What Home-Services Businesses Actually Sell For: Multiples by Trade

Here is the short version: most home-services businesses under $1M in earnings sell for 2x to 3.5x SDE. Past $1M in EBITDA with a manager running daily operations, broker-published ranges move to 4x to 8x EBITDA, and private-equity platform deals go higher.

The trade you are in matters less than you think. The spread inside each trade, driven by recurring revenue, owner dependence, and how clean your numbers are, is wider than the spread between trades.

This post is the reference table we wished existed: every range sourced, every source named, and the gotchas the calculator pages skip.

Multiples by trade: the table

These are broker-published ranges, compiled from 2025 and 2026 broker and advisory guides. Sources are listed under the table. SDE ranges describe owner-operator businesses, roughly under $1M in earnings. EBITDA ranges describe established companies past $1M in EBITDA with a management layer.

Last verified July 26, 2026.

Sources: BizBuySell’s industry valuation benchmarks (2025 closed-transaction data), First Page Sage’s HVAC EBITDA and valuation multiples report (updated February 2025), Peak Business Valuation’s fence company multiples, and 2026 trade-specific guides from brokers and M&A advisors including CT Acquisitions, Breakwater M&A, Auxo Capital Advisors, and Sofer Advisors.

One caution before you circle your number: roofing has the widest internal spread of any trade. Broker guides discount storm-chasing revenue to 2.5x to 3.5x because buyers treat insurance-driven work as non-repeatable, while commercial roofing with maintenance contracts commands the 6x to 8x end.

Asking prices are not closed prices

The most important footnote in this entire post: most published multiples are asking prices and advisory ranges, not wire transfers.

BizBuySell’s closed-transaction benchmarks, which track what businesses actually sold for on the largest business-for-sale marketplace, show median earnings multiples across service sectors of roughly 2x to 3.3x. For HVAC specifically, BizBuySell’s benchmark data puts the median cash flow multiple at 2.85x, on a median revenue of about $1.1M.

Compare that with First Page Sage’s 2025 advisory data, which puts the average HVAC deal around 8x EBITDA and 5.1x SDE. Both numbers are real. They describe different markets: BizBuySell tracks small main-street deals that closed; advisory tables skew toward larger, PE-attractive companies that hired an M&A firm.

So when a broker’s blog tells you HVAC companies “sell for 6 to 10x,” read the fine print. That is the market for $2M+ EBITDA platforms with recurring revenue. A two-truck shop with the owner running dispatch from a cell phone is in the 2.5x SDE market, and no amount of reading changes which market you are in. Changing your operations does.

SDE or EBITDA: know which number you are selling on

Small shops sell on SDE: seller’s discretionary earnings, meaning net profit plus your salary, your truck, your health insurance, and every other owner perk added back. The buyer is buying your job, so your total take is the earnings base.

Larger companies sell on EBITDA: earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, with a market-rate salary for a general manager subtracted. The buyer is buying a company, not a job.

The switch happens around $1M in earnings, and it cuts both ways. Your earnings number shrinks when a GM salary comes out, but the multiple applied to it roughly doubles.

Run the math on a real-shaped example. A plumbing company with $2.5M revenue and $450K SDE sells on SDE. At 2.5x to 3.5x, that is $1.1M to $1.6M. Now the same company three years later: $4M revenue, an operations manager on payroll, $700K EBITDA after that salary, half the revenue on service agreements. It sells on EBITDA at 4x to 6x: $2.8M to $4.2M.

Earnings did not triple. The company became transferable, and the pricing basis changed underneath it. That is why the single most valuable thing an owner can do three to five years before selling is make the business run without them, then prove it with numbers a stranger can audit.

Why the buyers showed up

Private equity discovered the trades because the math is hard to resist: fragmented markets, non-discretionary demand, recurring service revenue, and thousands of owners near retirement with no succession plan. The model is buy a platform at 6x to 10x, bolt on small shops at 3x to 4x, sell the combined company at a platform multiple.

The software vendors are consolidating right behind them. ServiceTitan acquired Aspire, the commercial landscaping platform, in June 2021, and FieldRoutes, the pest control and lawn care platform, in January 2022. When the biggest software company in the trades spends acquisition money to get into landscaping and pest control, that is a signal about where the buyers think the recurring revenue lives.

For the owner on the other side of that table, the experience is less abstract. One facilities vendor who has been through it told us: “bought out by equity firms, it happened to me three times, I was lost, done, history.” Three times. The consolidators are not a trend piece; they are the counterparty you will likely face.

What actually moves your multiple

Here is the part we see from the operational side. We build custom software and integrations for home-services operators, so we do not see the deal negotiations; brokers see those. We see the systems buyers walk into during diligence. The pattern is consistent.

A buyer discounts every business whose operations live in the owner’s head and in spreadsheets. Not because spreadsheets are embarrassing, but because they are unverifiable and untransferable. The multiple is a price on risk, and “only the owner knows how this place runs” is the most expensive risk on the sheet.

What raises the number, in the order diligence teams check:

• Recurring revenue under contract. Maintenance agreements, weekly routes, service plans. In landscaping and pool service, 60%+ contract revenue is worth one to two full turns of the multiple by itself, per Breakwater M&A’s and CT Acquisitions’ 2026 guides.
• Job-level cost data. Can you show gross margin per job, per crew, per service line, for the last three years? If the answer is “roughly,” a quality-of-earnings review will find the gap and the buyer will price it.
• Systems that run without you. Scheduling, dispatch, invoicing, and follow-up that a new owner inherits working. If every workflow routes through your phone, the buyer is not buying a company. They are buying a job with your name on it, and they will pay job prices.
• Data you can actually export. This one surprises owners. If ten years of customer, job, and pricing history sits in a per-seat software subscription you cannot fully export, part of your operating history effectively belongs to the vendor. An owned system with your data in your database is an asset that transfers on closing day. A rented login is not.

None of this is exotic. It is the difference between a business a stranger can verify and one they have to take your word for. Buyers do not pay multiples for your word.

About those software-vendor calculators

ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro both publish free HVAC and service-business valuation calculators, and honestly, they are fine for what they are. Enter revenue and earnings, get a multiplier-based ballpark in ten minutes. ServiceTitan’s own fine print says it plainly: a self-help tool, not financial advice.

Use them for a first pass. Just know two things. First, they cannot see the factors that actually set your multiple: owner dependence, customer concentration, contract quality, books a buyer can trust. Second, they exist to start a software conversation, the same way this post exists to start a systems conversation. The difference is we are telling you.

For a number you can plan an exit on, get a broker’s opinion of value or a quality-of-earnings review. Those look at what the calculators cannot.

If you are three to five years out

The multiple you get is mostly decided before the listing, in how the business runs. Recurring revenue takes years to build. Clean job-cost history takes years to accumulate. A business that runs without you takes deliberate work to construct.

That last part is what we do. We build owned scheduling, job-costing, and operations systems for home-services companies: software you control, with your data in your database, that a buyer inherits working. It will not turn a 2.5x business into an 8x business by itself. It removes the discounts that keep 2.5x businesses at 2.5x.

If you want to talk through what the operational side of a higher multiple looks like for your shop, start with our custom software page or reach out through the contact page. We will tell you within one call whether a build makes sense or whether you should just go fix your maintenance-agreement count first.