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Updated over 8 years ago, 08/29/2016
Property Management Software
Hi everyone,
I'm on a quest to find a solid property management product to manage properties I own and those that me and my partner will be managing for investors. Here's a list of the products I'm looking at. Anyone have any good or bad experience with any of these, or can suggest something else?
Buildium RenTec PropertyWare AppFolio Rent Manager LandLord Max Trex Property Manager
Thanks
Sergio A. I use rentec for the 90+ units I manage and love it. Low cost, web-based, ability to contact tenants thru rentec, owner and tenant portals, & the ability to scan leases, receipts, etc into the program make it my favorite. Was looking at a couple others and the price/value led me to rentec. Just my two cents!
Adam Gerig Thanks much for the info, and thanks for the slap in the head...I totally forgot to search the forum for the question.
Thanks again!!
Adam Gerig Following up on this topic, here is a great resource that shows a side by side comparison of some of the more popular products. Might be good to make this a sticky.
http://www.reviews.com/property-management-software/compare/
Sergio A., we use PropertyWare to manage 140+ units in Tulsa, OK and are very satisfied customers. We converted from Tenant Pro last year and the transition was surprisingly smooth. We also used RealPage (the parent company of Propertyware) to redevelop our website and we were also very pleased with the work that they did.
We are especially pleased with the integration of all the modules in the PropertyWare interface. From initial contact with a potential client (owner), to conversion, entering the portfolio and property into the database, marketing, leasing, monthly management, maintenance, the information flows across the application. We are finding increased efficiencies in our business every day as a result.
I haven't tried the other products you mentioned, I'm sure some of them are very good as well. I don't think you can go wrong with PropertyWare.
Thanks Nate Garrett! We've narrowed it down to PropertyWare and Buildium. The features of PropertyWare are certainly more compelling, but we are only managing 6 units right now, so it's coming down to cost. I talked to a sale guy at PropertyWare yesterday and he made me aware of some additional costs of modules that I would expect to be included in the base rate, like tenant and owner portals. I get that a web site would cost more, but I would think those items would be a basic element of using such a service. I'm waiting to talk to a regional sales person to get more specifics.
Thanks
I have found that the sales people at PropertyWare have some room to negotiate with you on price if it makes sense. With your number of properties I bet they would be willing to make some adjustments to make the pricing more reasonable in the anticipation that your company will continue to grow.
They have spent several hours with me in different areas to help our company expand. It seems that they have a good focus on helping their customers increase volume, which in turn increases their business. It's great to have a partner like that.
Nate
That's great info, thanks a lot Nate Garrett!! I'll be contacting the rep in a few and let you know the results.
Sergio A. Did you ever decide on a property management application? I've been looking and PropertyWare was one I'm considering but didn't like the idea of paying for the for the extra modules. AppFolio was my favorite and while $1/unit isn't bad they have a $200 min and I have 40 units right now so that's kind of expensive. I'm also considering Renttec because the price is better than the others but my business is still growing so I don't want to have to move from one system to another down the road.
Hi Patrick L. I have been negotiating with ProertyWare for the last couple of weeks, but have become increasingly frustrated with the complexity of their business model. Like you said, the added costs for the modules is just a bit much. Right now, the negotiated rate has reached $171 a month, with like $700+ up front. The sales person I have been working with hasn't been all that clear with everything, so while I was OK with paying $87.50 a month (based on my math) it has kept climbing. For example, I want the marketing module, which is $12.50 a month, but in order to get that you have to buy the web site module, which is $49 a month. If one requires the other then why would they even make them separate - ridiculous? I am a technologist by profession so I don't think I need their training program, which they want $300 for. And then they want $300 for the initial setup. I was ready to sign up until I received 4 separate invoices with so many things that weren't even talked about.
At this point my partner and I will probably go with Buildium, since we only have 6 units to manage. I know they aren't nearly as complete of a product as PropertyWare, but they have turned me off with all of the nickel and diming. We plan on revisiting the service as we scale and can justify the costs.
Sergio A. Wow thanks for the update on that one, I will definitely be crossing PropertyWare off my list. There is nothing I hate more than a company that needs to nickel and dime everything out of you, especially on software. I have a web development background and could probably build something myself but there's no point in reinventing the wheel. Paying for their website module, training or "setup" seems like something that would definitely annoy me. I guess it's down to Buildium or Rentec for me.
Patrick L. Yeah, and when I mentioned that I can buy a website for a lot less than $49 a month, she mentioned that they have widgets, but the portals would look different. It stinks because it has some great features that I really want, but they have turned me off. This process has been so long for us that I forget why we didn't factor RenTec into the finalist list, but just revisiting their site makes me think it is worth another look. What do you know about them?
Sergio A. I found this website to be a pretty good comparison tool for the different property management applications:
http://www.reviews.com/property-management-software/compare/
The main difference from what I can tell between Rentec and Buildium seems to be that Rentec doesn't have the accounting capabilities that Buildium has. Appfolio seems to be the most complete and it's a great deal if you have 200+ units at $1/unit plus 2 month's cost as a setup fee. The problem is the $200 minimum per month that seems cost prohibitive for a small portfolio.
Patrick L. Ha! Scroll up a bit in this thread, I posted the save review link. I've studied it and it's how I narrowed down our finalists, but I am not sure how current the comparison is. It's certainly a good baseline, but I wouldn't agree that Buildium is better that PropertyWare, which the site seems to suggest. I just signed up for the Rentec free trial (use GOODFORTUNE promocode to not have to put in CC info), so I'm going to see how I like it.
Hey Sergio A.,
Any updates on your quest? I just began a free trial with Buildium, going to speak with a rep this week on initial questions and will update the thread with general feedback.
Thx in advance,
@Cat N. Hi, yeah, we ended up going with Buildium, but it is really a no frills product that I couldn't recommend for anyone looking for more than just online management. It has tenant and owner portals and all, but the platform is very immature. Just to give you one small, but basic example, you can only upload 4 pictures for a unit for listing purposes. Accounting is equAlly frustrating.
We only paid $247 for a year, so if cost is that much of a consideration, then it is worth a look. It cannot be compared to PropertyWare or Appfolio, that's for sure. We did a brief pilot of Rented, but it was missing a must have for u, but I forget what that is anymore.
Being that you are managing 40 units, I would consider $5 a month per unit to be well worth it for an advanced and quality product. You should be able to make your operation more efficient to provide enough of a benefit to pass on some of the cost to tenants.
If I were you, I would get a proposal to both PropertyWare and Appfolio and go with the one that comes out to best meet your needs, at the price point you think it is worth. I was in love with PW and really wanted it to work, but the salesperson I worked with was awful and turned us off.
Let me know if you have any more questions and I can try to help out.
Sergio
Steven Hamilton II While the reports and chart of accounts appear to be good, it's getting the data into buildium that not as intuitive or feature rich as it should be. For example, there is no way to import transactions from a bank and no way to track finances for running a property management company. We had to create a dummy property for the business and add debits and credits as if it were another lease. This is how Buildium told us to do it.
Sergio A.,
I couldn't tell from that side. I'm just saying from an accountants side it is wonderful.
I'm in about the same boat as you, managing 6 properties (12 total units), and looking for a good online property management suite. Why did you eventually rule out RenTec? It is by far the most cost effective and doesn't have any sign up fees. From what I can tell, it's mostly lacking in its online marketing offerings but not much else.
Hi @Ryan Swan we have actually moved on from Buildium and bit the bullet with PropertyWare. It is far more expensive, and complex, but a far more powerful product that has already saved me hours of frustration and time managing our properties. We got to the point where we felt restricted in our ability to grow with Buildium, hence why we moved.
I am a tech guy by day, so I have an easier time figuring out the deep technical components, but I also leverage the more technical aspects of the product, like desktop integration, web site widgets, etc. - these things make it worth my time. I don't recall what our problem with Rentec was, but I remember there being one or two show stoppers for us. I would go through all of the tutorials and try them out for yourself. I can say that one of the most frustrating things with buildium was the way the interface is designed, which is that each field on a page requires a refresh of the whole frame when you change something. It may not seem like much, but it taking 2-5 seconds to get from one field to another becomes a real hassle.
When we signed up for buildium, knowing they were a startup, I was hoping that they would have some rapid development to make their product better, but we were 4 months into using it and only one new feature was implemented, which should have taken a weekend to do. This made me question whether they were a company that I could trust would not make a fool of me in my business.
I can say that migrating to PW was not painless, and it is far from perfect, but just being able to add more than 4 pictures for each property and dump files to the site through windows explorer is huge for us. We are still working out the kinks, but I am a lot more confident in that end of our business than I was before. We are hoping to launch the new service to our tenants by 10/1 - we are using the opportunity to build our new web site along with it. I'll share the new site on BP too :-)
Hope this helps, but let me know if you have any more specific questions.
Hey @Sergio Altomare Thanks for your great reply. I used to be a programmer by day, so it's easy for me to figure out most of these platforms as well. I've been playing around with Buildium and PropertyWare this afternoon. The number of features and options in PropertyWare is pretty staggering and complex. Are you using the Website Solutions offered by PropertyWare? That is an important feature for me, especially getting it for free as part of the monthly subscription. I played around with the website offering in Buildium, which wasn't too bad actually. The big limitation, as you mentioned, is only being able to use 4 photos (how silly is that).
Hi @Ryan Swan, yes, I am, or at least will be using the website solutions that propertyware offers (in the process of building our site now), but let me caution you on a couple of things. First, it isn't free. The tenant and owner portals are $12.50 a month, but aren't really usable without getting their web sites module, which is $50 a month. I believe that the portals alone might be able to be linked to, but there are serious gaps that lead you to adding the sites module. The basic web site templates that come with the $50 are really basic and amateurish. They offer custom templates, but at $1k+ a pop. What you really want to pay the $50 for is to get access to the portal and listing widgets, which you can then use on an external site. Just to give you an idea of the difference between buildium and PW, take a look at our two sites. The first is the buildium site, which is the only site our tenants know about now, and the second is the one we are working on - feel free to provide feedback everyone, but keep in mind that it is still a work in progress. I have some finishing up to do and some kinks to work out, but hope to launch it for next month. I am using godaddy web site builder (another $6 a month) to build it out, mainly because I found it to be far more intuitive than wordpress and the like.
www.hfireholdings.com
Let me know if you have any other questions.
@Sergio Altomare Wow I didn't realize they are so expensive. That definitely tilts the scale in favor of Buildium for me. For the first link, I assume you're just using a redirect from your domain to your page on their domain? I dig the look of your handbuilt site on Godaddy. Will you directly integrate any of the PropertyWare widgets/pages using iFrames, or will you simply have links to those pages on your site?
Buildium has recently removed the quantity and size restrictions on property/unit photos. http://www.buildium.com/news/set-your-rental-property-photos-free/
I've been working with Buildium for a few months now and so far really like it. The biggest selling point is the pricing, which is hundreds of dollars less than other competing platforms.
I signed up with Propertyware about a year ago after having done research on useability to the rest of the software mentioned. I am pretty happy with Propertyware, especially after we have gotten over the learning curve, with the exception that we are having major issues syncing it to Quick Books. Does anyone know any consultants in the SF Bay Area who can help us get over the hump?