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If it's that good, I'd wonder why the guy is selling up. The link says that they invested a lot recently. Unless it's that he wants to retire or there is some other reason (family problems, health, so forth) to sell up now, I really would check out why he's selling this off.
Maybe there's problems coming up like new regulations, rent increases, or people giving up their contracts once they expire because they're cutting costs. You might buy this expecting to continue on with the million worth of contracts, only to find that half those contracts are due to expire and won't be renewed.
Selling a small business is a market for lemons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons
With uncertain quality, the price goes down to very low levels. 3-4x annual profit is standard for small businesses. Keep in mind that these businesses will typically require the full-time presence of the owner, so you can't just buy 10 of them and retire to a beach.
The guy is probably old and doesn't want to run a landscaping business anymore. Now he takes what he can get. Because that is what the market will bear.
Definitely possible. On the plus side, you might double your contracts and make twice as much. It's not like smart people are launching new power washing and landscaping businesses every day to compete with you. If you can answer the phone, you're upper half. If you offer online appt scheduling, you'll be top decile.
Oftentimes in those cases the guy running the business is the business. Once he leaves the business is essentially worthless, existing clients will re-evaluate who they are buying from: you spent a million dollars and you would be in the same position if you had started your own landscaping business in the same area.
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It's to fleece people that @jeroboam is "helping" with this "it's EZ to buy a business" nonsense.
The macro theory that retiring Boomer's are selling profitable businesses is true. But the devil is always in the details. There are toxic pills in so many of these businesses and, because markets eventually optimize to information, there are emerging small / micro PE firms that will blow you out of the water because they don't need to finance the way a solo-preneur does. It's a similar formula to what has happened in housing - it's not that you're competing on buying a house with another young couple, it's that BlackRock is coming to town with all cash offers sight unseen 10% above asking.
Again, it's about risk and number of opportunities. There are numbers aplenty for "1 out of every 10 startups" makes it. Fine. I want to see numbers for "of people who started a business 1/2/3/4+ times, here's how they make out"
We shouldn't shy away from risk and failure as a country. We should encourage it. The real evil of MegaCorp jobs is they slow feed you a median outcome when, if it were possible to weather some storms a little better, you might eventually catch a wave.
Color me skeptical. While PE is rolling up certain kinds of businesses, they are not buying landscaping and tire repair shops at the $1 million level. They aren't going to buy anything that depends on the sweat equity of the owner.
Financing as a solo-preneur is not prohibitive. There are SBA loans. There is seller financing. You can do it for 10-20% down, maybe less.
It's not "EZ" nor did I claim it was. That's why people don't do it. Most people would rather earn W2 income where someone else has all the responsibility and they just show up and drone.
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