We deferred the decision to adopt Buildium for 10 years too long

Our biggest challenge was gathering all of our data as it was stored in numerous systems. Buildium's deployment staff was excellent in helping us to get off the ground. We were live within 30 days of starting and have continued to add functionality throughout the year.

Pros

We have been live for just over a year now. We use the applications, electronic rent collection (epay), accounting, Resident Center, and task tracking (maintenance) features of Buildium. Their automation has saved us so much time and money.

Cons

Wishlist rather than cons as the system is very good: 1) multiple applications would be good based on the type of property rather than being limited to just 1 application, 2) the ability to move a tenant out and move a new tenant in on the same day, 3) better tenant communications (emailing and messaging) above and beyond what is built-in, we adopted Follow-up Boss for this, 4) API should be open to Zapier

The Best PM Software Solution

We have enlarged our client base with Buildium's features thanks to their focus on speed and accuracy with payments, reporting, and accounting ease.

Pros

Online payments are a game-changer. Owner/tenant/HOA access allows each respective person the ability to view important reports and property status in real-time. The property database is completely searchable from anywhere on the site.

Cons

The task feature is a bit wanting. It's good for what it is, but dedicated project management or to-do list applications work just as well or better in most cases.

We've been using Buildium for about 2 years, long enough to get a good feel for its strengths and weaknesses. My overall impression is that this is a good product for small to medium size residential property management firms (10-100 units). If you have fewer than 10, this product is overkill. If more than 100, you'll probably find it too simplistic. The product is geared to residential properties and residential associations. Managing commercial portfolios with it can be difficult. The Good: Accounting functionality is pretty strong. GL, AR, AP, budgets and property ledgers are handled seamlessly. Very easy to use even for beginners. I like the global search functionality. You can pretty much find anything using it without navigating through the menus. Pricing is relatively inexpensive. It's cloud-based, so you don't have to maintain any software on your own computers. You can access it anywhere with a web browser. Some people see this as a negative, but we've not had any issues with Buildium being down unexpectedly. The scheduled maintenance times are generally late at night. Support is good if you're having problems with the standard functionality. In general I would say the support staff understands their product well. And you can get them on the phone to explain things. That's becoming less common with companies today. Document management is hit & miss. I love that I can post a PDF receipt for every expense right there in the ledger. However, documents at the property- or owner level are less helpful. It's just one big bucket per property or owner. Having a folder structure would be a big help. (Not there today.) Buildium offers tenant bill-pay through an online portal for rent payments, and also outbound electronic payments to property owners. It's done through a 3rd party vendor and at additional cost. This is a double-edged sword. Very convenient; it makes the bookkeeping entries for you automatically. But if you're doing outbound payments, make sure to treat it just like an online banking account (long passwords, be careful of who in your office has access to it, etc.) Allowing for extra security questions or letting users limit the IP addresses that have this outbound payment functionality would be helpful. The Bad: As noted, you'll get frustrated if you're trying to use this for commercial properties. The designers make assumptions that you're doing residential. CRM functionality is practically non-existent. This is an accounting package. They do have some decent (and customizable) postal-mail templates and can do mail-merge so you can send notices to tenants and owners. But this does not extend to email. You'll need another product to do CRM and do double data entry between systems. There is no integration layer or API, so no chance of integrating this with your CRM system or generating custom reports. The reports, while nice-looking, are as-is and not customizable in any way. You're stuck with what they give you. They make some odd design decisions sometimes. For example, you can't generate an association owner invoice for an owner who lives someplace other than the managed property. The invoice is always addressed to the managed property, even if you entered a different mailing address for the owner, as if an association owner would never rent out the property. These types of oddities abound, and the product support folks will never acknowledge it as a problem. They'll tell you to fill out an enhancement request, which may be considered for implementation someday, or may not. You'll never know. Providing a way to customize reports or providing an API would help in this area. In Summary: Buildium is good at what it does, but what it does is pretty limited. You will likely be happy if you're in their demographic sweet spot (10-100 residential units). It's cheap enough to sign up and try it out to see if it's right for you. If you manage commercial properties, have a very large or complex portfolio, or need integrated CRM capabilities, it's probably not for you.

Great product for property management

Buildium has been great for property management. Online applications/background checks, epay, and the resident portal have proven to be daily uses in our business. 10 out of 10 would recommend.

Pros

epay. It's worth it for that. To be able to get paid online seemlessly is great. Communication being automated around payment is wonderful, too -- specifically, the lease ledger, automating late fees, and payment reminders.

Cons

We list properties for rent that do not have bed/baths on them - specifically, RV pad sites and commercial lots. Buildium does not allow us to list properties without the bed/bath requirement. This becomes confusing to prospective tenants when these listings are on our website and published elsewhere.

A Good program getting better

A much better system than using multiple programs for individual aspects. Very geared toward rental management and Condos or HOAs seem after-thoughts often.

Pros

The ability for Boards to interact with management and for owners to be easily communicated with are some of the best features with this program. It's mostly all integrated!

Cons

Updates are usually bumpy when implemented, causing a slow down in service. Some features, which seem to be common sense are still in development stages. Tracking of tasks in infancy yet. Can send emails but not receive them through the system, causing us to still have to use another program.