Just starting out - is Buildium a good choice?
St. Louis, MO · Member since 2017 · 16 posts · 8 votes
Just starting out - is Buildium a good choice?
Most Popular Reply
Investor / Vendor · San Diego, CA · Member since 2016 · 1k+ posts · 949 votes
9yThese are my notes I've collected for payment systems and PM software based on what people have been saying on this site. I use a PM so I don't have direct experience with this but I gather all notes on software I can find for real estate investing as it helps us develop our software better. Enjoy!
Property Management / Accounting
Quickbooks pro “I'd love to use quickbooks pro but they won't allow me to import expense data, nor allow subdivision of income/expenses as I would like.” ~Brandon Schlichter
“We have been using quickbooks for 12 years. I can tell you what profit I made on each rental, new home construction, rehab, flip. What the money was spent on. A detail P & L per property. It is all you need.” Arlan Potter
“I would recommend QuickBooks Pro on-line version. We set up quickbooks to create invoices for tenants. You don't need to mail them, but you can or you can email them automatically. Then we apply the rent payments against these invoices - Very easy when you hook up QB to your bank account -happens mostly automatic every night. We also enter future bills for taxes and insurance and PM fees etc... The benefit that this can create for you (with a couple downloads to excel) is an ongoing cash flow forecasting tool and a comparison of what you thought your cash flow should be to what it actually was. Plus it alerts you of bills due so everything is getting paid on time and provides you a report of past due rents or past due bills you owe.
Their phone app connects directly to the cloud based software. You can take pictures of receipts (before they are lost) and upload into QB for permanent retention. This process also requires you to select what property the receipt is for, what bank or CC you used and what account it should charge this expense to. So, it is all posted and done at the same time. This is very simple, straight forward and takes only a few moments to do. No more spending hours manually entering into your PM software!
So, you can replace the majority of the features that a PM tool offers you with the added benefit of a great P&L, budget vs. actual and cashflow analysis.” Kevin Schulz
Pros: commonly used accounting software
Cons:2.5 star rating on AmazonCost: QuickBooks Pro 2017 web download 189.99, $45/month for online
Buildium – Property management software
“The current software I use is Buildium.com, the software is one of the more inexpensive softwares to get for your management systems at $40.00 a month up to 200 units and then the price bumps to $200.00 a month. This software has some hidden fees in ACH transfers, which are charged to the property manager for every ACH transfer a total of $.50 and could be more depending on the days it takes to transfer. If you have a lot of properties this can add up quickly!” Peter Mckernan
“I have been using buildium for 2 months now managing 14 units. It's great for costs, budgets and the money management. It allows all units or properties to stay separate or combine by owner. The online rent collection has saved me a ton of time and effort.” Blake Garcia
“I used Buildium and it's a great software for starting out. It just doesn't make sense to pay around $50 a month to manage two units. It wouldn't cost too much more to hire a property manager and they would do all the work for you.
There are services available for screening that won't cost you a dime or require any effort on your part. Free online payment options are available or you could have the tenant set up direct deposit into your account for free. All of these options take less time than it would to set up Buildium, they don't require upkeep, and they won't cost you anything.” Nathan G
Pros: mentioned often on BP so commonly used
Cons: Hidden fees that add up
Cost: Starting at $45 / month, additional fees for features like ePay, tenant screening, 1099 eFiling
Appfolio - Software used for property management
“The next software that is pretty expensive is out of the gate is Appfolio.com, which charges $200.00 fee. This service does not take any money for ACH transfers and the software does charge an extra amount for building a website for your company (this is optional).” Peter Mckernan
“I have to say, they have a lot of cool things, but their accounting system is awful. That alone was a deal breaker. They told me that I would have to manually enter every single charge I do on the credit card for the business manually. If you use quickbooks and download the transactions from your bank, you know how much time that saves you every month. They also force you into working in their molds and expect you to adapt to their software. Most of the time are small compromises, but still annoyances.” Rafael Floresta
“My PM uses Appfolio (which seems, on here, to have it's share of fans and detractors) so it's easier and quicker for me to login and review rent collections, expenses, invoices, etc. I can't speak to maintenance management or anything else like that but now that I've had a PM with a cloud solution that has an owner portal, I don't think I'd want to go back. At the very least it would save you and your partner time with owners who are similar to me calling you up with questions that they could get the answers to online.” Andrew Johnson
“I use Appfolio out of santa barbara, ca its definitely not free and my property mgmt company passes those costs down to me which I think is around 50-60 bucks a month based on number of units under the service.
I am able to see all reports from rent rolls, cash flow statements / trailing 12 month cash flow, tenant ledgers, maintenance requests, dialog between tenants and mgmt staff, resolutions to maintenance requests, move in pictures, move out pictures, or video, and many more features.
What I like is that it allows the vendors to be in a dialog/text/chat box so they are prepared (vendor) prior to job assignment with lockbox codes, scope of work and pictures before they even go to the site so we dont waste time figuring things out and run up a huge $$$ bill for lack of efficiency.” Albert Bui
Pros: mentioned often on BP
Cons: accounting module is very weak, expensive for small operations
Cost: $1 per unit, per month plus an onboarding fee (equal to two months of service). Note that there is a $200 minimum monthly fee. App Folio offers a 15 day free trial.
“Rent Manager has a pretty solid maintenance feature. I can create workorders and assign them individually to specific vendors or handymen. Those guys can then view their individual workorder lists from their mobile devices. When they have completed each workorder they can close them out and add comments detailing their scope of work. I am able to add/remove/edit/reassign workorders anytime.
All closed workorders are saved and can be cross referenced by tenant, property, or unit at any time from anywhere. Very handy.” – Ryan Murdock
“We have been using Rent Manager for years and its works very well for us. It can do as much or as little as you need, it is very affordable, and if you pick the cloud version (what we use) it is very convenient. Owners love having a portal to access their property information and performance in real time. “ Ante Vujic
TenantCloud “I do all of that with TenantCloud and have closed my paid account with AF. I only have 22 properties (all homes), but it works great. I do applications, listings to zillow and others, website, payments, accounting, maintenance, reports and its all free. I am still waiting for the got ya as they are free, but they claim they will always be free for up to 75 units. At SXSW I saw one of their people and they said they will have the ability to get bids on jobs like cleaning, painting and such soon - I assume this is how they make money. “ Ben Travis
Pros: they are new and offer free operations for landlords and tenants
Cons: new company, not mentioned on BP much
Cost: “We get paid by service providers - like insurance companies, plumbing companies, screening companies, A/C and heating, moving companies..... oh you get the idea. TenantCloud is free, but if you decided to use any of the service providers products then you can buy in TenantCloud, which only makes life even more convenient.”
Payment Systems
Problem with Cozy:
Alex Reiz said:
We have been using Cozy for our rental properties in regards to rent collection. Initially, their system was great and would not allow a Tenant to make partial payments; it would only allow a Tenant to pay all or none of the Rent, which was great and was one of the reasons we started using their service. However recently they have changed their system which now allows Tenants to make partial payments, which we do not like at all. There is no option on the receiving side in order to only allow only full payments, we find this to be a waiting nightmare if an eviction ever came up. We are especially unhappy with the service now, considering that was one of their highly touted features when they first started offering it.
Does anyone know of any other online payment service which only allows for full payments or at least allows the Landlord to chose between full and partial payments?
ERentPayment
Clay Owens said: I just set up ERentPayment last week and they give you an option to accept partial payments or not.
“I am playing around with tenant cloud. I like erentpayment and the fees are cheap.” Jim Adrian
Drew Bonnor said, “rentecdirect.com. This software is so affordable and has features like: automatic payments from your tenants bank account, tenant screening, publishing vacancies to sites such as realtor, zillow, Craigslist, etc., and keeps individual spreadsheets for each of your properties. Give it a look!”
Unitdash – “Unitdash is a free to use property management platform for landlords and property managers. We pride ourselves on our users being able to sign up and hit the ground running. There is no required setup or setup fees. We have all of the features you expect and many nice to haves like custom online rental applications, in-app text messaging, integrated postal mail services and more.
Our online tenant portal allows your tenants to pay rent online and submit maintenance requests for free.” According to Anthony Ascuitto the developer
Cons: it’s new and not established.
Their claim: “We make money on online payments, background checks, and other integrated services by charging a small markup. We are not a beta product, we are just able to deliver a similar solution at a much cheaper price!”
@aaron mckenzie
29 Replies
- Investor · Cathedral City, CA · Member since 2014 · 481 posts · 170 votes9y
Buildium is too expensive for your first rental.
- Wilmington, DE · Member since 2015 · 121 posts · 36 votes9y
Check out Cozy. Or if you know how to use Quickbooks that works well too.
- Investor · Riga, n/a · Member since 2015 · 61 posts · 23 votes9y
Buildium would be a bit overkill. Simpler ones like Cozy, Pendo or mobile app like Landlordy or Housters would be also fine for small portfolio.
- Rental Property Investor · Oxford, MI · Member since 2013 · 98 posts · 18 votes9y
I agree with the above. I like buildium but not for 1 to 10 units.
- 9yGita FaustBusiness MemberAccountant · Richboro - Philadelphia, PA · Member since 2008 · 901 posts · 246 votes
@Aaron McKenzie How many units?
- Carolina · Member since 2017 · 519 posts · 222 votes9y
Originally posted by @Gita Faust:
@Aaron McKenzie How many units?
His post says he is buying his first property and plans on five more by the end of the year.
- Investor · Fort Collins, CO · Member since 2017 · 169 posts · 119 votes9y
@Aaron McKenzie I think the first question is what are you looking specifically to have Buildium help you with? Do you need a software just to help you manage your marketing, assist with tenant screening, collect rent online?
I think that depending on what you need out of a software is the right place to start in picking which software is right for you and your needs.
Just a though, let us know and we'll try to help steer you in the right direction.
- Rental Property Investor · St Joseph, MI · Member since 2015 · 302 posts · 106 votes9y
I quit buildium when they nearly doubled in price in a span of about 12 months. I'm currently managing using quickbooks and a spreadsheet. I have 4 rentals, about to add a fifth. I'll worry about upgrading software when I have over ten units. Until then its not worth it to me.
- 9yStephanie MedellinBusiness MemberMortgage Broker · CA · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 642 votes
@Nathan Waters How much were the Buildium fees?
Stephanie Medellin, Loan Factory58 Reviews - Rental Property Investor · St Joseph, MI · Member since 2015 · 302 posts · 106 votes9y
1 to 40 units was $40 per month when I first looked into them. Then they changed their lowest tier package to 1 to 60 units for $60 per month. About 3 months ago they raised the 1 to 60 units to $75 per month. The benefit that I did like was that tenant screening background checks were only $15 per person. I know the applicant pays it, but it can be a steep fee if there are 2 adults in the house and some people are charging $35 per person. But unless you are listing a new rental each month, the price didn't make sense.
- 9yStephanie MedellinBusiness MemberMortgage Broker · CA · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 642 votes
Also do they have a feature where potential tenants can go online or you can send them a link to pay / apply for screening? What do you see as far as the credit report results? Do you get a score and full report or just a recommendation depending on your criteria?
Stephanie Medellin, Loan Factory58 Reviews - Rental Property Investor · St Joseph, MI · Member since 2015 · 302 posts · 106 votes9y
I just went to unitdash and signed up for a free account. I was having trouble setting things up though. At first glance, it looks really user friendly but once I started trying to add my houses and tenants, it seemed very glitch. Have you or anyone else here experienced issues? Maybe I'm just not doing something right, but it wasn't saving my properties once after I input all the info.
- Real Estate Investor · Tinton Falls, NJ · Member since 2017 · 84 posts · 11 votes9y
@Nathan Waters No I have not. I believe you cannot save unless all of the required fields are filled in.
- Rental Property Investor · St Joseph, MI · Member since 2015 · 302 posts · 106 votes9y
Just emailed you my number. I want to get a good overview of the site. I like the look and feel of it. I just want to make sure it functions before I start transitioning everything over to it.
- Rental Property Investor · St Joseph, MI · Member since 2015 · 302 posts · 106 votes9y
Looks like an IE issue. The site works fine on chrome. Thanks for taking the time to walk me through it.
- Real Estate Investor · Tinton Falls, NJ · Member since 2017 · 84 posts · 11 votes9y
Not a problem! I'm happy everything is working well for you.
- Real Estate Agent · Southington, CT · Member since 2008 · 5k+ posts · 3k+ votes9y
As you scale up buildium is a great software to use. We use it for our portfolio up here in CT and have had good experiences. They have very good customer service people and provide tutorial videos to answer a lot of the basic questions you may have while using it.
- 9yShea SpinelliPro MemberRental Property Investor · Tyler, TX · Member since 2016 · 198 posts · 89 votes
My wife and I are closing on our first property. There are 15 units, the prior owner used 3 for storage and 12 are leased. We'll rehab and rent the storage units once we own them. They all need new leases, which is good. We'll have our leases in place from the go, but have paying tenants (they've been in place for years). I've been researching the best site to keep track of expenses, performance and be able to turn all this over to my accountant at least quarterly. We're opening a business account with Chase, they offer ACH for a small fee already. But, which management/bookkeeping software is best for the expenses, performance, and rent roll? We want something user friendly, yet has everything we need. It seems that Cozy may be the way to go. Buildium may be too much. I have heard from clients that Quickbooks can be tough to learn/navigate, but that it may be the best. Seems like everyone has a different opinion of which way to go.
- Investor / Vendor · San Diego, CA · Member since 2016 · 1k+ posts · 949 votes9y
These are my notes I've collected for payment systems and PM software based on what people have been saying on this site. I use a PM so I don't have direct experience with this but I gather all notes on software I can find for real estate investing as it helps us develop our software better. Enjoy!
Property Management / Accounting
Quickbooks pro “I'd love to use quickbooks pro but they won't allow me to import expense data, nor allow subdivision of income/expenses as I would like.” ~Brandon Schlichter
“We have been using quickbooks for 12 years. I can tell you what profit I made on each rental, new home construction, rehab, flip. What the money was spent on. A detail P & L per property. It is all you need.” Arlan Potter
“I would recommend QuickBooks Pro on-line version. We set up quickbooks to create invoices for tenants. You don't need to mail them, but you can or you can email them automatically. Then we apply the rent payments against these invoices - Very easy when you hook up QB to your bank account -happens mostly automatic every night. We also enter future bills for taxes and insurance and PM fees etc... The benefit that this can create for you (with a couple downloads to excel) is an ongoing cash flow forecasting tool and a comparison of what you thought your cash flow should be to what it actually was. Plus it alerts you of bills due so everything is getting paid on time and provides you a report of past due rents or past due bills you owe.Their phone app connects directly to the cloud based software. You can take pictures of receipts (before they are lost) and upload into QB for permanent retention. This process also requires you to select what property the receipt is for, what bank or CC you used and what account it should charge this expense to. So, it is all posted and done at the same time. This is very simple, straight forward and takes only a few moments to do. No more spending hours manually entering into your PM software!
So, you can replace the majority of the features that a PM tool offers you with the added benefit of a great P&L, budget vs. actual and cashflow analysis.” Kevin Schulz
Pros: commonly used accounting software
Cons:2.5 star rating on AmazonCost: QuickBooks Pro 2017 web download 189.99, $45/month for onlineBuildium – Property management software
“The current software I use is Buildium.com, the software is one of the more inexpensive softwares to get for your management systems at $40.00 a month up to 200 units and then the price bumps to $200.00 a month. This software has some hidden fees in ACH transfers, which are charged to the property manager for every ACH transfer a total of $.50 and could be more depending on the days it takes to transfer. If you have a lot of properties this can add up quickly!” Peter Mckernan
“I have been using buildium for 2 months now managing 14 units. It's great for costs, budgets and the money management. It allows all units or properties to stay separate or combine by owner. The online rent collection has saved me a ton of time and effort.” Blake Garcia
“I used Buildium and it's a great software for starting out. It just doesn't make sense to pay around $50 a month to manage two units. It wouldn't cost too much more to hire a property manager and they would do all the work for you.There are services available for screening that won't cost you a dime or require any effort on your part. Free online payment options are available or you could have the tenant set up direct deposit into your account for free. All of these options take less time than it would to set up Buildium, they don't require upkeep, and they won't cost you anything.” Nathan G
Pros: mentioned often on BP so commonly used
Cons: Hidden fees that add up
Cost: Starting at $45 / month, additional fees for features like ePay, tenant screening, 1099 eFilingAppfolio - Software used for property management
“The next software that is pretty expensive is out of the gate is Appfolio.com, which charges $200.00 fee. This service does not take any money for ACH transfers and the software does charge an extra amount for building a website for your company (this is optional).” Peter Mckernan
“I have to say, they have a lot of cool things, but their accounting system is awful. That alone was a deal breaker. They told me that I would have to manually enter every single charge I do on the credit card for the business manually. If you use quickbooks and download the transactions from your bank, you know how much time that saves you every month. They also force you into working in their molds and expect you to adapt to their software. Most of the time are small compromises, but still annoyances.” Rafael Floresta“My PM uses Appfolio (which seems, on here, to have it's share of fans and detractors) so it's easier and quicker for me to login and review rent collections, expenses, invoices, etc. I can't speak to maintenance management or anything else like that but now that I've had a PM with a cloud solution that has an owner portal, I don't think I'd want to go back. At the very least it would save you and your partner time with owners who are similar to me calling you up with questions that they could get the answers to online.” Andrew Johnson
“I use Appfolio out of santa barbara, ca its definitely not free and my property mgmt company passes those costs down to me which I think is around 50-60 bucks a month based on number of units under the service.I am able to see all reports from rent rolls, cash flow statements / trailing 12 month cash flow, tenant ledgers, maintenance requests, dialog between tenants and mgmt staff, resolutions to maintenance requests, move in pictures, move out pictures, or video, and many more features.
What I like is that it allows the vendors to be in a dialog/text/chat box so they are prepared (vendor) prior to job assignment with lockbox codes, scope of work and pictures before they even go to the site so we dont waste time figuring things out and run up a huge $$$ bill for lack of efficiency.” Albert Bui
Pros: mentioned often on BP
Cons: accounting module is very weak, expensive for small operations
Cost: $1 per unit, per month plus an onboarding fee (equal to two months of service). Note that there is a $200 minimum monthly fee. App Folio offers a 15 day free trial.
“Rent Manager has a pretty solid maintenance feature. I can create workorders and assign them individually to specific vendors or handymen. Those guys can then view their individual workorder lists from their mobile devices. When they have completed each workorder they can close them out and add comments detailing their scope of work. I am able to add/remove/edit/reassign workorders anytime.All closed workorders are saved and can be cross referenced by tenant, property, or unit at any time from anywhere. Very handy.” – Ryan Murdock
“We have been using Rent Manager for years and its works very well for us. It can do as much or as little as you need, it is very affordable, and if you pick the cloud version (what we use) it is very convenient. Owners love having a portal to access their property information and performance in real time. “ Ante VujicTenantCloud “I do all of that with TenantCloud and have closed my paid account with AF. I only have 22 properties (all homes), but it works great. I do applications, listings to zillow and others, website, payments, accounting, maintenance, reports and its all free. I am still waiting for the got ya as they are free, but they claim they will always be free for up to 75 units. At SXSW I saw one of their people and they said they will have the ability to get bids on jobs like cleaning, painting and such soon - I assume this is how they make money. “ Ben Travis
Pros: they are new and offer free operations for landlords and tenants
Cons: new company, not mentioned on BP much
Cost: “We get paid by service providers - like insurance companies, plumbing companies, screening companies, A/C and heating, moving companies..... oh you get the idea. TenantCloud is free, but if you decided to use any of the service providers products then you can buy in TenantCloud, which only makes life even more convenient.”Payment Systems
Problem with Cozy:
Alex Reiz said:
We have been using Cozy for our rental properties in regards to rent collection. Initially, their system was great and would not allow a Tenant to make partial payments; it would only allow a Tenant to pay all or none of the Rent, which was great and was one of the reasons we started using their service. However recently they have changed their system which now allows Tenants to make partial payments, which we do not like at all. There is no option on the receiving side in order to only allow only full payments, we find this to be a waiting nightmare if an eviction ever came up. We are especially unhappy with the service now, considering that was one of their highly touted features when they first started offering it.
Does anyone know of any other online payment service which only allows for full payments or at least allows the Landlord to chose between full and partial payments?
ERentPayment
Clay Owens said: I just set up ERentPayment last week and they give you an option to accept partial payments or not.
“I am playing around with tenant cloud. I like erentpayment and the fees are cheap.” Jim AdrianDrew Bonnor said, “rentecdirect.com. This software is so affordable and has features like: automatic payments from your tenants bank account, tenant screening, publishing vacancies to sites such as realtor, zillow, Craigslist, etc., and keeps individual spreadsheets for each of your properties. Give it a look!”
Unitdash – “Unitdash is a free to use property management platform for landlords and property managers. We pride ourselves on our users being able to sign up and hit the ground running. There is no required setup or setup fees. We have all of the features you expect and many nice to haves like custom online rental applications, in-app text messaging, integrated postal mail services and more.
Our online tenant portal allows your tenants to pay rent online and submit maintenance requests for free.” According to Anthony Ascuitto the developer
Cons: it’s new and not established.
Their claim: “We make money on online payments, background checks, and other integrated services by charging a small markup. We are not a beta product, we are just able to deliver a similar solution at a much cheaper price!”
@aaron mckenzie
- 9yShea SpinelliPro MemberRental Property Investor · Tyler, TX · Member since 2016 · 198 posts · 89 votes
@Ray Lai this is great! Thank you for sharing your notes with me. This was a lot of good info!
- Investor / Vendor · San Diego, CA · Member since 2016 · 1k+ posts · 949 votes9y
You're welcome @Shea Spinelli, glad to help. Hope you and @Aaron McKenzie benefit from it :)
- 9yVarinder KumarPro MemberReal Estate Broker · LA & ORANGE COUNTY CA -Multi Family · Member since 2016 · 374 posts · 132 votes
Hey Aaron,
I self manage my own SFR also and I do not use any software etc. You dont need it man to be honest.
- Investor / Vendor · San Diego, CA · Member since 2016 · 1k+ posts · 949 votes9y
Did you even read his post? He plans on paying 5 more and scaling. You need software and systems to scale properly. Doing it, poor man's style, is not possible time-wise and accuracy wise when you have more than 1 property. Even with 1 property, if you use good software it saves you time. Time is money (if you know how to convert it).
- Investor · Bensalem, PA · Member since 2011 · 146 posts · 93 votes9y
@Ray Lai Wow, just wow man. Thank you for that breakdown of all the different options. I know it helped me. That was excellent info.
- Investor / Real Estate Agent · Oklahoma City, OK · Member since 2015 · 324 posts · 157 votes9y
You definitely don't need any property management software for that small of a portfolio. It would be worth it if you had over 50... But until then just use Microsoft office, I.e. Excel and word and quick books for accounting purposes and save the money to put towards the acquisition of more properties.
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