HVAC & Electrical Business Broker in Florida

Amerivest is an HVAC business broker serving owners across Florida — residential service and replacement companies, commercial mechanical contractors, and electrical contractors. We have been selling Florida trade businesses since 1983, from a $270,000 service company to a $12 million commercial contractor.

Years of experience

1,200+

Businesses sold

Statewide

Florida coverage

IF YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT IT

Most owners we talk to are not ready to sell yet

They are thinking about it. A consolidator’s letter showed up in the mail, or somebody threw out a number at the supply house, or they have started counting how many more Florida summers they want to do. The first conversation is almost never about listing the business. It is about what it is actually worth, and what it would take to be ready.

That is the conversation worth having early. A company that spends a year getting ready usually sells for more than the same company sold in a hurry, and the gap is wider than anything most owners could add to the top line in that same year. Nothing about that conversation obligates you to sell, and nothing about it leaves this office.

Most of these companies started with one truck. What you take out at the end ought to reflect what went into that — and that starts with knowing what actually comes off the price between the handshake and the wire.

BEFORE YOU SELL

What actually comes out of your check

The price you shake hands on is not the number you take home. In this trade, six things routinely come off it between the handshake and the wire, and most owners find out about them late — usually in the last two weeks, which is the worst possible time to be surprised. None of them kill a deal if you see them coming.

Maintenance visits you have already been paid for

Annual agreements get billed up front and performed across the year. Whatever visits are still owed on closing day go to the buyer, and the value of that unperformed work comes off your side of the settlement statement. A clean log of what has actually been performed against each agreement is worth real money here — if nobody can tell a buyer where each customer stands, the buyer assumes the worst and prices it that way.

Extended warranties you wrote yourself

If you back parts-and-labor warranties in house, the buyer inherits every truck roll you promised over the last several years. Buyers respond by discounting for it, carving it out, or asking you to keep the liability personally. Warranties placed with a third-party administrator almost never come up at all — which is a good reason to move them there well before you go to market.

What is still owed on the trucks and equipment

Loans and leases against vehicles, trailers, lifts and equipment get paid off out of your proceeds at closing. This is the most common surprise in the trade: owners think of the fleet as an asset they are selling and stop counting the notes attached to it. Add them up before you decide what the business is worth to you.

Inventory above or below your normal level

35+ year-old family-owned electrical contracting business in Southeast Florida serving both residential and commercial.

$500,000

Sell Side

Individual

Coral Gables

Electrical

35+ year-old family-owned electrical contracting business in Southeast Florida serving both residential and commercial.

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WHAT BUYERS PAY FOR

What moves the number, in order

Two HVAC companies doing the same revenue routinely sell for very different money. These are the six things that account for most of the gap, heaviest first.

Your maintenance agreements

How much of your work renews on its own is the single biggest thing separating two companies of the same size. Agreements keep producing without you making a call, and they turn into replacement work at a rate a buyer can count on. A company living on the phone ringing gets priced like a business that starts over every January — whatever it billed last year.

The license, and whose name is on it

In Florida the license belongs to a person, not to the company. If that person is you and your buyer does not have one of their own, there is no sale until that gets solved. It is fixable, and it is worth fixing early: putting a qualified employee on the license a year ahead opens the door to every buyer who does not already hold one, and closes off the most common reason a deal in this trade falls apart at the end.

How much is service, how much is new construction

Service and change-outs repeat, carry better margin, and get billed as soon as the work is done. New construction is job revenue with retainage held back, bonding, and a schedule of work in progress attached to it. The heavier your construction mix, the less a buyer pays for the same earnings — and the more the process turns into an audit of your job costing.

Your technicians

What a buyer is really buying is capacity, and in this trade capacity means techs who know the work and are staying. How long they have been with you, how they are paid, and whether the lead guys intend to stick around get looked at as closely as the financials do. Losing two good techs right before or right after a closing costs more here than in almost any other business we sell.

How much rides on one customer

A wide residential base carries no single point of failure, but no contracts either. A commercial book is stickier and usually more concentrated — one property-management company or one general contractor at a big share of your revenue is a discount, especially when the relationship is with you personally rather than with the company.

Books a bank can follow

Most buyers in this range need a lender, and the lender needs to see where the money comes from — margin by type of work, not just a tax return. Trucks and inventory carried at real numbers, a job-costing report that ties, and the personal expenses you run through the business documented well enough that someone else can verify them. Clean books do not raise your price so much as they stop it from falling in the last thirty days.

Opens a side-by-side comparison — no form, no email required.

What Earns More

What earns more, and what costs you

Two companies doing the same revenue routinely sell for very different money. What drives the gap is not the same across the trade — pick the one that sounds like you.

For a residential company, most of the gap comes down to how much of the work renews on its own, and whose name the reputation is attached to.

What buyers look at	Earns you more	Costs you
Maintenance agreements	A big active base, with a log of what has been performed and how many renew each year	Running on the phone ringing, or agreements sold for years but never tracked
Reputation	Current reviews across every county you run in, under the company name	Reviews in your own name, or thin and several years old
The license	A qualified employee on the license who is staying	The license in your name with nobody behind you
Technicians	Long-tenured techs on a written pay plan who will stay through the change	Recent turnover, or one tech carrying most of the work
The numbers	Month-by-month figures that show the Florida season honestly	A single annual number that hides how much of the year is summer
Trucks & inventory	Fleet maintained, stock counted, and what is still owed on them known	Deferred maintenance, and inventory nobody has counted in years

For a commercial or controls contractor, a buyer is working out whether the contracts and the know-how come with the company or leave with you.

What buyers look at	Earns you more	Costs you
Service contracts	Written agreements that carry over to a buyer, renewing at different times of year	Handshake arrangements that reset the day ownership changes
Customer spread	A wide book across property managers, campuses and facilities	One property-management company or one GC carrying the year
Who knows the equipment	Techs certified on what is installed, staying, with the certifications on file	The know-how sitting with you or one senior guy
Monitoring & controls	Controls and monitoring billed every month under contract	Controls sold job by job
Whose customer is it	Accounts and service history in a system the buyer takes over	Accounts that follow you personally
Callbacks & warranty	Callback and warranty cost tracked, low, and going down	Warranty work nobody has ever added up

For an electrical contractor, the gap is mostly about how much is service rather than construction, and whether the work on the books was priced at today’s costs.

What buyers look at	Earns you more	Costs you
Type of work	Service and small commercial, bid and finished inside a week	Mostly new construction, with money held back for months
The license	A qualifier on the license at the company, staying past closing	The qualifier walking out with you
Work on the books	Jobs bid at today’s material and labor costs, with the margin on each one visible	Jobs bid before the last round of price increases
Retainage	Money held back tracked by job, aged, and collectible	A percentage-complete number nobody outside the company can reproduce
Who you work for	Several general contractors plus direct commercial customers	One builder carrying the year
Crew & books	Journeyman tenure, written pay, and personal expenses documented	Turnover, and write-offs nobody can back up

Most of the right-hand column is fixable with twelve to eighteen months’ notice.

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WHO YOU WOULD WORK WITH

The advisor who handles this sector

JM De Los Rios

Managing Director

More than 20 years with Amerivest Group. JM has led most of the firm’s HVAC and electrical transactions, including the sale of a $12 million commercial mechanical contractor in Miami.

FL License SL3043408

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COMMON QUESTIONS

Questions owners ask an HVAC business broker

What is my HVAC company actually worth?

Less than the rule of thumb you heard at the supply house, and more than what the trucks would bring. The honest answer is that the range for a company your size is wide, and where you land inside it comes down to the six things above — how much of your work is under agreement, and how much of it is new construction, more than anything else.

We put together an opinion of value from your own numbers rather than a multiple stuck on your revenue. It takes a few weeks and it costs you nothing to find out.

What we will not do is price it at what you would like to get. A defensible number brings offers. An aspirational one spends the listing’s best weeks being ignored, and every conversation after that is about coming down.

Why not just list it and see what offers come in?

Because a business gets one launch. The buyers who have been looking for a company like yours move quickly when one finally appears, and that wave passes once — which is why the strongest offers almost always arrive in the first sixty to ninety days.

If the business is not ready to stand up to questions when those buyers show up, you spend your best weeks explaining instead of negotiating. We do not publish until the financials are recast, the operations are written down, and the questions buyers are going to ask already have answers.

Industry estimates put the share of listed businesses that actually sell at somewhere between 20 and 40 percent, depending on the source and the size of the business. Most of what decides which side of that you land on happens before the listing goes out.

The license is in my name. Can I even sell?

Yes, and it is the first thing almost every owner in this trade asks. In Florida the license belongs to a person, so your buyer either holds one already or needs a qualified employee inside your company. Buyers who already have one exist, but there are fewer of them.

The expensive version of this is finding out after you have a signed letter of intent. Putting a qualified employee on the license a year ahead widens who can buy you and takes the surprise out of the back end.

Will my technicians find out — and when do I tell them?

They will not find out from us. Information is released in stages behind a signed agreement — a blind profile with no company name first, and nothing that identifies you until a buyer has been screened. Your employees, customers, suppliers and competitors do not learn about the sale from the process.

On telling the crew: after closing, with the money cleared. Telling them early does not give them certainty, it gives them a reason to start looking — and in a trade where two good techs walking out changes what the company is worth, that is the one risk entirely inside your control.

What do I have to do while it is being sold?

Run the company exactly the way you were running it when the buyer made the offer. That is not a throwaway line. A soft quarter during due diligence is the most common reason a good deal gets renegotiated down or falls apart, and in this trade one bad summer shows up in the numbers immediately.

Everything else is ours: buyer questions, the document room, the lender, the attorneys, the landlord. We coordinate it through to closing so the deal does not stall in the last mile. Your job is the work.

How do you decide which buyer we go with?

Not on proof of funds alone. Someone who can write the check but cannot run a service company puts your technicians, your customers, and — if any part of your price is financed by you — your own money at risk. We qualify buyers on whether they can actually operate what they are buying.

And the biggest number is not automatically the best offer. How it gets paid, what sits in escrow, what is tied to future performance, how working capital is settled and how long you are expected to stay all change what an offer is really worth to you. We negotiate the terms, not just the headline price.

Should I sell before or after the summer?

A sale in this trade usually runs six to twelve months from the day you engage to the day you get the wire, so the real question is which set of numbers a buyer will be looking at when they are doing their homework — not what month you sign with us.

A full season already closed out, with month-by-month detail, is almost always a stronger picture than a partial year a buyer has to guess the rest of.

Do I have to stay on after closing?

Usually for a defined transition — often thirty to ninety days for a service company, longer where the license is in your name or the commercial relationships are with you. A buyer is not trying to keep you around; they are trying to keep what is in your head.

The more of that sits in your systems, your service history and your technicians before we go to market, the shorter the stay a buyer will agree to.

Amerivest Group does not provide tax or legal advice; tax and legal work is performed by independent professionals. Sell-through estimates vary by source and by business size and are industry-wide figures, not a projection of results for any particular business.

Thinking about selling your HVAC or electrical business?

Start with a confidential conversation and an opinion of value built from your own numbers. No cost, and no obligation.