Looking for a simple yet efficient key for your rental properties without feeling overwhelmed with management tasks? Buildium is one of the solutions you can consider, and it offers your company a lot for the money.
Buildium is a cloud-based software designed by property managers for property managers or real estate investors to gain control over property management tasks from tip to toe.
This online service can handle every aspect of your business, even if it’s about accounting, leasing, operation or maintenance requests.
What Is Buildium?
Buildium is a good pick for any property manager who struggles to maintain daily property management responsibilities.
The more things you can digitize and simplify, the more energy you free up while reducing stress as well. Buildium moves property managers into an environment that is more fully digitized, bringing together their tenants with world-class tools.
When Buildium collects more data about your properties, its reports become more useful and allow you to make informed and informed decisions about your property management business.
Data-driven analytics are a powerful way to spot trends, and without automated data collection, they would be nearly impossible to spot.
The software can be used by residential managers and associations to improve cycles of opening, renting and maintaining properties.
It also makes rent payments easier and alerts users automatically if payments are late. Being a cloud-based framework, it does not require additional software or hardware installation, it can be easily accessed from any computer with an internet connection.
Who Needs Buildium?
You’re a potential Buildium user if you’re suited to one of two categories: you’re thinking of kicking off a property management business (or improving/developing the one you already have) or you already own a few rental properties and need an easier way of managing them.
Property managers are often overpowered by the workload, as work is about a lot more than rent collection. The software reduces all of the repetitive tasks you will face and allows you to focus more on new business openings rather than investing all of your energy in routine operational work.
If you haven’t considered using a platform like Buildium, now is the time to start. While Buildium may or may not be the correct fit for your company, using an automated platform is probably one of the best ways to cut down on your stress, and boost your overall level of efficiency.
How Does it Work?
You’ve definitely heard the term ‘cloud’ at least once as we’re living in the internet era and technology takes control almost everything. Being a cloud-based system allows Buildium to own a number of powerful features.
Buildium users can easily access it via a browser from anywhere with no need for extra hardware or software installation. This means no need to invest in new computers or deal with tech support on your own.
By taking care of the hard work, Buildium helps cut down the workload and allows property managers to concentrate more on new business opportunities rather than spending their entire time on daily administrative duties.
Buildium provides a variety of features to optimize every step of the way the property maintenance process, including:
Leasing
You can start using the Buildium app with the leasing process. Like Yahoo and Craigslist syndication, Buildium manages the rental property list, after this, you can take applications and screen tenants using the software. The app will also enable the lease’s e-signing. In case you don’t have a website yet, Buildium can help you build your own website.
Screening is a process for landlords to protect their properties and income that is often overlooked, but very important. The Buildium screener gives you access to a record of credit, criminal convictions, and past evictions, so you know if a candidate is someone you really want to move into your house.
- Strength: Buildium blows out all the messy and annoying stuff you had to deal with paperwork. You can easily get your work done using a smartphone or tablet.
- Weakness: It’s not easy for beginning users to enter data correctly but the problem is quickly solved with Buildium’s customer agents.
Accounting
Accounting is always of the pain in the ass when you are a business owner. Accounting, bookkeeping, and taxes represent a serious workload you have to deal with. Luckily Buildium can have that covered.
Buildium accounting feature was set up specifically for property managers to ensure their property is working smoothly with a detailed report. You don’t need to worry about accounting backgrounds as the software performs accounting and financial reporting at the property and company level, handles rent payments and bills and enables you to e-file 1099s for seller payments.
Each batch costs you $25 and each mail costs $3.
The ability to create work orders is another great feature, then convert them into bills and then pay them online.
- Strength: Accounting feature is pretty affordable and helpful. You can save much more money with Buildium compared to doing this yourself and paying at least $40-50 or even more when your accountant does it.
Operations
Operations are a big deal of any property management system but Buildium takes this feature in another level and masters the game by providing an online portal for owners and residents to manage documents, requests for maintenance, and payments. Owners can view web-based financial reporting, or see the same data on a mobile device.
Maintenance requests are among the largest landlord nightmares, especially as they usually appear to come in the form of an emergency repair that is needed on Thanksgiving or New Year’s Eve. With Buildium, you can receive requests for maintenance, generate work orders and send requests directly from the owner dashboard to vendors.
This will knock down your day-to-day workload, as your clients and vendors have a direct line of communication, without a lot of headaches for you.
Buildium partnered with HappyCo and evolved into the Happy Inspector unit. Your Buildium assets and data will synchronize automatically with Happy Inspector so you don’t have to think twice when setting up anything.
- Strength: Without this feature, Buildium is not half as good. You can save your time, plus, the problem can be easily figured out and fixed without requiring the presence’s tenant.
- Weakness: You get your own dedicated subdomain that can be used by tenants to login, place requests for maintenance or pay for their bills. However, the side effect of this system is that instead of standard domain YouSite.com, your subdomain will be YourSite.ManageBuilding.com.
Referring your domain to the subdomain is possible, but it will send you to the subdomain when tenants or owners type in your web address, which is quite challenging.
Buildium Pricing
You get 2 weeks free when you sign up with Buildium. The big concern of the free trial is after 2 weeks if you choose to convert to a paid account, so be prepared to lose everything you do inside the trial if you choose not to upgrade. Therefore, don’t put all your properties and tenant lease information on Buildium because they are all gone after a 2-week trial.
The best solution here is that you should decide to become a paying customer. As a paying user of Buildium, you can set up your account with Core and Pro subscription. Plus, the 2 weeks free are available and once you move from trial to paid, you don’t have to worry about losing whatever you set up.
Buildium Account Signup & Login
Now if you’re interested enough to start your kingdom with Buildium, let’s first set up your Buildium account. Fill out the forms and then sign up, done, it’s just that simple. The greatest thing about this part is no credit card required.
Remember how many times you have signed up for free trials and forget to cancel it? Or it’s impossible to cancel, especially when the services don’t meet your needs?
Buildium offers you 15 days free, and there won’t be any financial headaches if you decide not to upgrade.
Core VS Pro
Buildium Core comes at $45 a month with up to 20 properties, but many products aren’t included in this package and they can charge you an additional cost when needed.
- Property inspections, ACH payments, and electronic money transfers are not available either. Electronic money transfers (EFT) costs 50 cents with a Core subscription, and credit card transactions pay 2.75%.
- There is a setup fee of $99 per company bank account you use to receive payments. Mobile inspections require an additional set-up fee of $99 and a subscription of $40 per month for up to 60 units.
- It costs $5 each for electronic leases and $15 for basic tenant screening. Core costs $60 a month for 21–40 units, and the monthly fee for 141–150 units continues to rise to a total of $225.
- If you go with Buildium Core, keep in mind it’s impossible to manage more than 150 properties with the plan.
- Buildium Pro offers all the features with no set-up fees. It still costs you 50 cents each for outgoing payments, while the processing of credit cards remains at 2.75%. But every month, you receive 30 free leases.
- Primary tenant check-up with Pro is available, and advanced screening is given for $18 each. The Pro also provides remote audits at no extra cost. Pro begins at 150 dollars, with a maximum of 50 and $200 monthly, with a maximum of 100.
Buildium Pros and Cons
Being an all-in-one property management service, there’s surely a lot to like Buildium. Like any platform, Buildium isn’t perfect, and it will fit some businesses better than others.
Buildium Pros
The software can be used easily on multiple platforms, the design is customized for property managers and rental owners. If you are still using a system that doesn’t integrate lots of regular functions in one place, Buildium will probably save you loads of time.
The end-to-end apps for handling tenant screening, renting, records, transactions, maintenance, accounting, and taxes really carry all you need to operate your property under one roof. And from your computer or smartphone, you can do anything online.
Below is a list of Buildium advantages:
- Easy-to-access services: Tennant screenings, rental insurances agreements, and tax filings are easy to find and available whenever you need them.
- Popularity: Over million tenants are using Buildium, along with 175,000 property owners and 13,000 landlords as well as managers. You can get up to 50 reporting tools each month, Buildium has plenty of options.
- Automatic accounting.
Buildium Cons
Buildium is great if you have a lot of properties to manage in order to divide the work across separate departments.
However, if one department has a lot of tasks under the same property, it is not easy to see what updates to tasks have been made, and it is necessary to search individually through each task to find relevant updates that could easily be missed.
The cost to use the platform is a tiny fraction for bigger property managers, but it may feel like you’re getting hit with many additional setup and service fees for small landlords.
In short, there are some points Buildium can focus on for improvement:
- The mobile website is not the best–although the app appears to be working well and has great ratings and reviews.
- If you are a small business, it could be considered expensive–if you have multiple units or properties, it’s best to use Buildium.
- Add-on costs can quickly add up–for more information, see the buyer’s guide.
Buildium Competitors
The real estate business is constantly going through changes, and new property management platforms are coming to market all the time. These options could be worth a look if you’re looking for assistance in rental property management.
AppFolio Property Manager
Like Buildium, AppFolio offers property management systems, mostly for smaller portfolios including apartment, residential, commercial, student housing and community association property managers.
The minimum monthly prices of AppFolio are $250 for Property Manager and for Pro $1,500. For large portfolios of 500 or more units, use Property Manager for small to medium portfolios or Plus.
AppFolio allows you to automate with a cloud-based all-in-one system, allowing you to focus on your bottom line.
There are no free trials on AppFolio. However, you can access the free demo for an hour and a half and have your questions answered by agents in real-time.
AppFolio is user-friendly but has a learning curve. Once the user gets to know the software, their property management business will be more efficent. The platform of AppFolio is easy to start using, with simple instructions, and it is easy to find everything. Tutorials and great customer service are available on the site.
RealPage
Founded in 1995, RealPage is considered as a pioneer in multifamily property management software. RealPage provides a cloud-based property management solution that can be used by companies of any size. Accounting, budgeting, maintenance of facilities, procurement, document management, and reporting are its key features.
RealPage allows users to organize and store electronic records and other documents related to digital compliance, automate service requests and manage asset conditions. Customizable apps, alerts, tasks, forms, and generic documents are included in the solution.
Recognized as leading property management software, RealPage is quite user-friendly and also a customizable tool in order to meet your needs. The biggest concerns with RealPage, from reviewers, are that the learning process to understand is not easy and you have to understand what is best for your business as well.
Cozy
Coming up as one of the top Buildium’s competitors, Cozy is undoubtedly a great tool to manage properties and condominiums.
Unlike Buildium, which is created for large property management companies, Cozy was designed mostly for independent landlords with no hidden fees or contracts, but you may pay for rent estimates and property analyses at $19.99 each.
Key features consist of rent estimates, tenant screenings, online application, expense tracking, and online rent collection.
From users’ experiences, Cozy is reliable, useful and user-friendly. The software helps with all the necessary information in one place. Generally, during the rental process, Cozy works extremely well, users create unique profiles that can share important details in a safe forum.
Is Buildium Worth It?
Technology for property management is essential and can be a great tool for keeping your business afloat, especially when we’re all jumping in a century of economic changes. If you want to save time by allowing some of your tasks to be handled by a computer, Buildium might just be for you!
Saving time at work means that you’re going to have plenty of free time to do things you enjoy. You will be more in touch with your tenants with Buildium and have better overall communication.
Whether you need help with taxes on property management, accept rent and applications, or just try to get more organized, Buildium can help with all these tasks and more.
Overall, Buildium is worth a go, as it is a great package of technology for property owners looking to monitor their entire online investment property management business. It’s a full suite of applications for property management. This includes all strategic tools, and the platform does not cut corners.
You can pay more for other providers, but with Buildium, residential property managers get one of the most comprehensive collections of software available.
Of course there’s always a tiny bit improvement needed on the platform, but in general, there are no reasons to steer clear to the product. Before making any choices, you should take Buildium for a spin, see how it works and if it suits your requirements.
Buildium
Pros
- Easy to Use
- Automated Accounting
- Popular Software, Widely Used in the Industry
- Tenant Screening
- Well Designed UI
Cons
- Costly for Smaller Businesses
- Add-On Fees can Mount up
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