income, credit score, debt to income ratio, # of pets, etc), instead of having to open each application individually and having to make your own spreadsheet for comparison.

A very useful app for property owners and managers to forgo expensive broker commissions and reach out to potential tenants directly. Easy to upload images, edit listings, and switch between live and archived information as the properties’ status changes. Only drawback is that communications coming into ZillowRentalManager do not forward to email or text and it is sometimes difficult to remember to check in constantly to see new inquiries and respond in a timely manner.

The set up is easy but when it came to listing or uploading the photos I was not able to rearrange them in the order that I wanted to.
Also it would be nice to be able to email within the platform to a potential tenant. wished there was on onboard application forms that can be tailored then sent to a potential tenant. also if I could upload the template for the lease so they can see in abvanced the terms and conditions. would be good if the background check connected with all three credit agencies.

Ive been working with the new update since it came out (several months). The website, doesn't allow you to delete leads, so your leads pile up and the application on your phone is extremely glitchy, horrible way to keep your leads and clean up, its extremely confusing..., loading up listings have never been more difficult and frustrating.

The idea of the rental manager is great. Keeping track of your listings and interested people and applications.

However, there is no way to add leads that came in through phone calls.
Trying to access applications is buggy half the time. It requires you to log in after x minutes and requires force quoting before it will let you do that past the initial log in. There is no support for Face ID to get around that annoyance.
A direct link to the application form would also be a great addition; most people use text/chat, not email these days.

I have been using this for about two or three years. The system saves all my information and it is easy to read list the properties as people move out over time. It also allows people from out of town to look at my rental houses before they get to Fayetteville. This is vastly superior to just putting a sign in the yard.

Eric

The first time I put in my listing I had several inquiries and answered them all. I got back requests for viewing times and showed them all. The second time, this year, that I posted my unit for rent I also got several inquiries and I answered them all but, this time I never got one response back to ask for a time to view the unit. I’m wondering if there is something that went wrong with the settings when I cancelled the listing the first time.

No option to send a text when contacting possible leads, only email and call (most potential tenants I deal with prefer text as the first method of contact). Makes no sense. Also applications are accessed through clicking on the property, rather than being on the home page next to “Inbox”. Other than push notifications (which I can also get through email) ZillowRentalManager is pretty useless to me and I’m better off using the website which has a better design.

Like that we can manage our listing through ZillowRentalManager but wish that responses to leads via email would be reflected in ZillowRentalManager so the communication thread could be tracked.

Also, app does not permit us to post an open house for a rental listing, only a for-sale listing. 1) wish we could list an open house or 2) with the section indicating "no open house" wouldn't show up in the listing since Zillow directs us to specify in the description but this messaging is confusing for a rental shopper.

As a professional management company I found ZillowRentalManager and advertising on Zillow a critical component to our business. We are a smaller company with an inventory of about 150 homes we manage. I used to advertise a lot on Craigslist but in the past couple of years I’d say about 90% of qualified applicants came via advertising on Zillow. I’m a big fan!