Avail Review: Automated Administration for Landlords

Some landlords are old-school and don’t mind going to each tenant to collect rent, handling manually screening them, and putting up listings on various websites themselves.

Other landlords have full-time jobs and being a landlord is their side hustle. These landlords can’t afford to put a team in place to manage all the administration that goes along with property management. This is the market Avail is targeting.

Avail offers several plans that allow landlords to scale their business:

• Unlimited: Free (no matter how many units). It includes syndicated listings, credit screenings, state-specific leases, online rent payments, and maintenance tracking
• Unlimited Plus: $5/mo per unit. This includes everything in Unlimited, but adds in next-day rent payments, waives the ACH fees, custom applications and lease agreements, and you can create a property website.

The paid plans come with 30-day trials. 

Avail’s pricing structure lets landlords with a single unit scale up as their real estate empire grows. This is done easily and the subscription cost is kept low. 

To help landlords better manage their property, Avail offers the following features:

• Rental listings
• Rental applications
• Tenant screening
• Credit, criminal, and eviction reports
• Digital leases
• Online rent collection
• FastPay
• Maintenance tracking
• Rent price analysis

When a landlord uses Avail to list their property, inquiries go to a central location. This allows the landlord to manage all potential tenant inquiries in one place. Landlords can respond to each tenant inquiry.

Tenant screening can be a tedious process. There are many websites that offer various levels of screening that you can cobble together to get an overall view of potential tenants. Avail’s tenant screening offers a renter profile report at no cost. This report includes:

• Job history
• Rental history
• Income verification

You can also request a credit report for an additional $25. It includes a credit score, adverse items, and credit history. As well, there is the full screening option for $45. It includes the renter profile and credit reports plus the following:

• Nationwide criminal
• Terror list
• Sex offender
• Evictions

These reports are done through TransUnion, which may not include as much information as other sources. A tenant’s credit score is not affected by pulling these reports. It’s up to the landlord for who will pay the report fee. It isn’t uncommon that the applicant pays.

Leases can be complex. There are many clauses to consider and they are state-specific. Avail simplifies this task through its digital leases offering. As the landlord, you’re able to configure what you need including:

• Terms
• Rent amount
• Options such as allowing pets, smoking, etc.
• Clauses
• Rules

Once you’ve configured your lease, tenants can sign it using a digital signature, which keeps everything online. Besides the obvious conveniences, digital applications and leases are more secure than paper, which can be lost, thrown away accidentally, or stolen.

“If you go and apply for an apartment in Chicago, for example, you just walk up to someone’s unit or office, write down all your information on a piece of paper and hand it over to them,” Coon told to PYMNTS.com. “That certainly isn’t secure.”

One area Avail is lacking in is accounting. Running NOI, vacancy cost projections, maintenance cost, tax prep, and other related reports would be helpful. But for that, you’ll have to use a different program. Still, Avail provides lots of functionality.