Life, Ledgers, & Real Estate: How Gita Faust Built a Niche on Her Own Terms

Real estate accounting has become a growing niche for modern accounting firms. However, building a successful, scalable practice takes more than experience. It requires the right mix of client focus, technology, and efficient workflows.

In this video, Gita Faust, Founder of Fast Trac Consulting and RealEstateAccounting.com, and Seth Fineberg, Founder of Accountants Forward, join Ace Cloud Hosting to discuss how accounting firms can build a niche practice, choose the right tech stack, and create processes that support growth without stretching their teams.

With over 25 years of hands-on experience, Gita has built a reputation for her practical, client-focused approach to real estate accounting.

She shares strategies for balancing life and work, serving diversified portfolios, leveraging QuickBooks and other tools, and scaling a specialized practice for lasting success.

Transcript

Seth: Hi there, I’m Seth Fineberg from Accountants Forward. I am here with Gita Faust of RealEstateAccounting.com, and we are just going to have sort of a brief chat because we do have a very exciting webinar “Real Estate Accounting in the AI Era: Adapt or Fall Behind” coming up on Tuesday, the 24th, at 12 o’clock Eastern Standard Time, where we’re really going to get into more of our discussion.

But for right now, I want you to see this to get to know Gita a bit and a bit of the work that she does because it’s very significant to really what the webinar is going to be about. So, Gita, very briefly, why don’t you introduce yourself and your business?

Gita: Thank you, Seth. I appreciate you taking the time to get to know each other. That is wonderful. What do I do and where do I start, right?

Seth: Yeah

Gita: So, years and years ago, since ninth grade, I’ve been on the same topic, which is commerce and accounting. So, you can see what my experience is, and that journey I have continued. Fast forward to today, where I have a niche in real estate accounting. We offer controllership and CFO services on a higher level and report customizations as well.

Seth: Okay. And what we really want to get into, you know, ultimately these days, you know, accounting professionals such as yourself, you know, they are kind of really needing to get back in touch with why they’re doing and what they’re doing.

And in some of our previous discussions, you had mentioned that you kind of hit a point where you really needed to find some balance between all of the work that you were doing and, you know, the life that you wanted to have and to live. Tell me how you’ve structured it that way.

Gita: Again, going, starting back in history, right?

Seth: Certainly.

Gita: Yeah. I was working full-time, and then I was in an accident, and I was kind of disabled for a couple of years. I could hardly sit for half an hour to one hour after five years.

At that point, I decided I needed to do something constructive about myself and about my life and start generating some revenue as well, while trying to balance family, kids, and business. And since then, I have started my business helping others. And in the process, down the road, like five years down the road, then I developed a niche with real estate.

And once that door opened and I got the “aha” moment, where everybody kept on saying, when I started my business, you need to find a niche. And that did not resonate until I became a so-called expert today in the real estate arena. Balancing is an act in life that we all do every day.

So, the way we balance, the way I balanced it was what was my priority and how can I manage that time to help my clients who have diversified portfolios and make them my family and bring their accounting and financials all in one place for all their business, not only real estate. And that’s what I loved about real estate.

Seth: And you’re finding today that you have the, I guess, work or life and work balance that you kind of sought after. Obviously, you went through a difficult time in your life, but it’s not like you know, once you kind of got, you know, recovered and all of that, you want to necessarily go back to the way you were doing things, you know, comment about that. And we’re going to definitely dig into that more, and the niche that you’ve developed in our webinar coming up. But tell me a bit about the balance that you have.

Gita: So, I started my business around 2000, and I got certified in QuickBooks. The first couple of years, 5-10 years, I work only when my son is sleeping and when he’s in school. And if I had to have meetings in between, I would drag my son along.

And I did have offices, but now it’s a home-based office. And I would tell my clients if I were in a meeting and he was going to walk in the door, they are going to hear, Mom, I’m home. And the door banging, you know; this was standard. Anybody who wanted to talk to me during that time period.

Seth: And I’m aware I work from home by myself.

Gita: So, I have had one client since the inception of my business, for 25 years, I should take my son along with me. And that client was so nice. He was a captain in the Navy. Every time he met my son, he would give him a dollar.

You know, that reminded me of what my grandparents did. Every time we went to meet our grandparents, we would get, you know, rupees, you know, not dollars. Yeah, a little something, just a token.

But I think that balance with the client is very important because I have my husband supporting me for anything and everything. He has never said no to me at any time. So, the success is first towards my husband, unconditional, do whatever you want.

And my clients, you know, we are here. We want your support and to find a balance between family and then help us. So, it was not only on my part, but also on my clients accepting my life balance as well. And that’s, I think, what made it more successful for me, just then, me thinking that I need to balance my life and my business.

Seth: Excellent. So, what are some of the, approximately, how many clients do you serve today? And tell me a bit about some of the tools, because it’s hard to really think about being an accountant today without seeing a true kind of tech stack, you know, a set of tools that work together and support you in your work.

Gita: So, the tech stack is so varied because I started with the niche and eventually found out that not everybody could afford me for the small businesses, small investors who had a couple of properties. So, we created the courses. So, the count of clients is humongous, right? On different variables, it varies by the services we offer.

So, going on to developing the tech stack was very challenging, but the tech stack started with the client’s needs. What do they need? What automation did they have? I’m talking 25 years ago. I still have the same concept, you know, how can we make their back office easier to transition everything to numbers? So, it starts from the backend.

What do they use in their back office to get to the tech stack? So, let’s say for a property management company, they may be using Yardi, AppFolio, Buildium, and Rentvine, and they may have different tech stacks to work with them because that work has to be done in-house. And that all relates to the accounting tech stack. Right?

If there is an integration, well and good. If there’s no integration, we build one. And sometimes you don’t even need to integrate the software. So, currently, we do help with property management software as well as in the accounting world.

I use ClickUp, which is very simple, dumbed down for the client-facing. You know, facing the client’s work has to be very simple. So, they just have to take 10 minutes out of their day in the morning while drinking a cup of tea, coffee, or mocha, whatever they drink, to answer the questions we have.

So, we dumbed it down totally for them. Of course, QuickBooks is a favorite accounting software, and I especially love the desktop. It takes us more time going online, QuickBooks Online, and that amounts to two to two and a half times more than working on a desktop.

Seth: Right. Yeah. And I assume in the desktop world, you’re able to, you know, still work in a sort of a hosted environment. Yes. And I found from day one that Ace Cloud Hosting is the best. They’re just a phone call away.

Every time I have called them, they have not put me on hold. They get the solution right with their high tech and, you know, people, the right person, they patch me up and get the solution. And we are up and running in one or two minutes.

So, the downtime is very little, and they’re so supportive. Even by email, you get a response right away. And that’s the kind of software companies I love to work with. You know, we have, you can pick up the phone and call, and you get the answers.

The reimbursement field is a huge one. So, we use a couple; we use Expensify for a couple of clients and Ramp. For AP, I’ve been introduced to MakersHub. That is great. And so is Ramp. And then of course, if you’re using QuickBooks Online, you just use the QuickBooks Online feature as they come along. And they develop it so fast. Every six months, they have a new feature.

So, with QuickBooks Desktop, it’s so easy because even today, we find integrated software that we can import and export. And being it on the cloud, we have national clients, global in the US, I would say, not global, but global in the USA, you get my gist.

Seth: Yes

Gita: And we can work anytime, anywhere, and we can access it.

And that’s why I love the QuickBooks desktop. It has the features that we need to run on a higher end, offering the services as a CFO.

Seth: Well, we are going to get into that a bit more, as well as our main topic on Tuesday, March 24th, at noon Eastern Time, sponsored by Ace Cloud Hosting.

We’re going to get into a conversation, Gita and I, to talk a little bit more about some of the tools that she uses to support her clients, but also the idea of developing the real estate niche. You know, what are some of the tools, some of the best practices?

This is definitely an area of growth for any accountant that is, you know, maybe has some real estate clients already and is maybe looking to dig a bit deeper into developing that. So, we’re going to get into some of those details at that time.

Remember again, March 24th, Tuesday at noon, Eastern Time. I do hope that you join us. Gita, thank you so much for your time today.

Gita: Thank you, Seth.

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