ExitSource

Reference · Closed transactions

Reference·Every figure sourced·As of 24 Aug 2026

What trades businesses actually sold for

Not what a broker thinks yours is worth, and not the multiple a private equity press release implies. This is published closed-transaction data for US trades businesses, with the source and the date on every line. Where the data does not exist for a trade, this page says so instead of borrowing a number from next door.

The whole small-business market in 2025

All industries, US Main Street, from BizBuySell 2025 Year in Review. Read it before the trade table, because it sets the scale of what is normal.

Businesses sold
9,586
Median sale price
$350K
Median revenue of a sold business
$703K
Median earnings before the owner's pay
$159K
Average multiple of those earnings
2.61x
Sale price against asking price
94%
Median days on the market
155
Total value changing hands
$7.95B

The number owners find hardest to accept is the second one. Half of all small businesses that sold in the United States last year sold for under $350K. A trades business with real crews and real contracts is usually well above that median, which is the encouraging half of the same fact.

One thing to know before you divide: the multiple is the average of the multiples each business achieved, not the median price divided by the median earnings. Those two calculations do not agree, and the second one is the wrong one, because the business with the median price is not the business with the median earnings. The same applies to every trade in the table below.

By trade, from closed sales

Pooled closed listings from 2021 to 2025, reported by BizBuySell. The multiple is applied to earnings before the owner’s pay, which is the same number we use and the same number a buyer will ask you for.

HVAC

2.68x

Median revenue
$1.5M
Median earnings
$304K
Median sale price
$775K
Sale against ask
93%

Reported as HVAC. Source

Plumbing

2.47x

Median revenue
$1.2M
Median earnings
$312K
Median sale price
$635K
Sale against ask
94%

Reported as Plumbing. Source

Electrical

2.66x

Median revenue
$1.7M
Median earnings
$386K
Median sale price
$845K
Sale against ask
94%

Reported as Electrical and mechanical contracting. Reported as one category with mechanical contracting, not separately. Source

Mechanical

2.66x

Median revenue
$1.7M
Median earnings
$386K
Median sale price
$845K
Sale against ask
94%

Reported as Electrical and mechanical contracting. Reported as one category with electrical, not separately. Source

Roofing

2.60x

Median revenue
$1.5M
Median earnings
$323K
Median sale price
$750K
Sale against ask
94%

Reported as Building and construction. There is no roofing-only benchmark. This is the general construction bucket, which holds roofing along with much else, so treat it as the neighborhood rather than the address. Source

Landscaping and grounds

Not published

Reported as Landscaping and yard service. A benchmark page exists and reports median sale prices rising 20% in 2025, but we could not verify its multiple figures directly, so we are not printing one. Every landscaping multiple we found elsewhere came from a firm selling advisory services. Source

Across the trades where a figure is published, the average multiple is 2.60x. The spread between the trades is narrow. The spread inside each trade is not, which is the next section and the one that actually decides what you get offered.

Size moves the multiple more than the trade does

One source states the spread plainly enough to quote. This is BizBuySell on plumbing, in its own words:

“Based on this data, half of plumbing businesses are valued between 1.66 and 3.15 times their annual seller discretionary earnings, with 25% of well-run, larger businesses trading above this range, and 25% of smaller, less desirable businesses trading below.”
“A plumbing business generating over $2MM in annual sales may sell for an earnings multiple over 3, where a similar, smaller business with sales below $600k may trade below 2 times its annual earnings.”

BizBuySell plumbing valuation benchmarks

So: half of them land between 1.66x and 3.15x. A quarter do better than that and a quarter do worse, and the thing that sorts them is mostly size, followed by how much of the business is you. On the earnings above, that middle band alone is a spread of $517K–$982K for the same median plumbing business. Anyone quoting you one multiple for your trade is quoting you the middle of that and calling it a valuation.

Why you have read that HVAC sells for 8x

Because two completely different markets are described with the same word, and the articles rarely say which one they are in. This is the single most expensive misunderstanding an owner can carry into a negotiation, so it is worth four lines.

The market you are in

A multiple of earnings before the owner’s pay

Deals below $2M of value, bought overwhelmingly by individuals: 46% first-time buyers and 32% people who have bought before. The multiple lands between 2x and 3.5x, because the earnings figure already includes the wage you were paying yourself.

The market in the headlines

A multiple of EBITDA, after a manager’s salary

Platform acquisitions from $2M of value up to $50M and beyond, where private equity is about 20% of buyers. Multiples of 5x to 9x get quoted here, on a smaller earnings number, for businesses that run without their founder.

The two are not comparable, and converting between them is not arithmetic you can do in your head. Take your own pay back out of the earnings and an 8x headline on a business your size collapses towards the figures in the table above. We looked hard for a source that puts a trades business under $2M of value anywhere near 8x. Every one we found was published by a firm selling advisory services, cited nothing, and described its own numbers as internal benchmarks. None of them are on this page.

Roll-ups are real, though, and worth knowing about. In May 2026 Apollo took a minority stake in Apex Service Partners, a residential HVAC, plumbing and electrical platform operating in 46 states, and brokers rank construction as their busiest sector for exactly this reason. Apollo did not disclose what it paid: the $2B figure attached to that deal comes from trade reporting rather than from the parties, so treat it as reported and not as confirmed. What is not in doubt is the direction. That money buys platforms and the companies they bolt on, and if it reaches your size it will reach you as a phone call, not as a repricing of the whole market.

What the data says moves your number

Whether you are replaceable

BizBuySell names low owner involvement as an upper-quartile driver and full-time owner involvement as a lower-quartile one, in those words. It is the same lever twice: a business that needs you is a job, and a job does not command a multiple.

Whether you will finance part of it

Also named as an upper-quartile driver. A seller willing to carry a note is telling the buyer the earnings are real, and gets paid for saying so.

Revenue that repeats without being sold again

Service agreements and contracted maintenance. Every advisory firm in this market calls this the biggest lever, and we agree — but none of them publishes a dataset that quantifies it, so treat the size of the effect as unproven and the direction as certain.

Size, which is the one nobody wants to hear

It moves the multiple more reliably than the trade does. The same plumbing business at $2M of revenue and at $600K of revenue is not the same multiple, and the gap is bigger than the gap between plumbing and HVAC.

How our own ranges compare, since you should check

We publish the multiples we apply, so here they are against the closed-sale figures on this page. We would rather you saw the gap here than found it yourself later.

The bottom of our ranges sits close to the reported averages. The top sits above them, and you are entitled to know why: the reported figure is one average across every business in the category, including the small owner-dependent ones, while the top of our range is what a larger business with contracted revenue and a crew that stays actually clears. On public data, a quarter of businesses do trade above the quartile band. But treat the top of any range, ours included, as a number you have to earn rather than one you have been quoted. If you think our arithmetic is wrong, it is all written out and we will change it and say we changed it.

Sources

What we left out matters as much: no sourced figure on this page comes from a firm that sells advisory services, and none of them is an estimate of ours. The only numbers here that are ours are the six multiple ranges in the section above, which are labelled as ours. Where a source is a survey of brokers rather than a record of closed deals, or trade reporting rather than a filing, the line below says so.

Now run it on your own numbers

Six questions about your business and a range on the next screen, using the earnings basis on this page. No email address to see it, no listing agreement, and nothing to pay at any point.

Show me my rangeRead the method first

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