Propertyware, Buildium, etc...

[Tony M]

Anyone having any recent experience with any of these programs? I'm testing both right now to manage my 42 units. I did a search and it seems like the last few topics on the subject are pretty dated.

Thanks in advance!

[Webster King]

Hey Tony,
Thanks for taking the time to write this. I was looking at both products too and thought I would chime in on the matter. I signed up for Buildium at first. The big reason was price. It was cheap and I thought it would do the trick. Plus, like you I wanted the web based solution since I have properties in 7 cities and I tend ot work from all over the place. After trying Buildium for 3 months, I finally gave up and took another look at Propertyware. Here's what I found:

1. Propertyware doesn't require QuickBooks. They have the full General Ledger accounting system. They have a check writer, bank reconciliation, AR, AP, etc. I have used it now for 3 months and I am very impressed. Much each to use than Buildium which I found to be confusing. But, worse they had errors in their reports.

2. Your second point about tenant access was huge for me. The two products are very different here. Propertyware's Portals are very powerful. I have 30% of my tenants paying me electronically and they have other great tools for communicating with them online too. Advantage Propertyware here for sure.

3. Propertyware gives you many Marketing tools that Buildium does not. The Portals are more professional and have great tools for me to list my vacancies on my site and automatically publish them to a variety of different sites. Especially love the prospect management tools here.

4. Reports and Dashboard. This was a big deal for me and the reporting platform at Propertyware is just much better. There is so much you can do with it that it is really amazing. They also have tons of forms backed into the solution for communicating with tenants.

I found Propertyware incredibly easy to use and the customer support is extremely helpful. I am paying $150/month and get much more value than I ever expected. Especially if you consider that I was paying $50 month to host my website somewhere else and another $75/month for posting my vacancies.

Hope this was helpful. Best of luck!