Buildium does stuff without telling us.

Somehow it overrides our settings and is opening up portals for residents without our permission.

Tonight I got multiple texts from residents, who are on autodraft, asking how to pay their rent because Buildium is talking to them.

We average 30 minutes per day FIXING the things Buildium does wrong or glitches.

I gave them over a year (and $6000 fees) and it's getting worse.

BRAD

I am relatively happy with Rentec Direct.

No problems here. I'm a tech guy, though, so maybe the software fears me. *grins

Seriously, I can't say enough good stuff about how Buildium has made my life easier. The one thing I don't like is how it's automatic reconcile feature works, so I just do it manually.

Unlimited advertising, applications, background checks, credit checks, rent collection, e-signature leasing and addendums, financial reports, 1099s.... all at the tip of my fingers. And some local Pro PMs use it, so if the proverbial bus hits me my wife can transfer everything over to them with a few clicks of the mouse and he gravy train keeps flowing uninterrupted. All for the cost of about $3 per month per unit. It's why I can spend less than 4 hours per week managing over 50 units by myself.

Maybe pay for some detailed training to get it to do what you want and not do what you don't want? I often hear on this board about "investing in yourself" and "new ideas" from seminars. Well... why not pay someone a few bucks to teach you Buildium?

My son loves Buildium and is VERY happy with their support so I make him call when there is an issue.

We had extra training at the beginning, and it's two of us, so maybe that helps. But for applications, listing, leasing, collecting rent: nothing better that we've found. For accounting, not so much but I know they've improved that side, we just don't use it as we use Quicken for that.

We know Buildium TOO well! The Customer Service folks don't know how to fix the the issues it creates. It sends messages that their Late Fee does not start until the 25th!

We set it up so the res cannot change their rent or method of payment.

They email messages to your residents that you don't know about so we set up a dummy account that goes straight to our office. We now see those emails. Stop bugging my people!

So we removed all emails.

On April 30, the day before many rents are autodrafted, Buildium TEXTED my residents inviting them to start paying thru the portal.

I'm flooded with messages saying "What the heck!?" They like their bi-weekly and existing autodraft. B is inviting them to set up autodraft. Confusion!

One is worried it's a scam email.

Again, B is CREATING unnecessary work.

Today my Maint Super said "What the HEXX!? Tenants are blowing up my phone asking what happened to their rent!!"

(When he calls to respond to a Service Request they keep his number. Plus they tell him things they would never tell me and he often knows what's happening in the rental.)

I told him to respond it was a scam message, nothing has changed with your lease.

We had removed all email addresses when B started sending our folks emails. Now they are texting them to the phone number in the B file.

My helper set up a BLOCK on every resident. More time and labor money expense because of Buildium antics.

BRAD

Users get to ask for features and also vote on those already suggested. But no real rhyme or reason to how to sort or categorize them so it's still a crap shoot if they get implemented and in what order or priority. And then HOW they are implemented...sometimes a little weird with features designed by an engineer not the end user.

I had everything Buildium TRIES to do without the hassle of them contacting my residents with offers and confusing them, and B making mistakes.

All communication with prospects and residents by free Google Voice texting.

Zillow is free to list available props. WHen a prop comes available again, we just change the prices, maybe a few words, and hit PUBLISH.

Quicken for rents in and pay bills by clicking on memorized transactions. (free)

My website has forms and Maintenance Requests where the res can send photos and set their own appointment. (I realize not every has a whiz-bang website -

BUT

Res can text in a request and photos 24/7 so a LL does not really need a Maint Request feature.

Online apps are easy to set up without a fancy pants website.

The autodraft system which we've used for 20+ years could often tell me ON THE SPOT that a res' draft bounced. B takes up to 6 days.In the world of weekly rents, that's basically an entire payment cycle.

When a B draft bounces, it shows as PAID on the res' phone, they believe their rent was paid, then later shows on their phone that we sent back their rent. No BOUNCE message on their phone. Lots of confusion.

My life was simpler and cost less before Buildium.

BRAD

Brad, I would love to get info about your autodraft system.

Except for automatically populating my ads across different platforms, I've created my own system that does most of what I would use Buildium for.

Having the lease automatically populate everything directly from the prospect's application is one of my biggest time savers because I don't have to worry about typos or miscalculations. All dates and monetary values are automatically populated for me with the click of a button.