How do I add a lease?

Whether you're just starting out with Buildium or you need to lease a vacant property, you need to add the new tenants and their lease information into the system.

Check out our Buildium Academy course on entering data for rentals for a video walkthrough of the Add lease process!

How to add a lease

Buildium makes adding a tenant and a lease to a unit easy by creating both at the same time.

To add a tenant and their lease information to Buildium:

1. Navigate to Rentals > Rent roll.
2. Then, click Add lease.
3. If the lease you're adding has already been signed and is active, select Signed under signature status. If you are creating a new lease that has not been finalized with signatures choose Unsigned. 
4. Select the property and unit number, then enter the lease start and end dates.
5. Choose a lease type:

• At will leases are month-to-month leases. Setting a lease as at will tells Buildium when the tenant’s lease initially started, but since there is no lease end date, Buildium will never move the lease to expired, and it will continue to post any automatic transactions (like recurring monthly rent charges or late fees) until you manually end the lease.
• Fixed leases are leases that have specific start and end dates. When the end date occurs, the lease will move from active to expired, and any transactions set to post automatically (like recurring monthly rent charges or late fees) will stop posting.
• Fixed with rollover leases are similar to fixed leases, but instead of Buildium moving this lease to expired as of the end date, it will move the lease to an at will status, which tells Buildium to continue posting monthly rent charges, late fees for you until you manually end the lease.

Adding tenants and cosigners

1. Click the + under tenants and cosigners to enter tenant information. You can use the Tenant and Cosigner toggles at the top to designate that the person is a tenant or cosigner.
   
2. Fill out the add tenant form, then click Save.
3. If you want to add additional residents or co-signers to the lease, click the + and repeat the steps you just did.
4. If you include the tenant’s email address when entering their contact information, you can create a tenant website account and send an email with instructions to sign in. 
   
   You can always create the tenant website accounts in bulk once you’re ready to go live with the portal.
   

Rent and Security Deposit

1. Under the Charges section in the Rent card, enter the recurring rent amount and how frequently you want it to post. This creates a charge that is automatically posted on the tenant’s lease ledger based on the details entered. If you’re a new Buildium customer, choose the next due date based on your accounting start date, and Buildium will use that date to post the first rent charge onto the tenant’s ledger for you.
   
   Use the Add new charge button to add any additional flat fee charges, such as monthly pet fee or utility charge.
   
2. Under Security Deposit, enter the amount the tenant owes for security deposit. Buildium will create a one-time charge for this amount based on the information you enter here.
   
3. Add any attachments you might like to include with the lease. To upload a file from your computer you can either click and drag a file into the box or select browse to navigate to the file.
4. When you’ve completed the form, click Create lease.
   
   
   

Click here to learn how to use Buildium's eLeasing to create unsigned or draft leases and collect eSignatures.