Buildium vs. MRI Residential Management

I'm very happy with the service provided via phone, to me that is the absolute largest draw. I also really appreciate the integrations Buildium offers. I mostly appreciate HappyCo, Petscreening, and Hunter Warfield. None of these are seamless in their communication with Buildium but it's still a vast improvement from having to have separate accounts from Buildium so overall, it is beneficial to our company

Incentivized

Well suited scenario - MRI Residential is obviously good for residential real estate. It doesn't make sense to just plug in industrial, hotel or commercial real estate management as those are different types of products. Those who have access to the cloud can easily download information off site to do an analysis. Less appropriate - Information may need to be scrubbed. For instance, there could be operating statements that are inputted incorrectly because items are miscoded.

• It documents the date and time of all updates and communications, which are essential to the companys records.
• It allows external clients to communicate and stay in touch with our company, as well as access information.
• It serves as a large database for all of our customer and client information that is very user-friendly.

Incentivized

• Reporting
• Tracking Data

Incentivized

• Hello Sign has been a really rough transition and is not as user friendly as Adobe Sign.
• Customer service struggles to understand what is going on and you have to hang up and call to get someone else.
• Owner portal is lacking in my opinion.

Incentivized

• Sometimes the data that is outputted is not consistent (back end of the database is constantly being updated), have to follow up with our client relationship manager
• Sometimes very rigid
• Incremental cost to add on information (if we want MRI to host certain documents in the cloud)

I have used three property management softwares and know of others who have used additional softwares for managing properties. Buildium seems to be the best of all of them

Incentivized

Overall, the system is good and getting better; however, different roll outs have caused the system to regress. Their latest bank automation rollout was a disaster and continues to be an issue. Since the upgrade, I have not been able to sync our bank and Buildium (download transactions).

Incentivized

I have been able to get through to support immediately and they have been awesome in quickly resolving issues. More importantly, their communication when there is an issue which might take some time to resolve surfaces. Getting updates and resolution are critical.

Incentivized

They have a terrible help center and the training tools and videos are useless and not helpful. They need to invest in better training tools and modules for people to refer to. Especially when there is no designated training person within a company to teach newcomers how to use it.

Incentivized

I cannot rate this since I was not part of that process

Incentivized

Appfolio is my favorite software, and they are constantly making improvements. Buildium is great if you don’t have a ton of property but is not as manageable for advanced accounting and resident information tracking. There are workarounds, but they do need to work on their ease of use for owners.

Incentivized

We had a proprietary access database, but wanted to utilize MRI because of support (annual fee is in the tens of thousands versus a hundred thousand plus build out). The user interface is pretty straight forward, and there is available training as well. Updates are done online via the SAAS website so we don't have to worry about any coding issues here in house.

• Buildium absolutely saves time. Having all of our management systems in one place is almost beyond a value at this point because it’s the basic requirement of running an effective property management company.

Incentivized

• Helps track income
• Helps with on-time billing
• Keeps us on budget with projects

Incentivized