Buildium Review: $62 to $400 a Month - and the Habitability Duties the Software Will Not Track for You

Three tiers, and one important qualifier on all of them. Essential from $62 a month — described as covering day-to-day automation and core property management on a central platform. Growth from $192 a month — additional features, support and performance insights. Premium from $400 a month — adds open API access for building integrations with other software. "Starting at" is doing real work. This category prices by unit count, so your actual monthly figure depends on portfolio size, and the published number is an entry point. Before comparing platforms: Get a written quote for your current unit count and for your target count in two years. Software that is cheap at 50 units and painful at 300 is a bad choice if you plan to grow. Ask what is included versus charged separately. Tenant screening, e-signatures, payment processing, 1099 filing, insurance products and website hosting are commonly add-ons or per-transaction fees. Ask about payment processing economics specifically. Who pays card and ACH fees — you, the tenant, or absorbed — and at what rate? On a portfolio, that number dwarfs the subscription. Ask about the contract term, whether it auto-renews and the cancellation notice period. Ask about onboarding and migration costs. How to run the 14-day trial properly, since it costs nothing: Import real data. A demo dataset tells you the software works; your data tells you whether it works for you. Ask what import support is available and whether they will help during the trial. Run your hardest workflow. For most managers that is month-end owner statements or a messy maintenance escalation — not a happy-path rent payment. Test the tenant and owner portals from the tenant and owner side. You will live with those complaints for years. Test on mobile. Maintenance work happens on a phone. Check the reporting you actually need for tax and owner reporting, and whether you can export it. Ask about data export before you commit. The single most important question with any business platform is how you get your data out if you leave. Check integrations you depend on — accounting, banking, screening, insurance — and whether the API access you would need is gated behind the Premium tier. On the community association side, which the product also targets: associations have distinct requirements — assessments, violations, architectural review, board reporting and reserve tracking — and a platform strong in residential rentals is not automatically strong in HOA management. Test that module specifically if it is your business. Fourteen days is short for a platform migration decision. Ask whether it can be extended, and plan the fortnight before you start it rather than starting and then finding the time.

Because this is a health publication, the part of property management that matters most to us is habitability — the health hazards that live in rental housing and the legal duties attached to them. Lead paint. This is the one with the clearest federal obligation. Under the federal Lead Disclosure Rule, sellers and landlords of most housing built before 1978 must disclose known lead-based paint and hazards, provide any available records and reports, and give buyers or tenants the EPA-approved lead hazard pamphlet. Sales contracts must also allow a 10-day opportunity to test. Renovation work on pre-1978 housing is separately governed by the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule, which requires certified firms and lead-safe work practices for work disturbing painted surfaces. Sanding old paint without containment is exactly how children get poisoned. Why it matters so much: there is no known safe blood lead level in children. Lead affects brain development, and the effects are irreversible. Children in older rental housing are the highest-risk group, which makes this squarely a property management issue rather than a paperwork one. Mould and moisture. The health issue is dampness rather than any particular species. Damp indoor environments are associated with respiratory symptoms, asthma exacerbation and infections. The remedy is to fix the water, not to test the spores. Testing for mould is rarely useful. Guidance from public health bodies is generally that if you can see or smell mould, you remediate it — identifying the species does not change what you do. Persistent damp in a rental is a maintenance failure with health consequences, and repeated tenant complaints about it are a signal worth taking seriously rather than managing. Carbon monoxide and smoke alarms. Requirements vary by state and locality, and many jurisdictions now mandate CO alarms in dwellings with fuel-burning appliances or attached garages. Working alarms are cheap, legally required in most places and prevent deaths. Test them at turnover and document it. Radon. The second leading cause of lung cancer in the US after smoking, and entirely invisible. Testing is inexpensive, mitigation is well established, and several states have disclosure requirements for rentals. A property that has never been tested has not been shown to be safe. Water. Lead service lines and lead plumbing remain in use in older housing. Tenants are entitled to know, and the EPA has been tightening requirements around service line identification and replacement. Pests. Bed bugs, cockroaches and rodents are health issues, not just nuisances — cockroach allergen is a well-documented asthma trigger in children, and integrated pest management works better than repeated spraying. And accessibility and fair housing. The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination including on the basis of disability, and requires allowing reasonable modifications and making reasonable accommodations — including for assistance animals, which are not pets and are not subject to pet fees. Getting this wrong is both a legal exposure and a health equity issue.

The useful move is to build the health and safety obligations into the system rather than relying on memory, and a property management platform is well suited to it. Set up recurring tasks for the things with dates: Smoke and carbon monoxide alarm testing and battery replacement, at every turnover and on an annual schedule, with photographic evidence attached to the unit record. HVAC servicing and filter changes, which matter for indoor air quality and for asthma in tenants. Water heater and fuel appliance inspections, which is where carbon monoxide risk originates. Dryer vent cleaning, a documented fire cause. Gutter and drainage maintenance, because damp problems start outside. Annual or periodic inspections with a standard checklist covering damp, ventilation, pests and alarms. Attach documents to units, not to memory: Lead disclosure forms and any lead inspection or risk assessment reports. Radon test results and mitigation records. Alarm test logs. Maintenance requests and responses, which is your evidence that a complaint was addressed and when. Move-in and move-out condition reports with photographs. Take repair requests about health hazards seriously and respond in writing. Damp, no heat, no hot water, pests, alarms and anything electrical are habitability issues in most jurisdictions. A documented response is both good practice and the thing that protects you. The failure mode is a maintenance ticket about "a smell" that was closed without inspection and turns out to be a gas leak or a sewer defect. On tenant screening, which the software will offer: Consumer reports used for tenant screening are governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. If you deny an application, charge more or require a co-signer based on a report, you must provide an adverse action notice identifying the reporting agency and telling the applicant of their right to a free copy and to dispute it. This is a common compliance failure among smaller landlords. Screening criteria must be applied consistently to avoid fair housing exposure, and several jurisdictions restrict use of criminal or eviction history. Assistance animals are not pets. Under fair housing rules they are a reasonable accommodation, not subject to pet fees or breed restrictions. And a note on the owner relationship, since the product markets on winning new business: owners increasingly ask about habitability risk because it is where their liability sits. A manager who can show documented alarm testing, radon results, lead disclosures and a maintenance audit trail is offering something genuinely valuable, and it is a better differentiator than a lower management fee. Who this suits: a manager or small management company outgrowing spreadsheets, or one running community associations alongside rentals, who wants accounting and portals in one place. The tiering is sensible and the free trial without a credit card is the right way to sell software. Who should look elsewhere: a landlord with one or two units, for whom $62 a month is hard to justify against a spreadsheet and a separate accounting tool; and anyone whose need is primarily accounting, where dedicated accounting software plus a simple portal may cost less.

What does Buildium cost? Essential from $62 a month, Growth from $192 and Premium from $400, as published on August 13, 2026. All are "starting at" figures — pricing in this category scales with unit count, so get a quote for your portfolio. Is there a free trial? Yes — 14 days with no credit card required, which removes the usual silent-conversion trap. What does Premium add? Open API access for building integrations with other software, alongside the lower tiers' features. What should I test during the trial? Your real data rather than a demo set, your hardest workflow such as month-end owner statements, the tenant and owner portals from their side, mobile use, and the reports you need for tax. What questions decide the real cost? Unit-count pricing at your current and target size, what is charged separately — screening, e-signatures, payment processing, 1099 filing — and who pays card and ACH fees, which on a portfolio dwarfs the subscription. What are my lead paint obligations? For most pre-1978 housing, federal rules require disclosing known lead-based paint and hazards, providing available records and the EPA pamphlet, and using certified lead-safe practices for renovations disturbing painted surfaces. Should I test rental properties for mould? Generally testing is not useful. If you can see or smell mould, remediate it and fix the water source — species identification does not change the response. What about radon? Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the US after smoking. Testing is inexpensive, mitigation is established, and several states have rental disclosure requirements. Are carbon monoxide alarms required? Requirements vary by state and locality, and many jurisdictions mandate them in dwellings with fuel-burning appliances or attached garages. Test at turnover and document it. What do I need to know about tenant screening? Consumer reports are governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act — adverse action notices are required if you act on a report. Apply criteria consistently, and note that some jurisdictions restrict use of criminal or eviction history. Can I charge a pet fee for a service animal? No. Assistance animals are a reasonable accommodation under fair housing rules, not pets, and are not subject to pet fees or breed restrictions. Is it worth it for a small landlord? At one or two units, probably not — a spreadsheet and separate accounting software cost less. The value appears when portfolio size makes manual tracking unreliable.