Buildium no longer syndicating (with out fees)?

[Paul DeSilva]

Hey BP,

Fortunately we have not had any vacancies in several months, but the other day one of our tenants who is getting relocated by the Army said that they would be moving. So we went to list the unit to our website and syndicate to several other sites when a notification popped up on Buildium and said that they are no longer able to directly syndicate to Apartments.com ( we will have to list with them directly) and their affiliates. Also that we would have to pay (per days on market) to list with the Zillow group ( Zillow, Trulia and Hot Pads). This really takes away the attractiveness of the "one stop shop" of Buildium, we don't need them for bookkeeping we use QuickBooks, they are really just somewhere that we were able to quickly list units and keep track of tenant files.  Any info, feedback or experiences on this would be greatly appreciated. Are the other platforms I.e. Cozy, Appfolio, Stessa all in the same circumstances? 

[Nathan Gesner]

@Paul DeSilva this is happening with all the software providers. I use Propertyware and ShowMojo, both of which syndicate to dozens of websites. They no longer syndicate to Zillow but it's not their fault. Zillow is getting too big for their britches and needs to increase income, so they now charge $10 per listing per week to advertise on their website.

I stopped syndicating to Zillow and guess what happened? My leads came in from other sources! I haven't slowed down a bit and I'm at 400 units with somewhere around 15 rentals marketed at any given time. When Zillow shuts down, others pick up the slack.

As for software, Buildium is decent for getting started but there are probably free/cheap options like Cozy, TenantCloud, and others. I personally know TenantCloud can handle marketing syndication, maintenance tracking, online payments, and much more. Since you're already using QB to track finances, I don't know why you can't switch to a cheap alternative like TenantCloud for $10 - $15 a month.