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Danzinger & Co. is a real estate CPA firm providing real estate accounting, bookkeeping and tax services for property owners, investors and property managers across New York. We keep books at the property level, handle real estate tax planning, including cost segregation and 1031 exchange planning, structure entities for each holding, and produce the reporting your investors and lenders expect.
The questions New York owners and investors ask us most about real estate accounting, answered in plain English. Swipe through.
Real estate accounting is the practice of tracking income, expenses, assets and debt for property you own or manage — at the property level, not just the company level. It covers rent collection, operating expenses, capital improvements, depreciation, loan balances and the reporting owners, partners and lenders rely on.
Done right, it tells you what each building earns after every cost, and what you’ll owe in tax at the end of the year.
A typical business has one set of books and one income stream. A real estate business has a building, a mortgage and often an entity behind every address. Depreciation runs for 27.5 or 39 years, security deposits are liabilities rather than income, and capital improvements are treated differently from repairs.
Each of those rules changes the tax you pay, so accounting for real estate requires a chart of accounts built for property, not a retail template.
Yes — or at minimum a separate class or location for each one. Property-level books show which buildings are earning their keep, keep partner distributions and 1031 basis calculations clean, and make lender reporting simple when you refinance.
If every property currently runs through one bank account, we untangle it and set up a structure you can actually maintain.
The IRS lets you deduct the cost of a building (not the land) over 27.5 years for residential and 39 years for commercial property. A cost segregation study breaks that cost into components — roofing, flooring, fixtures, site work — that can be written off over 5, 7 or 15 years instead.
That moves large deductions into the early years of ownership, when cash matters most.
Before the second property, before a 1031 exchange, and before you bring in outside partners. Those are the moments when entity choice, basis tracking and reporting decisions become expensive to undo.
A real estate accountant or CPA who works with New York real estate will also flag local issues — transfer taxes, mortgage recording tax, abatement compliance — that a general accountant may miss.
Real estate is one of the few industries where the accounting is harder than the operations. Every property has its own income, its own expenses, its own security deposits and often its own entity. Depreciation schedules run for decades, and a single mistimed exchange can erase a year of returns.
When those pieces are tracked in one general ledger, you lose sight of which building is carrying the others, you miss deductions you were entitled to, and your partners and lenders start asking questions you can’t answer quickly. These are the four problems we see most often across Rockland, Westchester and the five boroughs.
Challenge 01
Challenge 02
Challenge 03
Challenge 04Property management accounting depends on keeping each building’s income and costs separate. When several buildings run through one set of books, you can’t see which property actually earns and which one quietly loses money every month.
Without a cost segregation study and real estate tax planning, most owners depreciate the entire building over 27.5 or 39 years and defer deductions they could be taking now.
A 1031 exchange gives you 45 days to identify a replacement and 180 to close. Miss either window and the entire gain becomes taxable.
Partners and lenders expect consistent statements. Spreadsheets rebuilt from scratch each quarter invite exactly the questions you don’t want.
Danzinger & Co. is a New City, NY CPA firm that has kept the books for landlords, developers, syndicators and property managers for more than a decade. We build your books around the way you actually own property — one building, one entity, one set of numbers — so every decision starts from facts.
Here’s what we do for you:
Set up and maintain property-level books for every building, unit and entity you own. Each property gets its own set of books mapped to a real estate chart of accounts, so you see income, expenses and equity per building and the consolidated view when you need it.
Track rental income, operating expenses and capital improvements per property. Rent, late fees, utilities, repairs and management fees are coded to the property and unit they belong to. Capital improvements are separated from repairs so they land on the right schedule at tax time.
Reconcile tenant security deposits per unit so every dollar held is accounted for. Deposits sit in their own account and tie to a per-unit ledger: who paid, how much, when, and what is owed back. We reconcile it monthly so a move-out never becomes a scramble.
Prepare depreciation schedules and coordinate cost segregation studies. We maintain the fixed-asset register for every property, run the 27.5- and 39-year schedules, and bring in an engineering-based cost segregation study when the numbers justify it.
Plan 1031 exchanges around the 45-day identification and 180-day closing deadlines. Before you list, we model the gain, confirm the qualified intermediary is in place and calendar both windows so the exchange holds up under review.
Structure LLCs and partnerships so each property carries its own liability and tax profile. Holding companies, operating LLCs and partnerships set up to match how you own, with the intercompany bookkeeping and K-1s to go with them.
Produce monthly, quarterly and annual statements your investors and lenders can rely on. Per-property and consolidated financials, rent rolls, debt-service coverage and distribution schedules in the format your partners and banks expect.
Handle New York State and City filings, transfer taxes and abatement compliance. Transfer taxes, mortgage recording tax, RPIE statements, abatement paperwork and the state and city returns for every entity, all run from one filing calendar.
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Our accounting services for real estate are built around how each type of owner earns, spends and reports.
Real estate investors. Our accounting for real estate investors keeps every property’s income, expenses, basis and loan balance separate, so you know your return by building and can plan around depreciation, 1031 exchanges and partner distributions.
Developers. Accounting for real estate developers means tracking construction costs, draws and carrying costs against each project budget, then moving cleanly from development to depreciation once a property is placed in service.
Property managers. Property management accounting requires keeping owner funds, security deposits and operating accounts separate, producing owner statements, and reconciling every trust account.
Landlords and syndicators. Multiple entities, outside partners and lender covenants call for consistent reporting, clean capital accounts and distributions that tie to the books.
Clean books are the starting point. The tax savings come from what you do with them, and one team seeing the whole picture keeps the accounting and the tax strategy from working against each other.
Our accounting services cover monthly property-level bookkeeping, reconciliations and investor-ready financial statements. Our real estate tax services handle entity returns, partner reporting and New York State and City filings for your holdings.
Good real estate tax planning happens before a purchase, a sale or an exchange, not after. That means timing cost segregation, structuring 1031 exchanges, and choosing the right entity for each property. As your portfolio grows, our CFO services add forecasting, budgeting and lender-ready analysis by property.
Strategy call. Tell us about your portfolio: how many properties, how they’re owned, and what you’re planning next. We’ll show you where your books and tax position may be costing you.
Setup and cleanup. We separate your properties, bring past periods current, and build a chart of accounts and entity structure you can maintain.
Monthly reporting and planning. You receive property-level financials, and a senior accountant walks you through what changed and which tax moves to consider before year-end.
Rockland, Westchester and the five boroughs each handle assessments and abatements differently. We work across all of them.
No junior hand-offs. The person who knows your portfolio is the person who answers when you call.
You know the cost before the work starts, and it doesn’t jump because you bought another building.
One conversation is usually enough to see where your books are costing you. Call (347) 410-1839 or send us a note below.
Book a Strategy CallTell us about your portfolio and we’ll show you what property-level reporting looks like. Fill out the form and a senior accountant will reply within one business day.
“Knowledgeable, trustworthy, and extremely detail-oriented. A pleasure to work with.”
“A client of Danzinger & Co for over a decade and could not be happier! Professional, responsive, absolute experts.”