Buildium Property Management Software: Does It Live Up to the Hype?

Managing rental properties involves juggling a lot of moving parts - tracking maintenance, billing tenants, complying with regulations, maximizing occupancy, and more. It can quickly become chaotic trying to handle it all manually.

That's why having a robust property management software solution like Buildium can provide game-changing organization and efficiency. But does Buildium truly deliver as one of the top platforms on the market?

In this review, we’ll break down who Buildium is for, its key features, pros and cons, and most importantly – can it really help you scale and simplify your rental property portfolio.

Who is Buildium For?

Buildium markets itself as an end-to-end cloud-based property management solution suitable for individual investors with a handful of units all the way up to large-scale residential and commercial property management companies.

Buildium is designed for property managers, landlords, and real estate professionals who want to simplify their property management tasks, streamline their business operations, and provide an improved customer experience for their tenants.

In particular, Buildium is built for rental property owners and managers who:

Handle multiple properties in their portfolio
Have both on-site and off-site rentals
Want to systemize and streamline operations
Need mobility to manage units remotely
Rely heavily on data to operate optimally

If you handle more than say 5-10 properties, Buildium can automate the management of your units. The platform shines for those ready to upgrade beyond spreadsheets.

Key Features and Benefits

Buildium packs a robust set of features developed specifically for rental property professionals like yourself:

Free website for property managers - hosted by Buildium, keeps you in front of renters and owners, 24/7. Building a website like this could cost you $ thousands in upfront costs. Included with your subscription, Buildium's robust free website CMS lets you brand your site and easily advertise your listings, link to your online rental application, include your company contact information, and allow tenants and owners to log into their own portals. You can host your Tenant Handbook, receive maintenance requests, and collect rent all in one place.

Centralized tenant and lease management – Track all occupant details, lease terms, rent charges, and more in one place.

Tenant Screening — You can run credit checks, criminal background checks, and eviction history reports to ensure that you are renting to reliable tenants.

Online rent collection – Buildium enables collecting recurring and one-time payments via credit card, debit, ACH, or eCheck. This saves hassle and reduces late rents.

Maintenance coordination – The portal allows tenants to request repairs 24/7 while creating and assigning work orders to track all maintenance needs.

Accounting and reports – Tools are included to handle income and expenses, bank reconciliations, budgets, and creating custom reports for ownership and analysis. Property managers can use Buildium's Data Insights and Analytics tools to measure their most important KPIs and make informed business decisions with confidence.

Contractor portal – Provide limited system access to contractors so they can update work order status as repairs are completed.

Mobile access – The Buildium is cloud-based and its mobile app allows you to manage your portfolio from anywhere in real time.

Website integrations – Buildium can integrate with listing sites to automatically publish vacancies and optimize leasing.

Queue management – Smart task hierarchies allow you to triage and optimize daily workloads.

Lead-to-Lease - Buildium offers a comprehensive set of tools designed to streamline workflows in the lead-to-lease process, such as scheduling showings and collecting rent online. Automating these tasks helps save property managers time and resources that they can reallocate to building their property business.

The platform essentially centralizes and digitizes the entirety of your property management process into one connected system. This allows for optimizing workflows around occupancy, maintenance, communication, contractor coordination, leasing efficiency, and more. Your tenants will also appreciate the easy-to-use rental payment and maintenance portal.

The result is major time savings, improved organization, and maximized rental performance.

Pricing

Buildium's pricing model is feature-based, which means that you'll need to invest in higher pricing tiers to get certain gated features. However, Buildium's pricing plans are more affordable than some of its competitors, such as Propertyware. Additionally, Buildium offers a 10% discount for annual contracts, making it a more cost-effective option for property managers and real estate professionals. Plans start at $52 / month.

Buildium Pros and Cons

Here are the key advantages and disadvantages to weigh with Buildium:

Pros

Big upfront savings on a free custom property management website hosted by Buildium (included in subscription, this could save you thousands!)
All-in-one centralized rental management
Customizable workflows and permissions
Robust mobile functionality
Integrations with major listing sites
Tenant and lease management
Maintenance work order tracking
Accounting tools for easy reporting
Different plan levels based on portfolio size

Cons

Can feel complex at first to onboard and master
Requires upfront setup and training
More costly than spreadsheet-based tracking

While the platform requires some ramp-up time to get fully accustomed to, the amount of time and headaches Buildium saves once mastered far outweigh the limitations.

Their technical support is readily available to help you with setup and optimization, and based on their Trustpilot reviews, their current customer support team is excellent and responsive. For professional property managers, the productivity boost is well worth the investment.

The Verdict – A Definite Yes for Scaled Management

So does Buildium live up to its reputation as a top property management platform? For managers with multiple properties under one management, the answer is absolutely.

The comprehensive system, mobility, maintenance coordination, leasing integrations, accounting tools, and real-time reporting provide a game-changing organization. This allows established rental businesses to optimize and simplify management at scale, and save thousands on custom website development costs.

While very small landlords may not benefit from the full scope, the platform pays dividends once you move beyond tracking a few properties in spreadsheets.