Buildium: Stand Alone Property Management Software?

[Zachary C.]

Hello Property Managers and Investors,

I would like to start a productive little discussion on Buildium. The other day I briefly looked over the Buildium account of a PM company that has been in business for quite some time. They only utilize certain features of Buildium and I have seen that some others do that as well, supplementing it with Quickbooks, Quicken, etc. If you have experience with Buildium I would love to hear about it, and I am sure others would as well; in-fact if you are interested in seeing some quality answers why don't you vote up this topic.

First, if you don't mind, share a little info to help put your experience with Buildium into perspective; like how long you have used it, around how many doors do you manage with it (your investments, other people investments, or both?), do you use it standing alone or coupled with other platforms (if you started one way and switched, why? which direction?). This should help those (like me) trying to learn about Buildium put your experience and advice into perspective and create a productive environment.

Some specific points:

1. I have seen pretty consistent views that Buildium had good tools and systems for managing the different properties tenants and owners. Things like your screenings, online payments and deposits, lease/rental agreements, etc. One of the area that I have seen a much bigger split in views is accounting. What is your take on the accounting features of Buildium? Is it good for tracking the tenant and owner financial data? How about your financial data as the Property Manager? Can you pull the necessary numbers and/or reports from Buildium that you and your owners will need come tax season to hand off to your tax professional?

2. Aside from the financial reports, how is Buildium for tracking the progress of your company? Are there easy ways to track and view vital information? For instance can you view reports with average data from all of your properties and then also view that same information for individual properties for performance comparisons; like average time between tenants (vacancy rates), avg. maintenance cost, avg. length of stay, and other data that might help you determine a list of top to bottom performers and which you might consider letting go? How about other areas like the average time an owner stays with your management services, how many doors you are adding versus how many you are loosing? If you manage other people properties does Buildium provide the stats that prospective clients typically ask?

3. If there are features that you really love or hate about Buildium, and you didn't already discuss them, please share those with us as well.

Thank you,

[Kari Miller]

Originally posted by @Zachary C.:

@Kari Miller 

Thanks, I assume you are with Rent Manager. Does that program have any of the analyzing features I discussed in the opening of this post (point 2)?

 Hi Zachary,

Yes, I am a Rent Manager employee and can gladly answer your questions.

We actually have over 250 reports readily available in Rent Manager. We also have report writer capabilities so if we do not cover a specific report you are looking for, you are able to design the report on your own or have someone in our professional services team design and build the report for you. You can also copy our reports and tweak them for your needs or design wants. In point 2, I see you are looking more for quick reference stats, which you should be able to create using our report writer tool.

[Zachary C.]

Thanks @Kari Miller

[Chris Sukala]

Zachary C. We actually just signed up yesterday to start using them. We have 6 doors right now and wanting to expand. I want something all in one where I can receive ACHs and send out my bills to vendors. This seems to have what I am looking for. If you pay in full you receive 10% off. So we paid about 480ish for the year. I'll let you know how it goes when we start setting it up.

[Zachary C.]

Thanks @Chris Sukala, I look forward to it

[Ben Travis]

I haven't used it for a little of a year, as I have been using TenantCloud, but my costs for Buildium were only about $60 a month total including payment fees (I have about 20 homes.) We are a small group and it worked great.  The Buildium reports did leave much to be desired, but again that was over a year ago.  I have to agree that it has many features, so if you are looking to expand into a larger management company it can support you and compared to some of the others mentioned like Yardi - it's a bargain.  Good luck.  

[Zachary C.]

How is TenantCloud, is it similar? Thanks @Ben Travis

[Ben Travis]

@Zachary C. depends on the operation. I am one person shop, so organizing the tenants and their payments along with the maintenance is my key focus. TenantCloud does this great with invoicing, late fees and accounting all built-in and included. They say they are about to add e-signature for lease signing and then it will do everything the others do. 

If you have a lot of employees and focus on multi-family than paying for a Buildium type service might be a better fit. Hope that helps. 

[Zachary C.]

Ya, thanks @Ben Travis

[Adam Jernow]

Hi All,

I'm a long time Buildium user. Several hundred units. 

The software is good overall but the accounting is week for institutions. There have been issues with auto reconciliation that take Buildium months to resolve. It's not a feature everyone uses but it's a real time saver. You should check that out if you haven't.

The bigger issue that I'm tackling now relates to trial balances. Buildium displays trial balances incorrectly and the bigger issue is that they seem unwilling to repair their software code to remedy the problem.

So... I'm looking into other management software. I'll start a separate thread because although plenty of people are using Rentecdirect.com or Cozy, I need something more robust.

[Zalman E.]

Thanks! We are also currently trying to find a more robust program, specifically for better accounting.

As we are considering using Buildium for our rental properties, can you please elaborate on the nature of the issue with displaying trial balances and other accounting shortfalls, so our bookkeeper can know if it'll be a dealbreaker?

I presume that you are using Buildium in the NYC market. Can I ask you some questions about that?

How well does Buildium handle DHCR limits, MCI, Sec 8 payments Etc?
Do you get a significant amount of paper checks, and what is your workflow for getting them into Buildium's system?
Our current software supports direct check scanning into the ledgers and bank in one step, and I'd like to know how much it would hurt to lose that feature...

Thanks in advance!!

[Nathan Gesner]

@Zachary C. what is the purpose of your question? You say you recently saw someone using Buildium but I can tell from your web site that you already use Buildium yourself. That makes me suspicious.

I used Buildium for two years. It was the cheapest option out there at the time. I started out with 110 rentals and grew to about 180 before I decided to upgrade to something more robust.

Buildium is easy to learn and - in my opinion - the best option for a mid-size company. If you are managing for yourself and have fewer than 25 units, a spreadsheet should be sufficient. Build a tab for each property that tracks tenant name and contact information, security deposit, and a running ledger of charges and payments. The data from each tab can be combined onto a master tab for tracking overall income and other data. You can also have a maintenance tab for tracking work orders.

You can spend all your time crunching numbers on vacancy rates, average maintenance costs, turnover costs, etc., but it's a complete waste of time in my opinion. With fewer than 50 units in your portfolio, you should be able to easily identify the bad performers off the top of your head. I manage 230 units right now and within five minutes I could list the 20% that produce the most work and the least return.

[Zachary C.]

@Nathan Gesner I think the question was thoroughly articulated when I wrote it 5 months ago; back before I was using Buildium.

[Zalman E.]

@Nathan Gesner, Can I ask you when this was, what prompted you to change systems, and what system you settled on using?

We are considering them for a larger portfolio than what you had and would like to know what to ask them when they demonstrate the software to us.

Thanks in advance!

[Todd Dexheimer]

@Brian Adams of the 3 programs you mentioned which one do you use? I have around 150 units and looking to grow, so I want something that works for 500+ units

[Nathan Gesner]

I used Buildium from 2010 until the end of 2013. There were certain tasks that required too many steps and some things the software couldn't track for me.

I switched to Propertyware in January 2014. It's far more robust, though I won't say it's perfect.  For example, paying owners now takes less time with 230 units than it did under Buildium with 180 units. I won't bore you with details but Propertyware can do much, much more for a larger company than Buildium could. I still think Buildium is the best solution for around 100 units.

Even after using Buildium for three years, Propertyware was a steep learning curve and there are many features we still don't use.

[Brian Adams]

@Todd Dexheimer I buy 100+ unit deals and my third party property managers use OneSite. The program isn't cheap.

[Zalman E.]

Originally posted by @Brian Adams:

@Todd Dexheimer I buy 100+ unit deals and my third party property managers use OneSite. The program isn't cheap.

Do you know what it offers them that the other, far cheaper options do not?

I'm looking into both, but I can't find any real standout features listed on RealPage's site that justify their asking price over Buildium and the like, even for very large properties...

Any insight would be appreciated.