Sell by industry · Home services
Selling your home services business
How HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and roofing companies are bought, and what the buyers pay for.
Home services is the most active founder market in the country, and the buyers are professional. A platform that has bought forty companies reads yours in a day: the service agreements, the technician roster, the owner's seat, and twelve months of financials. The sale is won in the file before the first call.
What buyers pay for
In home services, buyers pay a premium for a few things and discount the rest
Every offer is built from the same ledger. One column is what moves a home services business up the range. The other is what a buyer finds in diligence and takes off the price.
Priced up
- A membership or service agreement base: recurring revenue in a trade that is otherwise call by call
- A general manager and a dispatcher who run the day without the owner
- Technician tenure, with pay and training a buyer can keep
- Twelve months of clean monthly financials that show the shoulder months hold
Priced down
- An owner who is the dispatcher, the closer, and the best technician
- Technician turnover above the market, which a buyer models before margin
- Revenue that depends on one builder, one property manager, or one insurer
- Fleet, licences, and permits that cannot transfer on the day of close
Who is across the table
The buyers who show up for a home services business, in the order they usually do
Five kinds of buyer exist in every sector. Home services draws some of them more than others, and each one reads your business a different way. A competitive process puts more than one of them at the table, so the terms are set by competition.
Private equity platform
The most active buyer in the trade: a platform with a brand, a call centre, and a plan to add your company to it. Pays for the service base and the roster.
- Wants
- A durable business to build on with add-on acquisitions.
- Pays
- A market multiple, with rollover equity for a second exit.
Private equity add-on
A platform that already owns a company in your market, buying density. Faster diligence, and an earn-out tied to the integration is common.
- Wants
- A bolt-on to a company they already own.
- Pays
- A multiple close to the platform's, with faster diligence.
Strategic acquirer
A regional consolidator or a larger contractor adding your territory. The highest price when the fit is real; the brand usually goes.
- Wants
- Your customers, product, or territory added to theirs.
- Pays
- Often the highest price when the fit is real, with synergies priced in.
Individual or search fund
An owner-operator who will run it. The most common buyer for a smaller company, and the most dependent on bank financing.
- Wants
- A business to run themselves.
- Pays
- Bank-financed prices with seller notes common.
The published multiple
What buyers have paid for home services businesses
This is the median its source published, not a FNDRS estimate. It is on owner earnings, not on EBITDA like the typical range above, so the two do not compare directly. The ledger is what moves a sale inside and beyond it.
owner earnings was the median multiple paid for HVAC businesses sold on BizBuySell from 2021 to 2025.
How the sale runs
Four phases, and what diligence reads first in home services
Selling a home services business follows the same path as every FNDRS sale: the Go-To-Market Analysis, then four phases, prepare, market, select, and close. What changes in home services is what the buyer's diligence reaches for first.
Diligence reads first
- Service agreements: how many, how they renew, and how much revenue sits under them
- The technician roster, tenure, pay, and the turnover of the last two years
- Twelve months of monthly financials against the seasonality the trade expects
- Fleet, licences, permits, and the leases, and whether each one transfers
- Before the saleThe Go-To-Market AnalysisA buyer's read of the business, with your CPA in the room
- Phase oneGo-to-market preparationThe financials and the materials a buyer will read
- Phase twoMarket launch and offersBuyers under NDA, and the offers by one date
- Phase threeMeetings and final selectionThe shortlist, the counter-offers, one letter of intent
- Phase fourDiligence and closeThe buyer checks everything, and the money moves
The terms
The deal terms a home services business is most likely to see
The headline number is one line of a term sheet. These are the terms that come up most often when a home services business is sold, what each one means, and how it tends to be used in home services.
- Rollover equity
A share of your proceeds reinvested in the buyer's company for a second exit.
In home services. Platforms ask for it, so the founder shares in the second exit when the platform itself sells. The share and its terms are negotiated.
- Earn-out
Part of the price paid later, if the business hits agreed targets after close.
In home services. Common in an add-on sale, tied to the first year's revenue or the integration milestones. The cleaner the numbers, the smaller the part that waits.
- Working capital peg
The normal level of working capital the buyer expects to be left in the business at close.
In home services. Set on the trailing average. Parts inventory and deferred service revenue are where the argument usually is.
What owners are told
Three things owners in home services hear, and what buyers actually do
Each one is common enough to have cost a founder money. Open a row for the correction.
The platforms are paying record multiples, so timing is everything.
FactThe record multiples go to companies with a service base and a management bench. The same platform pays a plain multiple for a company that runs on the owner, in any market.
A buyer will keep me on, so owner dependence does not matter.
FactA buyer keeps the owner for a transition and prices the business on what it earns after. The longer the transition a buyer needs, the lower the price and the larger the earn-out.
My customer list is the asset.
FactIn a call-by-call trade, the list is a history. Buyers pay for the agreements that bring the customers back without a call, and for the technicians who answer it.
Home services
Home services owners on working with FNDRS
Short testimonials from owners who went through the FNDRS process. Most are under two minutes.
No founder in this industry is on film yet. The first testimonial goes here once it is filmed; until then, every founder we have filmed is one link away.
Not ready to sell yet
Scale the home services business first, then sell it for more
The valuation playbook for home services reads the same market from the other side: the value gap in numbers, the element buyers weigh first, and the order of work that closes the gap before you go to market.
Selling a home services business? Start with a conversation
The playbook gives the range. The deal team gives the number, the buyers who will show up, and the terms to expect.