Real Estate Investors
Bookkeeping for rental owners, flippers, commercial investors, and syndications. Per-property and entity-level books from a team whose entire career is in real estate accounting.
The Industry
An investor owns six rentals held across three LLCs. He also has a 30% stake in a fix-and-flip with two partners and an LP position in a syndication that just closed on a 40-unit building in the Valley. His CPA touches the books once a year at tax time. His bookkeeper treats every entity like a generic service business. When he wants to know which properties are actually cash-flowing after debt service and reserves, nobody can give him a straight answer.
Real estate accounting is not regular accounting. Each property has its own operating statement. Each entity has its own set of books. Depreciation schedules run across decades and carry basis forward through 1031 exchanges. Capital contributions, distributions, and allocated income need to be tracked per partner. Generic bookkeepers treat exchanges like sales of regular assets and commingle properties onto a single P&L. The problems this creates take years to unwind.
Who This Covers
Who This Covers
Rental property owners with anywhere from one door to fifty, fix-and-flip operators running multiple projects at a time, commercial investors in retail, office, and industrial, and GPs or LPs in syndications and joint ventures.
What Makes It Different
What Makes It Different
Multi-entity structures. Property-level P&Ls. Depreciation schedules that have to roll forward cleanly year over year. 1031 exchanges with basis carrying to the replacement property. Capital accounts per partner. Investor reporting. Bank packages for refinances and acquisitions.
What We Handle
We treat every property and every entity as its own set of books. Transactions get coded to the right property and the right LLC. Rent rolls reconcile to the bank. Operating expenses get classified correctly between repairs, capital improvements, and pass-throughs to tenants. Mortgage interest, property taxes, and insurance land where they belong. The monthly report actually reflects the real economic performance of each asset.
Dennis spent nearly a decade at Alexandria Real Estate Equities, an S&P 500 REIT, handling development accounting, joint venture reporting, and construction draws across five regions. He currently runs property management accounting at a real estate development firm. This is not a bookkeeper who picked up a real estate client and learned on your dime. Yardi, QuickBooks, CAM reconciliations, waterfall calculations, and bank reporting packages are the work he has been doing for 20 years.
Property and Entity Books
Property and Entity Books
Each property gets its own P&L. Each entity gets its own balance sheet. Intercompany balances stay clean. When you look at the 12-unit on Orange Grove or the duplex in Highland Park, you see what it made standalone after debt service, reserves, and everything else.
Investor and Partner Reporting
Investor and Partner Reporting
Capital contribution and distribution tracking. Partner capital accounts that tie to the operating agreement. Waterfall calculations for preferred returns and promote tiers. Bank reporting packages for refinances and acquisitions. K-1 support that makes the CPA’s year-end work a review rather than a reconstruction.
Common Problems
The most common issue we see is a single QuickBooks file doing the work of eight. Multiple properties, two or three LLCs, and a flip project all dumping into one P&L. Nobody can tell which property is cash-flowing and which is quietly losing money. Mortgage interest for one property gets mixed with another. Capital improvements show up as repairs. The CPA does their best at tax time but is essentially rebuilding the books from scratch every April.
Capital accounts in partnerships get neglected until there is a dispute, a buyout, or a refinance that forces the issue. Distributions do not match the operating agreement. Depreciation schedules get recreated every year because no one has a clean roll-forward. 1031 exchanges get recorded as regular sales and purchases, which wipes out the basis tracking your CPA needs to do the return correctly.
No Property-Level Visibility
No Property-Level Visibility
Books that only roll up to entity or portfolio level hide the performance you actually need to see. Which properties are working and which are a drain should be a basic question. It should not take a weekend of spreadsheet work to answer.
Capital Account Drift
Capital Account Drift
In partnerships and syndications, each partner’s capital account tracks contributions, distributions, and allocated income or loss. When this gets sloppy, disputes follow. K-1s come out wrong. Buyouts get ugly. This is not a problem that fixes itself later.
What Changes
You see your portfolio the way it actually works. Per-property P&Ls that reflect real performance after debt service. Entity-level books that tie out to the tax returns. Capital accounts that match the operating agreement. When a refinance opportunity comes up, the lender package gets produced in an afternoon instead of a two-week scramble through bank statements and old spreadsheets.
Investor communications become straightforward. LPs who want an update get real numbers instead of rough estimates. Distributions hit the right waterfall tier. The GP fee calculates correctly. When your CPA starts on the tax returns, the books are already in a state that makes the filing a review exercise rather than a reconstruction project billed by the hour.
Decisions Based on Real Numbers
Decisions Based on Real Numbers
When one property is dragging down the portfolio, you see it in the monthly report. When cap rates shift and a sale makes sense, you have the financials to move on it. You stop making acquisition, refinance, and disposition decisions on feel.
Clean Handoff to Your CPA
Clean Handoff to Your CPA
Reconciled accounts. Clean intercompany balances. Depreciation schedules that roll forward properly. 1031 basis tracked through the exchange. Your CPA focuses on tax strategy instead of cleanup, which usually means a smaller bill and a better return.
Pasadena's Small Business Bookkeeper
The Next Step:
A 15-Minute Call
Tell us where your books stand today. We'll ask a few questions, share how we can help, and give you a clear quote.