Get Buildium real estate development accounting Solutions With REA
Buildium is built around properties that produce monthly rent or assessment income. A development project produces none of that for one or two years, then converts everything into a sale or a stabilized asset at once. Running the project inside the same Buildium instance used for rental and HOA clients puts construction draws and capitalized costs into accounts that were never built to hold them.
Developers Accounting Inside Buildium
What Changes When You Run This Vertical On This Platform
Where it breaks
Draws and capitalized costs default to income
Buildium's deposit screen assumes incoming money is rent or an assessment, so a construction loan draw hitting the project's bank account gets coded to income unless someone manually reclasses it to a liability. On an instance that also runs rental and HOA properties, the property list does not flag a project under construction any differently than a stabilized rental, so soft costs, carrying interest and property tax during construction post to ordinary operating expense accounts by default. No step forces a capitalize versus expense decision at entry. The error surfaces later, at the audit or the certificate of occupancy, when two years of expense show up with no matching asset.
How REA handles it
A separate ledger structure for each project
REA sets up a construction-in-progress asset account and a loan-draw liability account for every development, kept separate from the rental and HOA chart of accounts sharing the same Buildium instance. Every draw deposit is coded to the liability account, never to income, then reclassed as the project converts to permanent financing or sells. Soft costs, carrying interest and property tax route to construction-in-progress under a written capitalization policy, not by whoever happens to enter the bill that week. Retainage held from the general contractor and subcontractors is tracked on a schedule outside Buildium, since Buildium has no native job costing, and reconciled against payables at every draw.
What we check in your Buildium instance
- Draw deposits coded to liability, not income
- Capitalization policy applied consistently across soft costs
- Retainage schedule reconciled against subcontractor payables monthly
- Project bank account segregated from HOA reserves
- Carrying interest and property tax routed to CIP
- Construction-in-progress balance ties to outstanding draw requests
The Full Scope of the Engagement
Two Pages Carry the Detail
This page covers what is specific to running Developers books in Buildium. The complete service scope, process, and pricing conversation live on the two pages below.
The vertical
Developers Accounting
Full scope, monthly process, property types, FAQs and the team on the account.
See the Developers pageThe platform
Buildium Bookkeeping
What Buildium does well, where its accounting breaks, and how REA works inside your own instance.
See the Buildium page- 01
Trust Accounting
Tenant, owner, and security deposit money kept separate, tied out, and ready for a state audit at any time.
- 02
Bank Reconciliation Services
Every operating, trust, and escrow account reconciled on a fixed schedule, with the variances chased down rather than carried forward.
- 03
Accounts Payable & Receivable
Vendor invoices coded and paid, tenant receipts applied, management fees taken, and owner distributions cut on time.
- 04
Bookkeeping Cleanup & Catch-Up
Months or years of unreconciled books diagnosed, corrected, and brought current so the numbers you report are numbers you trust.
- 05
CAM Reconciliation
Common area maintenance pools built from the lease terms, reconciled against actuals, and billed or credited with a defensible tenant statement.
Experts In All Property Types
Residential, commercial and everything in between. The asset class changes what the books have to prove, and our teams are staffed accordingly.
- Single-Family
- Multifamily
- Student Housing
- Affordable Housing
- Community AssociationsSee the page
- CommercialSee the page
Check Out What Our Clients Have To Say About Us
Property Managers, Investors & Owner Operators
Onboarding and responsiveness
Real Estate Accounting truly is a special company. They helped as if they were a part of our company, with the concern and caution as an employee would have, but even more. They quickly ascertained our needs and developed an effective team to help with our accounting needs. They were extremely responsive and always accurate. I would recommend their services to anyone who needs help with their property management accounting.
Smaller portfolio, still looked after
Adam the owner took a personal interest in my situation and was willing to work with me to see if his company was a good fit. I may be too small for them but I would highly recommend them to anyone considering a bookkeeper for their property management business.
Came from a bookkeeper who did not know real estate
Following a series of erroneous financials from my previous bookkeeper, who lacked expertise in real estate, it's been truly remarkable to receive not only accurate financials on a consistent basis but also proactive advice without prompting. The REA team is a game-changer in real estate accounting!
230+
Property Accountants
30M+
Commercial Sq. Ft.
Up to 50%
Saved vs In-House
Every month
On-Time Close
Running Developers On Something Else?
Same Vertical, Different Platform
Frequently Asked Questions
We manage rentals and HOAs in Buildium already. Can we run a development project in the same instance without the accounts blurring together?
Yes, but it takes deliberate setup, not the default chart of accounts. The project needs its own construction-in-progress and loan-draw accounts, and its bank account should stay separate from the trust and reserve accounts used for your rental and HOA clients. Left on the default setup, a draw deposit looks identical to a rent payment to whoever is coding it, and the two funds end up mixed in the same operating account.
Buildium doesn't do job costing. How do you track the retainage we're holding back from our general contractor?
Outside Buildium, on a retainage schedule that lists each draw, the percentage held, and the running balance owed once the project is substantially complete. We reconcile that schedule against the payables ledger every draw cycle so the retainage liability never gets lost inside a lump payables balance or forgotten once the project moves into its final stretch.
Our construction loan draws keep showing up as income on the profit and loss. Is that a Buildium problem or a bookkeeping problem?
It's a bookkeeping problem. Buildium's deposit screen defaults to treating incoming money as rent unless someone tells it otherwise, so a draw has to be coded to a liability account by hand every time. Once that mapping is set up correctly and applied consistently, the draw stops showing as income and the P&L stops overstating the project's revenue for a building that has not sold or leased anything yet.
Ready for Accurate Developers Books in Buildium?
Schedule a call with our team to talk through your Buildium instance, what it is doing to your developers financials, and what REA would take on.