Buildium reduced my workload by approximately a factor of 5!

Overall, my experience has been fantastic. I took my time onboarding over a period of about 3 months, then I ran the software concurrent to QuickBooks for 2 months, cutting Quickbooks off on Jan 1 and using Buildium exclusively.

Pros

Residents having 24/7 access to their account to make payments and submit requests is a huge time saver. Requests go to the right place automatically and payments are deposited into the proper account. Accounting is a breeze since it is all done online - reconciliations take no time at all!

Cons

I wish it were easier to add residents to leases that have already been signed and to assign leases mid-lease.

Easy to use becoming more Robust

Been using Buildium for about 6 years. We have been able to manage properties much more effeciently and thoroughly. Tenants now are more interactive and easier to recieve payments and get work orders done, so much less deferred maintenance. The software is intuitive and pretty easy to use. When we have needed Customer support there has typically been a live person that is very helpful.

Pros

The software is pretty easy to use, intuitive. Buildium does not really encourage integration with other Apps easily.

Cons

That Tenants can't do Independent Home inspections. OR that We can't tie another software into Buildium easily to allow us to customize a few things.

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.

I Love Buidium!

Pros

This software is extremely easy to use. In addition to using this program now for my personal rental properties, I also used this when I was previously employed as a Rental Property Mgr. I managed 60 properties. It save me a tremendous amount of time and assisted me in organizing what I needed to do on a daily basis. I absolutely love this software and highly recommend using Buildium for managing a rental property portfolio of ay size.

Cons

The only thing I can think of that I did not care for was the constant reminder to the tenants about their insurance. When it went into effect, all tenants received the notice. I don't recall recall or seeing an opt out to manage this. It was difficult time-wise to update all of the tenants at one time. Also you have to update each tenant. It would be nice if you could combine the tenants. I required additional type of coverages, ie. adding mgmt co/owner as an additional interested party and water back-up coverage. I recommend adding a field to show so you know if the tenant's policy is updated or not.