A quick search will yield a number of software solutions for landlords of all sizes on the web. The landlord market that seems to be gaining more recognition recently has been the small landlords who own 1-25 units. There are a number of startups with this exact market in mind, and they seem to be focused on rental applications in particular: cozy.co – an online application and rent payment tool, rocketlease.com – online application software, leaserunner.com – ditto to the previous two with the addition of online lease agreements, and RentJuice which was recently acquired by Zillow. Conventional wisdom would say that this is one of very few straight forward businesses to start in the online rental industry, with revenue coming from credit checks paid mostly by tenants and ranging from $10 to $50 per applicant.

The simplicity of this business model is also its crutch. An online application is literally just an online form (hopefully protected via ssl), and the barriers to entry are almost non existent. Another problem for these companies is the old chicken and egg scenario. You have application software that a renter has to pay for, but what if they don’t get approved by the landlord (very plausible in some of the more high demand areas)? Then they need go and pay to fill out another application for another apartment? Cozy seems to hope to change this, but first they will need to find enough landlords to accept this form of application so that it can truly be used as a “universal online application.” I call this the holy grail for this budding market, and until massive landlord adoption is reached, there will be more and more players coming in to this field. There can only be so much differentiation in the applications and forms themselves (they presumably all have to gather the same basic info about a tenant), so wouldn’t it be likely that if a landlord accepts one, they should accept them all? I will be watching closely to see how this market develops in the coming months.