Buildium

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Buidlium is in the old guard when it comes to property management software. It was founded in 2004 and it has been, for years, one of the most popular choices for budget conscious landlords and property managers.

Had this review been written ten years ago, Buildium likely would have earned top marks for it’s pricing and ease of use. But times have changed. Many modern competitors have a sleeker, more intuitive interface and deliver their product for less money (or in some cases, for free).

The Bottom Line: Buildium is not a bad choice as it offers a robust set of features that work for a wide variety of landlords and managers and it does it for a reasonable price, but if you’re not already using it, there are better options available to you.

Designed For:

Estimated Cost:

$600 – $5,000+ per year

Pricing

6/10

Back in 2004, Buildium launched on the promise that property management software could be affordable for even smaller landlords and property managers. But pricing for even their basic package has nearly tripled since. They also charge for a quite a few additional features including online payments and electronic signatures. In contrast, newer rental management software providers have come in lower than Buildium’s original price (some are even free to use). Added together, these two developments result in property management pricing on the high end of the market.

Buildium has a useful pricing page on which you can estimate your fees. Keep in mind that this does not include estimates for add-on features which can get pricy. For a 50 unit landlord, prices range from roughly $850 a year for their basic software all the way up to nearly $5,000 for their premium offering

Add-on pricing includes $5 per digital lease signed, $.50-$1 per ACH transaction, 2.95% per credit / debit card payment, and $99 per bank account added (to deposit into).

Features

9/10

Seventeen years of operations provides plenty of time to develop new features, and Buildium has done a great job keeping up. They boast one of the most robust offerings on the market, particularly for the slice of real estate professionals they’re serving. With Buildium, you can handle basic property management functionality like online rent payments, electronic lease signing, tenant screening, and maintenance management. But you can also go deeper.

Buildium offers advanced features like business analytics for enhanced insights into your leasing cycle, an open API, and client lead management for property managers. If some other software offers a feature, there’s a decent chance Buildium does too. This style of “kitchen-sink” development means the features you need are almost certainly going to be included along with many, many more.

Ease of Use

8/10

As great as it is that Buildium has such a rich offering of features, it also has its drawbacks. An overwhelming number of features can be, well… overwhelming. Most landlords, property managers, and home owners associations don’t need or want things like advanced performance metrics. The mere presence of additional features takes focus and attention away from those they do need.

Buildium is also a tech product that was developed 17 years ago and while they’ve done an admirable job of updating it, some of the frayed edges show. Many users report relatively minor but frequent bug / glitch issues. They are also known for producing “click fatigue”: as new features have been added to the product sitemap, it takes more and more clicks to perform functions like adding / removing tenants or updating / closing maintenance tickets.

All of that being said, Buildium is laid out in a logical, straightforward manner. They have helpful videos to teach you the ropes and most landlords find that, within a reasonable timeframe, they can get the hang of things.

Buildium also gets bonus points for offering a highly usable mobile app, one of the best in what is admittedly a thin market.

Flexibility

8/10

Buildium’s approach to flexibility has been, predominantly, to offer more features. They’ve added additional and separate tooling for association management, for bill pay, for check printing, etc. As a result, Buildium works for property managers, DIY landlords, HOA managers, and it can handle just about any late fee or lease structure you want to throw at it. t doesn’t always do so in the most elegant way, but most anything you want to do with Buildium can be done, you simply need to know how to do it.

Customer Support

8/10

Buildium offers both email and phone support, so it’s starting off with the right approach; however, the support provided varies by the pricing level you choose. The basic package, for example, does not include phone support.

Users report that the Buildium support team is considerate, knowledgeable, and helpful. There are complaints of difficulty getting a hold of them at times, or of slow response times. Buildium also offers a robust FAQ section with videos and helpful articles for landlords to solve their problems themselves.

Stray Notes

During our review process, we test products on multiple web browsers. We experienced some notable issues when attempting to use Mozilla Firefox. Fields were unclickable and some text did not appear

when typed. These problems did go away when using Google Chrome, but they were frustrating nonetheless.

Overall Score

The Verdict

7.9

TOTAL SCORE

The old guard may be falling behind

Good, quality property management software that is packed with features but expensive when compared to alternatives. It’s ease of use is also middle of the pack.

Pricing

7.9 Expert Score

Pricing
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