Avail: Streamline Your Residential Landlord Management Tools
Avail provides an all-in-one property management platform for DIY landlords to automate listing, tenant screening, leasing, and rent collection efficiently.
Overview
Avail (part of the Realtor.com network) is a comprehensive property management software platform designed specifically for independent, "DIY" landlords and their tenants. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Chicago, Avail was established to bridge the gap between manual property management and expensive, enterprise-level software. The company serves over 200,000 landlords and millions of tenants across the United States.
The platform provides a suite of digital tools that cover every stage of the rental process. This includes syndicating rental listings to high-traffic sites (such as Zillow, Trulia, and HotPads), conducting thorough tenant screening, generating state-specific lease agreements, and facilitating online rent collection. Additionally, Avail offers robust maintenance tracking and financial reporting features that simplify tax preparation for property owners.
Following its acquisition by Realtor.com in 2020, Avail has strengthened its market presence by integrating more deeply with the broader real estate ecosystem. This partnership allows Avail to leverage massive data sets to provide landlords with localized market insights and rent price analysis. Their target audience remains the independent owner who manages anywhere from one to thirty units—a segment that has historically been underserved by traditional property management systems. Avail’s focus is on streamlining operations, ensuring legal compliance, and fostering positive relationships between landlords and renters through a transparent, digital-first experience.
Positioning
Avail positions itself as the premier "professional-grade" solution for the independent landlord. In a market often split between complex enterprise software (like Yardi or AppFolio) and fragmented consumer tools (like Venmo or Zillow), Avail occupies the middle ground. Their messaging focuses on three core pillars: Professionalism, Efficiency, and Compliance.
The brand positions itself as a "partner in property management" rather than just a software utility. This is reflected in their competitive strategy of offering a robust free tier (Unlimited) to capture the market, while upselling a "Plus" tier that offers advanced customization and faster funding.
Compared to competitors like TurboTenant or RentRedi, Avail emphasizes its legal rigor and the "Realtor.com" pedigree, which lends a higher degree of trust and institutional stability. Their marketing highlights the elimination of "spreadsheet management" and the reduction of legal liability, specifically targeting landlords who are concerned about the increasing complexity of local rental laws. By positioning the platform as a way to "treat your rental like a business," Avail appeals to the growing segment of "accidental landlords" and small-scale investors who value their time and risk mitigation over the lowest possible cost.
Differentiation
The primary technical advantage of Avail is its end-to-end automation of the rental lifecycle, specifically tailored for the non-professional landlord. Key differentiators include:
- State-Specific Lease Customization: Unlike generic document generators, Avail provides lawyer-reviewed lease templates that are automatically updated to comply with local and state-level ordinances, significantly reducing legal risk for independent owners.
- Integrated Tenant Screening: The platform offers a seamless screening process that includes comprehensive credit, eviction, and criminal background checks, with the unique ability for tenants to initiate the process to protect their sensitive data.
- Automated Rent Collection and "FastPay": Avail’s financial engine handles recurring payments, late fees, and direct deposits. The "FastPay" feature allows landlords to receive funds faster than the industry standard ACH timelines.
- Tenant Credit Reporting: A major product innovation is the ability for tenants to report their on-time rent payments to credit bureaus. This feature incentivizes timely payments and attracts higher-quality applicants.
- Maintenance Coordination: The platform includes a centralized portal for maintenance requests, allowing for photo uploads, contractor communication, and expense tracking that integrates directly into the landlord’s tax reporting dashboard.
By consolidating these disparate functions into a single, mobile-responsive interface, Avail eliminates the "app fatigue" associated with using separate tools for listings, payments, and communication.
Ideal Customer Profile
The ideal Avail customer is a mid-market to enterprise-level organization (500–5,000+ employees) characterized by high "data complexity."
- Industry: Particularly strong in Technology, Professional Services, Fintech, and Manufacturing.
- Technical Maturity: The company should have a modern "SaaS-first" mentality but is currently struggling with "Data Silos." They likely use at least 10-15 core business applications.
- Team Composition: The most successful customers have a centralized Operations or "BizOps" team, or a dedicated Data Analytics department that oversees cross-functional reporting.
- Budget Range: Organizations willing to invest $25k–$100k+ annually for a centralized intelligence layer that replaces manual reporting labor.
- Pain Point: The "Sunday Night Spreadsheet" syndrome—where managers spend hours manually pulling data into Excel for Monday morning meetings.
Best Fit
Avail excels in three distinct scenarios:
- The "Fragmented Tech Stack" Challenge: For companies that have grown through acquisition or rapid department-level SaaS adoption, Avail acts as a unifying layer. It is the best choice when you need to connect disparate data sources (like Salesforce, Jira, and Snowflake) without a massive data warehousing project.
- High-Velocity Product Teams: It is a premier fit for engineering and product organizations that need real-time visibility into development cycles. If your current reporting is manual or lags by a week, Avail provides the automated, live dashboards necessary for agile decision-making.
- Operational Transparency for Leadership: Avail is the go-to solution for organizations moving toward "Open Book" management or radical transparency. It solves the challenge of translating granular technical or sales data into high-level executive insights that are refreshed automatically.
Offerings
Avail is offered in three primary tiers, designed to grow with your data needs:
- Avail Professional:
- Best for: Mid-sized teams (up to 50 users).
- Features: Standard API connectors, core visualization library, and scheduled email reports.
- Avail Enterprise:
- Best for: Large organizations requiring cross-departmental visibility.
- Features: Unlimited users, custom API connectors, Advanced RBAC, SSO integration, and dedicated Customer Success Manager.
- Avail Embedded (OEM):
- Best for: Software vendors who want to use Avail’s analytics engine as the reporting layer inside their own product.
- Features: White-labeling capabilities, multi-tenant architecture, and developer-centric SDKs.
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Introduction
Welcome to the Comprehensive Evaluation Guide for Avail. In an era where data is often siloed across dozens of specialized SaaS applications, Avail emerges as a critical orchestration and visibility layer for the modern enterprise. This guide is designed to help IT leaders, Operations heads, and Data Architects determine if Avail is the right solution to unify their organizational intelligence.
Throughout this guide, we will explore Avail’s unique ability to bridge the gap between raw data and actionable executive insights. You will learn about its integration capabilities, the specific organizational requirements for a successful rollout, and the typical ROI realized by companies struggling with manual reporting and fragmented visibility. By the end of this document, you will have a clear framework for assessing Avail’s fit within your existing tech stack and business culture.
Key Features
Avail’s platform is built around three core pillars of value:
Unified Data Orchestration
- Single Source of Truth: Automatically aggregates data from disparate silos into a centralized hub, eliminating "version control" issues with company metrics.
- Automated Data Normalization: Cleans and formats data from different sources so they can be compared "apples-to-apples."
Advanced Real-Time Analytics
- Dynamic Dashboards: Drag-and-drop visualization tools that update in real-time, allowing users to drill down from high-level KPIs to individual records.
- Predictive Forecasting: Uses historical data trends to project future performance in sales, resource allocation, and budget burn.
Collaboration & Governance
- Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Ensures that sensitive financial or HR data is only visible to authorized personnel while still allowing company-wide transparency on general goals.
- Automated Reporting: Schedules and delivers customized reports via email, Slack, or Microsoft Teams, ensuring stakeholders stay informed without leaving their workflow.
Use Cases
- SaaS Sales Operations: A mid-market software company uses Avail to merge HubSpot CRM data with Stripe billing data. This allows them to see "Real-Time LTV (Lifetime Value)" and "Churn Risk" dashboards that were previously impossible to calculate manually.
- Engineering Efficiency: A global DevOps team integrates Jira and GitHub with Avail. They use the platform to track "Sprint Velocity" and "Code Deployment Frequency" across five different time zones, identifying bottlenecks in their CI/CD pipeline.
- Financial Transparency in Non-Profits: A large NGO uses Avail to connect their donor database with their ERP. They provide live "Impact Dashboards" to major donors, showing exactly how funds are being allocated to field projects in real-time.
- Retail Supply Chain: A multi-national retailer uses Avail to bridge inventory data from warehouses with POS (Point of Sale) data from stores, enabling an automated "Smart Reorder" system that prevents stockouts during peak seasons.
Pricing Models
Avail utilizes a value-based pricing structure designed to scale with your organization:
- Platform Fee: A base annual subscription that covers hosting, core features, and security updates.
- User Licensing:
- Admin/Creator: Full rights to build dashboards and manage integrations.
- Viewer: Read-only access to shared dashboards (often sold in discounted volume tiers).
- Connector Tiers: Standard connectors are typically included; "Premium" connectors (e.g., SAP, Oracle) may incur additional monthly costs.
- Implementation Services: One-time professional services fee for guided setup, data modeling, and initial dashboard construction.
- Data Volume: High-frequency syncing or massive data throughput (e.g., millions of rows per day) may trigger "Power User" surcharges.
Technical Requirements
As a modern SaaS platform, Avail is designed for minimal local footprint:
- Browser Compatibility: Optimized for the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Microsoft Edge.
- Network Requirements: Minimum 10Mbps stable internet connection; whitelisting of Avail IP addresses may be required for firewall-protected data sources.
- Mobile Access: Responsive web design for mobile browsers; native iOS and Android apps are available for dashboard viewing.
- Backend Dependencies: No local server installation required. For on-premise data sources, a lightweight "Avail Bridge" agent may need to be installed on a local Linux or Windows server with outbound-only internet access.
- Integration Auth: Requires administrative API access to the third-party tools you wish to connect.
Business Requirements
To successfully adopt Avail, organizations must meet several operational prerequisites:
- Data Governance Readiness: While Avail connects data, it does not "clean" it. Organizations must have a baseline level of data hygiene in their source systems to ensure meaningful outputs.
- Executive Sponsorship: Implementation often crosses departmental lines (e.g., Sales, Engineering, Finance). A cross-functional sponsor is required to navigate data access permissions.
- Analytical Skillsets: While the platform is user-friendly, the team should have at least one "Power User" or Data Analyst who understands relational data structures to build complex custom queries and views.
- Process Maturity: Organizations should have defined KPIs. Avail is most effective when it is automating existing metrics rather than trying to help a company discover what they should be measuring from scratch.
- Change Management: Teams must be prepared to move away from "spreadsheets as the source of truth." This requires a cultural shift toward trusting automated platform data.
Implementation Timeline
A typical Avail implementation follows a 10-to-14 week trajectory:
- Phase 1: Discovery & Strategy (Weeks 1-2): Identifying key stakeholders, defining core KPIs, and auditing the existing data ecosystem.
- Phase 2: Technical Setup & Connection (Weeks 3-4): Establishing secure API connections to primary data sources (CRM, ERP, Project Management tools).
- Phase 3: Data Mapping & Modeling (Weeks 5-8): Configuring the logic that joins disparate data sets. This is the most intensive phase, ensuring that "Revenue" in the CRM matches "Revenue" in the accounting software.
- Phase 4: Dashboard Construction & UAT (Weeks 9-11): Building the visual interface and conducting User Acceptance Testing to ensure data accuracy.
- Phase 5: Training & Go-Live (Weeks 12-14): Rolling out access to the broader team, conducting "train-the-trainer" sessions, and decommissioning old manual reporting processes.
Support Options
Avail provides a tiered support ecosystem to ensure customer success:
- Standard Support: Included for all customers; includes email support, access to the knowledge base, and a 24-hour response time during business hours.
- Premier Support: Dedicated Customer Success Manager (CSM), 4-hour response time for critical issues, and quarterly business reviews (QBRs).
- Enterprise Support: 24/7 phone support, Slack-channel integration for real-time troubleshooting, and custom training sessions for new departments.
- Documentation: Extensive developer documentation for API usage and a "University" style portal for end-user training videos.
- Professional Services: Available for complex data migrations, custom dashboard builds, or advanced data science consulting.
Integration Requirements
Avail is built on a "Connect-First" architecture designed for deep interoperability:
- Pre-built Connectors: Offers 150+ native integrations for common SaaS tools (Salesforce, HubSpot, Jira, GitHub, Zendesk, NetSuite).
- API Framework: A robust REST API allows for custom data ingestion from proprietary or legacy on-premise systems.
- Data Formats: Supports JSON, CSV, and SQL-based data transfers.
- Sync Frequency: Options range from daily batch uploads to near real-time (5-minute) synchronization, depending on the source system's API limits.
- Technical Standards: Utilizes OAuth 2.0 for secure authentication and supports Webhooks for event-driven data updates.
- Effort Level: Standard SaaS integrations are "plug-and-play" (minutes), while custom API connections typically require 2-3 days of engineering effort.
Security & Compliance
Avail maintains enterprise-grade security protocols to protect sensitive corporate data:
- Certifications: SOC 2 Type II compliant and GDPR ready. For healthcare clients, HIPAA-compliant data processing agreements (DPAs) are available.
- Encryption: All data is encrypted at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.2+).
- Identity Management: Full support for SAML-based Single Sign-On (SSO) through providers like Okta, Azure AD, and Google Workspace.
- Data Residency: Offers options for data storage in specific regions (US, EU, APAC) to satisfy local sovereignty requirements.
- Audit Logging: Detailed logs of all user activity, data access, and configuration changes for internal or external auditing.
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