Practice
For owners of residential, commercial, and industrial service contractors who have decided to grow by buying. HVAC, plumbing, electrical, landscaping, finishing, site work, and environmental services.
Talk to Joe →You already know the sellers. The best trades acquisitions are never listed. They come from competitors, subcontractors, and suppliers you have worked beside for years, who would rather sell to someone they trust than to a fund.
You know which costs come out. You run the same profit and loss statement already. Before the letter of intent, you know which overhead is duplicated, which supplier is overpriced, and which crew is underused.
Integration starts on day one. A searcher spends the first year learning the trade. A fund hires outsiders to run a hundred-day plan. You already know how the work gets dispatched, priced, and done.
What the owner usually lacks is the time and the team to run the process: the thesis, the outreach, the structure, the capital, and the diligence. That is the part we run.
Every trades acquisition buys one of six assets the financials understate: density, customers, revenue quality, talent, supply, or a new map. These are the eight moves owners run to buy them.
Start with buying home services companies, which covers why HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and landscaping are consolidating and how an owner competes with private equity platforms. For HVAC specifically, see buying HVAC companies. More trade guides are on the way in the answers library.
Current buyers we represent in the trades. If you own, know, or broker a fit, start a confidential conversation. We do not co-broke.
New England
Established technician bench and maintenance-agreement revenue preferred. The buyer is a growing operator that will add technicians and invest in new equipment.
View mandate →Carolinas and Mid-Atlantic
Add-on to a licensed multi-trade platform. Strong team retention and a service-weighted book valued over size.
View mandate →Carolinas
Licensed platform absorbs the back office. Team-retention model; service-weighted revenue preferred.
View mandate →Carolinas
Commercial and residential contractors. Self-performing, licensed shops preferred.
View mandate →North Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas
Well-funded, qualified buyer seeking a platform to build on. Recurring maintenance valued; hardscape and install welcome. Real estate welcome. Moves quickly with a straight yes or no.
View mandate →Mid-Atlantic and New England
Environmental and remediation services. Specific criteria are being finalized, so reach out if you think there's a fit.
View mandate →Nationwide
Drywall and painting finishing contractors with current volume supporting national homebuilders. Buyer is an owner-led platform rolling up finishing contractors to build national-builder volume. Nationwide, with the strongest fit in Texas, Florida, the Carolinas, Arizona, Georgia, and Tennessee.
View mandate →Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Georgia
Operator buying fleets and crews along the I-85 corridor. Right-of-way and land clearing, grading, and access roads; recurring vegetation management also in scope. At least $1M of equipment, counted at appraised value, not book.
View mandate →Find. The thesis, the target list, and outreach under your name, to the competitors and subcontractors you already know and the ones you don't.
Fund. The capital stack arranged and closed: SBA, bank debt, seller financing, and equity, sized to the deal.
Finished. Diligence on what kills contractor deals, licensing, crews, and backlog, and integration planned before closing.
Often not automatically. Many trade licenses are held by a qualifying individual rather than by the company, and the rules vary by state and by trade. If the license holder leaves at closing, the business may not be able to keep working. Identify who holds each license early in diligence, and structure the deal so a qualified person stays on or you have a qualifier of your own before closing.
Treat retention as part of the deal, not an afterthought. Know who the key people are before you sign, plan pay and benefits so no one takes a cut to join you, use stay bonuses or retention agreements for the few people the business cannot run without, and tell the crews what is happening from someone they already trust.
Usually, because recurring service revenue is steadier than project revenue and buyers and lenders value it more. The diligence question is whether the agreements are real: how many renew each year, whether they are priced to make money, and whether they are tied to the company or to the owner personally.
Beyond the usual cash flow coverage, lenders look closely at the work-in-progress schedule, backlog, over- and under-billings, customer concentration, and, on commercial work, bonding capacity. Contractor books are often kept on a cash basis, so plan for the financials to be rebuilt before a lender will rely on them.
It depends on what constrains you today. If you are profitable and short on capacity, a competitor in your own market usually pays back fastest. If your customers keep asking for work you refer away, an adjacent trade may be the better move. The eight moves guide walks through how to tell which one fits.
Thirty minutes. What you own, what you want to buy, and whether the math supports it.
Talk to Joe →