As seen in The Real Deal

June 4, 2025 - A major shortage of accounting talent is plaguing the real estate industry.

Everyone, from the largest funds and institutions to small shop syndicators, is dealing with finding and keeping accountants, particularly controllers. To solve this major pain point, many firms are turning to outsourcing, a one-size-fits-all solution that gives companies access to expertise, industry knowledge, and best practices for critical accounting functions, as well as the ability to easily scale up or down as needed. In honor of their recently released e-book on the subject, How Real Estate Companies Can Take Control of Their Finance and Accounting Operations, we sat down with the Real Estate Industry Practice and the Business Process Outsourcing Practice at Citrin Cooperman to learn how outsourcing can prevent major accounting headaches across the industry.

The Dangers of High Turnover

Whether a company has a large portfolio or just one or two properties, there are a multitude of transactions with tenant payments coming in and vendor payments going out. If a company isn’t staying on top of those payments, things can go sideways very quickly.

That’s typically where a controller or CFO is needed to make sure everything is running correctly and that the monthly, quarterly, and annual financial statements going out to investors and lenders reflect accurate and up-to-date accounting.

However, these crucial positions have become hard to hold down in the last few years.

“Finding someone who understands the industry, understands the software, and understands what things should look like is really hard right now,” says Ryan Moore, a director in Citrin Cooperman's Business Process Outsourcing Practice. “The cycle of hiring, training, and then doing it all again when an employee leaves is exhausting for a lot of owners and operators.”

Outsourcing these functions is a way to introduce stability to this crucial operational practice, allowing managers to focus on other business areas instead of being distracted by a constant hunt for new accounting talent.

Outsourcing for Efficiency

There are more advantages to outsourcing than reliability. Due to the ebb and flow nature of the real estate market, right-sizing your accounting team can be a constant struggle, which outsourcing services solve by automatically scaling up or down to match your immediate needs.

“If a company’s going out and buying 5,000 apartment units, they’re expanding so quickly that even in a market where you had ample people to hire, you couldn’t keep up with it. And that’s what this outsourcing solution provides for our clients,” says Citrin Cooperman’s Partner and Practice Leader, Real Estate Industry, Mark Mindik. “A company could double the size of their business in a year and still stay up to speed because they have the services they need, whether it is the whole accounting department or a resource alongside their internal accounting team to assist them.”

Citrin Cooperman offers both basic accounting services and a full-service outsourcing model that are custom-tailored to a client’s needs. Services range from providing transaction level work to more sophisticated and complex needs, such as getting a company ready for an audit or a sale.

Oftentimes, the cost of outsourcing is offset by savings and increased efficiencies.

“Many of our clients are surprised that they get a team of three people just to replace one controller, and that's because we have the right person doing the right task and have a separation of duties,” says Moore. “You don’t need five years of experience in the industry to do a bank reconciliation or to code accounts payable, but a lot of times that’s what a controller is also responsible for doing in smaller organizations.”

The Right People for the Job

Another major pain point for real estate firms is that they don’t know exactly what they need in an accountant or finance executive. That might result in overpaying for internal staff.

“We have direct access to good people,” says Moore. “We also have the ability to identify the needs of the client and what they actually need in their people.”

In other cases, a company might promote an existing senior property accountant into the role of controller because they know the industry and the software, but it ends up being a stretch.

“What that typically leads to is a situation where they are sending their books to the tax accountants at year-end, and the tax accountants are finding a lot of mistakes because things were done incorrectly all year,” says Moore.

For asset management companies that work with multiple property management companies, there also are advantages in working with one outsource firm that can work across different software platforms and bring all of the different financials together. Engaging a business process outsourcing firm can also help companies improve their speed and turnaround times, such as hitting earlier reporting dates and providing more timely data to their investors or stakeholders.

“One of the added advantages of our BPO model is that we're working with lots of different clients,” says Moore. “We see what works, what doesn't work, and we can bring in those best practices and knowledge.”

Citrin Cooperman’s Real Estate Industry Practice and Business Process Outsourcing Practice are highly skilled in creating customized, effective outsourcing models to help your business achieve its strategic goals. To learn more, read How Real Estate Companies Can Take Control of Their Finance and Accounting Operations.