Property Management software - Buildium vs. Cozy

[Roy Copeland]

My wife and I have a portfolio of 4 properties (6 units) and we are preparing to purchase software to self manage. We have played around with the trial period for Buildium and explored Cozy.

Does anyone have experience with both or either one? What would any of you recommend? The leasing features for each seem similar as do the maintenance features. The tenant portal and vendor aspects of Buildium seems to have more reporting features. Is it worth it to pay for Buildium? I

Any feedback would be appreciated. Thank you!

[Laura Williams]

@Roy Copeland

I don't have any experience with Buildium but I do use Cozy for collecting rent from tenants and dealing with maintenance request and can tell you that tenants really seem to like Cozy and the feedback has been that it's very easy and user friendly. It's also easy to keep track of who has paid and who hasn't ...tenants can put rent on credit cards which is nice. You can give tenants rent credits or charges &/or charge automatic late fees through Cozy...it sends them reminder emails that rent is due etc etc. 

I also have used Tenant Cloud and Stessa (both free) and really like some of their features as well. You can collect rent on Tenant Cloud also but they charge a small monthly fee & not as user friendly as Cozy. Tenant Cloud is good for listing places for rent and taking rental applications as it has a feature where you can blast a rental listing out to all the major rental sites with one touch of a button and it also has decent accounting features and spreadsheets. 

But for accounting and keeping track of all income/expenses for taxes the winner in my opinion is definitely Stessa. You can take a photo of receipts and it scans automatically and it has great charts to see how well your portfolio is doing and your return on investment ...it sends reminders when your insurance policies are coming due, keeps track of mortgages. 

In my opinion I don't think with 4-6 properties you really need to spend money on accounting software ..unless you're planning on doing property mngt professionally for others. There's some great free websites out there that are awesome.