Construction & Contracting Business Broker in Florida
Amerivest is a construction business broker serving contractors across Florida — roofing, shutters and impact openings, gutters and screen enclosures, glass and glazing, general contractors, and cabinetry and millwork. We have been selling Florida trade businesses since 1983.
43
Years of experience
1,200+
Businesses sold
Statewide
Florida coverage
If You Are Thinking About It
They are thinking about it after a good year, which is exactly the wrong reflex
A storm came through, or the carriers pushed a wave of roof replacements, or a builder handed over more work than the crews could take. The phone rang for eighteen months. Somebody heard about it and made an offer at the supply house. The first call is almost never about listing the company — it is about what the good year is actually worth, and whether any of it is repeatable.
That is the right question, and it is the one buyers ask first. A contractor who goes to market on the back of a spike is asking someone to pay for weather. A contractor who can show what the business does in a quiet year, and prove the licence, the approvals and the crews come with it, is selling something a buyer can finance.
Most of the distance between those two positions is closed before anything is listed. Nothing about that conversation obligates you to sell, and nothing about it leaves this office.
Before You Sell
What a buyer is really underwriting is how much of the business survives a quiet year
Every trade has its own version of this, but in Florida exterior work the swing is bigger than anywhere else we sell. Two contractors billing the same revenue can be worth very different money, because one of them billed it in a storm year and the other one did not. Six things decide which one you look like.
A storm year is not a run rate
A hurricane season pulls forward years of replacement work and compresses it into twelve months. Owners price off that year. Buyers strip it out and underwrite what is underneath. The gap between those two numbers is the single biggest pricing fight in this trade, and it is won on paper long before anyone negotiates. Showing the storm revenue separately from the baseline — by job type, month by month, across three or four years — turns an argument into a number. Leaving it blended invites the buyer to assume the worst version and price it that way.
The licence belongs to a person, not to the company
Roofing is its own certification category in Florida; glazing, aluminum and screen enclosures are their own specialties. If the qualifier is you and your buyer does not hold the licence themselves, there is no sale until that is solved. It is the most common reason a contracting deal falls apart at the end, and it is entirely fixable a year ahead. Putting a qualified employee on the licence opens the company to every buyer who does not already hold one.
Product approvals are an asset, or they are a discount
Florida Building Code approvals and Miami-Dade Notices of Acceptance are what let you sell what you install. Current approvals that transfer are worth money on their own. Approvals that are close to renewal, tied to a supplier who may not follow the company, or held in a name that is not the company’s, get priced as a cost the buyer has to carry. Knowing which of yours are which, before diligence, is a cheap afternoon that changes the conversation.
The warranty tail goes with the business
Workmanship warranties in this trade run years past a closing, and the buyer inherits every one of them. Where the claims history is documented and the exposure is quantifiable, it gets priced for what it is; where nobody has ever added it up, it gets priced at the worst case a buyer can imagine. That difference is real money, and the records already exist in most companies — they have simply never been pulled together.
Deposits taken and money held back both come off your side
Jobs sold and not yet finished are a liability, not revenue. Deposits already spent on material still owe the customer a completed job. Retainage sits with the general contractor until the work is signed off. At closing, the value of work you have been paid for and not performed comes off your side of the settlement statement, and so does anything a buyer cannot collect. A clean schedule of what is sold, started, billed and held back is worth more in a sale than most owners expect.
Bonding capacity does not automatically survive the sale
Where bonded work is part of the business, the surety is underwriting the people and the balance sheet, not the name on the door. A change of ownership means a fresh look, and a buyer without the history or the net worth may not get the same capacity you have. If bonded jobs are a meaningful share of revenue, the surety conversation belongs at the start of the process rather than in the last two weeks.
Track Record
Construction and contracting businesses we have sold
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What Buyers Pay For
What moves the number, in order
Two contractors billing the same revenue routinely sell for very different money. These are the six things that account for most of the gap, heaviest first.
01
How much of the year does not depend on the weather
Service agreements, maintenance and repair work, builder and property-manager relationships that produce jobs every quarter — this is the part of the business a buyer will pay a full price for, because it arrives whether or not a storm does. A company that can show a steady baseline with storm work on top is a different asset from one whose good years and bad years are four times apart. Everything else on this list is a modifier on this one.
02
The licence, and whose name it is in
Covered above, and it belongs here too. A qualifier already on payroll who intends to stay opens the company to the whole buyer pool. A licence held personally by an owner who is leaving narrows it to buyers who already hold one — and hands those buyers a reason to bid less.
03
Where the work actually comes from
Insurance and carrier-driven replacement, builder and GC relationships, property managers and associations, or retail leads bought by the click — four different businesses at the same revenue. Relationships held at company level, with a performance record behind them, transfer. Work that arrives because of who the owner knows is priced as a risk. One builder or one adjuster at a large share of revenue is a discount regardless of how good the numbers look.
04
Whether the company runs without you
If you estimate the jobs, price the work, walk the difficult ones and handle every customer who is unhappy, a buyer is not acquiring a business, they are acquiring your week. A production manager or estimator who already does most of what the owner used to is worth more to the price than almost any single piece of equipment on the yard.
05
Backlog you can document, and crews to deliver it
Signed work not yet built is an asset if a buyer can see it — contract value, cost to complete, expected margin, and a realistic date. Backlog described in conversation rather than on a schedule gets discounted to nothing. And backlog without the crews to build it is a liability, which is why foreman tenure and how the field is paid get looked at as closely as the financials.
06
Books a lender can follow
Most buyers in this range need financing, and the lender needs to see job-level margin, not just a tax return. Job costing that ties to the financials, work in progress accounted for consistently, equipment carried at real values, and the personal expenses run through the business documented well enough that a third party can verify them. Clean books do not raise your price so much as they stop it falling in the last thirty days.
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