How to Value and Sell a Landscaping Business (2025 Guide)

Selling your landscape business can be an overwhelming, complicated, and lengthy process.

First, exiting a business in general is difficult. For most owners, it’s the biggest financial transaction of their lives. The culmination of a life’s worth of work. It involves preparing financials, streamlining operations, securing legal documents, marketing your company to sell, finding buyers, and navigating negotiations. Data shows that the majority of business owners fail to bring out the exit outcomes they’re looking for, which means these owners are compromising on price, timeline, and stewardship.

Second, there are specific challenges that landscape owners will have to navigate, such as:

• A reduced buyer pool: State-specific licensing requirements can reduce your buyer pool by up to 70%. For one sale in California, the buyer had to get three different licenses before buying the business. With a reduced buyer pool, you may struggle to find a buyer who helps you achieve your ideal exit.

• Decline in revenue: 42% of landscaping companies reported a decline in revenue in 2024. With a decline in revenue, your valuation may decrease, resulting in fewer premium offers from buyers.

But the more you know about these challenges and potential roadblocks ahead, the better you can prepare for them.

To help simplify the process of selling your landscaping business and maximize your exit outcomes, we put together this guide, which covers:

How to Value a Landscaping Business

• Key Valuation Methods Used to Value Your Landscaping Company
• Factors That Drive Your Landscaping Company’s Value

Preparing Your Business for Sale

• Know Your Exit Goals
• Prepare for Due Diligence
• Remove Operational Gaps and Key Person Dependencies
• Optimize Your Customer Contracts to Address Seasonal Challenges and Show Recurring Revenue

Marketing Your Business and Evaluating Buyers

Negotiating and Structuring the Deal

If you’re ready to sell your landscaping business, the next step is working with an M&A advisor. M&A advisors can help you exit your business and get a higher final sale price. Axial can help you find the best M&A advisor by looking over its database of over 3,000 M&A advisors and hand-picking a curated list of 3-5 advisors with experience in selling businesses like yours. Schedule your free exit consultation.

How to Value a Landscaping Business

When you want to sell your landscaping business, you need to have a clear understanding of its value. The value of your company is made up of several factors (we have a full list down below), including:

• Revenue growth rate
• Profit margins
• Geographic market and demand

When you speak of your company’s value, you’ll generally word it in terms of a multiple of your earnings.

For most landscaping companies, this means talking about value as a multiple of your EBITDA. Smaller companies will sometimes use seller’s discretionary earnings (SDE) instead of EBITDA, but SDE is generally for smaller companies that bring in less than a million a year. However, 65% of landscaping businesses are bringing in more than a million a year, so we’re going to focus on EBITDA for this article.

EBITDA represents your earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. This metric offers potential buyers a clear snapshot of your business’s core profitability, free from the effects of taxes, financing, and non-operational factors. EBITDA helps buyers gauge cash flow, assess whether your company is suitable for a debt-financed transaction, and compare it more easily to other businesses.

So if your EBITDA is $4 million and you have a multiple of 2x, that means your business is valued at $8 million.

But how do you figure out the right multiple to apply to your EBITDA? That’s where it gets difficult. To arrive at the right multiple, you need to conduct several different valuation methods, understand which factors are driving your value, and have experience in selling landscaping companies. You want this experience because you want to know first-hand what buyers are willing to pay for a lawn care business. For these reasons, most business owners can’t accurately conduct their own valuation.

While you can find average EBITDA multiples online broken down by industry, being off even by a point or two can significantly alter your valuation and your chances of achieving a successful exit.

At Axial, we pair you with an M&A advisor with recent deal experience in selling companies like yours. This helps them accurately value your company, arriving at the most accurate multiple and valuation of your business.

Key Valuation Methods Used to Value Your Landscaping Company

When you work with an M&A advisor, they generally use two different valuation methods to arrive at your valuation range.

These methods focus on forecasting future cash flows and looking at the purchase prices of closed deals in your industry.

1. Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) Analysis

This method estimates the value of your landscaping business based on projected future cash flows, accounting for the unique seasonal patterns typical in landscape operations. Landscaping companies face distinct financial challenges, with weather dependency and seasonal demand fluctuations being primary concerns: peak activity during spring and summer growing seasons and reduced revenue in fall and winter.

An M&A advisor can determine appropriate growth and discount rates based on their experience with recent landscaping acquisitions. To provide a more accurate valuation that reflects your actual landscaping business value, your advisor will incorporate industry-specific factors, such as:

• The percentage of maintenance versus installation work
• Commercial versus residential customer mix
• Your company’s maintenance contract renewal rates

2. Precedent Transaction Analysis

This method estimates the value of your business based on the purchase prices of similar, recently closed deals, which may include transactions your advisor has facilitated for other landscaping owners.

However, gathering this information for small businesses can be difficult, as transaction details are often private. Transaction dates are also important, as outdated deals may not reflect current market conditions. By working with an advisor with insider knowledge of past transactions, you can effectively use recent deal data to refine your valuation.

Using these methods, your advisor can arrive at an accurate valuation range for your landscaping business, providing a clearer understanding of what your business could realistically sell for.

You might see a breakdown like this:

• Discounted Cash Flow Analysis: 3.5x EBITDA
• Comparable Companies Analysis: 4x EBITDA
• Precedent Transactions Analysis: 5x EBITDA

This represents the EBITDA multiple range for your business, indicating you can expect a sale price between 3.5x and 5x your EBITDA.

Keep in mind that this initial valuation range serves as a starting point for eventual pricing negotiations with interested buyers. The final price paid for your business will often differ from this initial valuation. Factors like market conditions, the deal structure (e.g., less cash upfront in exchange for a higher offer), and whether you’re retaining any ownership stake in the business (either yourself or your employees) will all play a role in determining the final price.

You can learn more in Axial’s post on How to Value Your Company for Sale.

Factors That Drive Your Landscaping Company’s Value

While you may not be conducting the analyses that lead to your valuation, you want to understand the factors driving your company’s value. This helps you decide whether or not it’s the right time to sell or how you can best maximize value before you sell.

An M&A advisor is invaluable here, as they can provide pointed insights on what buyers value. For example, here are some critical factors for most landscaping companies:

• Proper labor documentation: Labor documentation is essential, not just a nice-to-have. When a landscaping company lacks proper I-9 forms, worker classification documents, E-Verify documentation, or has gaps in employee verification records, sophisticated buyers immediately flag this as a critical risk that could expose them to substantial fines, work stoppages, or complete operational disruption. As a result, buyers will lower their valuation of your company.

• How many commercial contracts you have and how they’re structured: You want to show that your earnings will be reliably consistent after your exit. Let’s say there are two landscaping companies with the same EBITDA. Company A relies mostly on residential spring clean-up and one-time installations, while Company B has recurring commercial contracts that repeat throughout the year. Company B is likely to get a much higher valuation because their work is more contracted and iron-clad.

• Equipment fleet age creates valuation swings: Buyers will do a detailed equipment assessment during their due diligence. They’re looking to see when they’ll replace your existing equipment. If they conclude they need to replace it soon after acquisition, they’ll see that as a reason to lower their valuation, as they’ll have to put money into the business. But if you can demonstrate that your equipment is newer or does not need to be upgraded, that can result in more premium valuations.

• Snowbird operations and geography impact valuation: A good chunk of your company’s valuation will derive from where you operate. If you’re in a warmer climate – think Arizona or Florida – where you can have year-round operations, you’re likely to attract a higher multiple. If you’re a landscaping company in a colder climate, you can offset this risk by branching out into year-round operations, such as providing landscaping services from April to October and snowplowing and salting from November to March.

Here’s a more comprehensive table showing all the factors that can affect your valuation:

From here, you have several options:

• If you’re ready to value your landscape business for sale and start the M&A process, schedule your free exit consultation. We will pair you with an Exit Consultant who will learn about your business and exit goals before introducing you to a shortlist of 3-5 experienced M&A advisors. We will then help you interview each advisor and pick the right one for your landscaping company.

• If you’re not ready yet to speak to an M&A advisor, you can also use our free business valuation calculator. This won’t give you a market-ready valuation, nor will the calculator replace an M&A advisor who helps you craft marketing materials, target buyers, and more. But it does give you a good ballpark of your company’s value using an industry-specific DCF methodology.

• If you want to keep learning about the M&A process and how to sell your business, you can continue to read on below. This guide covers preparing your business for sale, marketing your business, finding buyers, and structuring and closing the deal.

Preparing Your Business for Sale

In this section, we look at how to prepare your business for sale. Specifically, we cover knowing your exit goals and preparing for due diligence, which includes verifying your financials, preparing all relevant documents, removing operational and key person dependencies, and optimizing customer contracts.

Know Your Exit Goals

One of the main reasons why deals can fall through is the business owner having unrealistic or unclear expectations. You don’t want to go to market unsure of what your value is or what you want from your exit in terms of sale price, exit timeline, and stewardship.

You want to articulate these things before you start the M&A process. This way, if there’s any valuation misalignment — such as wanting more money from your exit than what you’re likely to get — you can work to either increase value or decide it isn’t the time to sell.

Here are some questions business owners should know the answer to:

• What do I need financially to support myself and my loved ones after my exit? Knowing your number helps you decide if it’s the right time to sell. If your advisor’s valuation range doesn’t match your ideal sale price, then the advisor can recommend what changes you can implement to maximize value.
• What will I do with my free time after I sell my business? You likely had a busy load running your landscaping business. How will you fill the time after your exit? How will this affect your loved ones?
• How long do I want to stay on after the sale? Most exits will require a transition period, where the owner stays on for a few months to assist with the exchange of control.
• What do I want to happen to my company, its employees, and current customers? There’s often a spectrum between price and stewardship, where the more you get of one, the less you get of the other. You may entertain very different offers if you’re willing to let your landscaping company be absorbed by a competitor.

At Axial, we recommend that you prioritize your motivations for selling. For example, if your main motivation is financial, such as funding your retirement and making sure your children are financially independent, you may be willing to sacrifice on things like exit timeline and stewardship if it brings you a more premium sale price.

Prepare for Due Diligence (Getting Your Financial and Operational Documents in Order)

A key part of exit preparation is preparing your business for due diligence. Due diligence is when an interested buyer looks at your financials and operations to understand your company’s value clearly. The better prepared you are, the less likely there’ll be a valuation misalignment, stalled deal, or a deal that goes completely off the rails.

Most landscaping companies aren’t going to have perfect books ready to go. They tend to use simple accounting practices, running their finances out of QuickBooks and homegrown operational processes.

While you don’t necessarily need a major overhaul of your financials and operations, there are simple things you can do to help create a smooth process for your potential buyers.

Here are the most helpful and relevant documents to gather and prepare:

• 3 years of P&L statements: It’s best practice to use accrual-based accounting, as that shows a clearer picture of growth over time, but cash basis accounting can also work.
• Current balance sheet: This gives buyers a snapshot of what you own versus what you owe.
• 12 months of bank statements: These statements show the actual cash flowing in and out of your business over a full year. It’s good for buyers to see consistent deposits from customers and understand your seasonal patterns, which play a big role in landscaping.
• Basic cash flow summary: You can supplement your bank statements with a simple cash flow summary, showing the highest and lowest months and recurring revenue.
• Last 2 tax returns: Tax returns provide an official, third-party verified record of your income and expenses, confirming your reported profits.
• Equipment list with ages/condition: This can be as simple as listing truck age, lawnmower conditions, and documenting any major repairs needed or recently done.
• Customer contract list: You likely already have this ready to go. You’ll want a list of recurring contracts and their renewal rates.

You also want to gather all legal documents, from your business formation documents to labor documentation and landscaping-specific licensing.

Here’s a checklist of legal documents to make sure you have ready:

• Business formation documents: Articles of incorporation/organization, operating agreements, partnership agreements, and corporate bylaws that establish your business structure
• Landscaping-specific licensing: Current contractor licenses where required (16 states require landscaping licenses), business licenses, and proof of any continuing education requirements
• Environmental and pesticide compliance: EPA pesticide applicator certifications for restricted-use pesticides, fertilizer application certifications where required by state, documentation of proper chemical storage and application practices, and compliance with local environmental regulations
• Labor documentation: This is particularly critical for landscaping businesses due to the seasonal and physical nature of the work. Include employee contracts, proper classification documentation for seasonal vs. permanent workers, non-compete/non-solicitation agreements, worker safety training records (OSHA compliance), and documentation of prevailing wage compliance for any government contracts.
• Service contracts: Current customer maintenance agreements, commercial landscaping contracts, installation project agreements, and warranty documentation that may transfer to the new owner
• Equipment & asset documentation: Leases for company vehicles and equipment, equipment ownership documentation, dealer/supplier agreements, and irrigation system certifications, where applicable
• Insurance & bonding: Current liability insurance policies, workers’ compensation coverage (critical given the industry’s above-average injury rates), and any performance bonds for commercial work
• Tax & financial records: Business tax returns, sales tax permits, any tax clearance certificates required for business transfer in your state, and documentation of seasonal tax planning strategies

Plus, you want to be transparent about any litigation, even if it happened in the past. This includes settlement agreements, court judgments, claims history, and documentation of compliance with any court orders. Also include records of any OSHA violations, environmental violations, customer disputes, or property damage claims that resulted in legal action.

Remove Operational Gaps and Key Person Dependencies

One of the most impactful things you can do as you prepare to sell is to make yourself redundant as the business owner.

You likely wear many hats at your landscaping company, but that creates a talent gap when you leave the business. You want to hand over any responsibilities you handle to other employees and your management team. Otherwise, potential buyers will lower their valuation to account for the fact that they’re going to have to hire/train employees to take over the roles you filled.

Best practice is to have standard operating procedures (SOPs) in place. SOPs ought to address granular processes like seasonal service transitions, equipment maintenance schedules, customer communication protocols, and crew management during peak and off-seasons — breaking each process into individual steps with consideration for seasonal variations.

SOPs help ensure a smooth transition after your exit and reduce the chance that a buyer will lower their valuation.

Optimize Your Customer Contracts to Address Seasonal Challenges and Show Recurring Revenue

Customer contracts are a great way to show value to potential buyers, but landscaping businesses face unique challenges that buyers scrutinize carefully. Buyers may offer a lower valuation if you have high customer concentration, significant seasonal revenue fluctuations, or contracts heavily weighted toward residential versus commercial clients.

As you prepare for your exit, you want to:

• Address seasonality concerns: You can do this by demonstrating how you maintain customer relationships and cash flow during winter months. Show buyers your strategies for winter revenue through services like snow removal, holiday lighting, tree pruning, or equipment maintenance.
• Balance commercial and residential contracts: Commercial landscaping companies tend to sell for higher multiples than strictly residential companies because commercial clients give more long-term contracts. They provide more stable, year-round revenue and are less likely to cancel services seasonally.
• Demonstrate contract diversification: Make sure your portfolio includes residential maintenance agreements, commercial property contracts, multi-year service agreements with varied renewal dates, and seasonal service add-ons to minimize renewal risk.
• Show recurring revenue strength: Maintenance agreements are the foundation of a valuable landscaping business, providing predictable cash flow and generating additional service opportunities through established customer relationships. Unlike one-off installation projects, maintenance agreements create the recurring revenue that sophisticated buyers seek when acquiring landscaping companies.

However, there will be times when you can’t reduce customer concentration or address seasonality concerns before your exit. If that’s the case, here’s how you can demonstrate long-term value:

• Prove contract stability by highlighting renewal rates and showing comprehensive account management processes to demonstrate your business’s commitment to delivering consistent service through all seasons.
• Document seasonal service expansion by showing how you’ve successfully offered winter services to maintain customer relationships year-round.
• Use earnouts tied to seasonal performance to align incentives and demonstrate confidence in your business model’s sustainability.

An M&A advisor will help you determine which strategies work best for your ideal exit and the specific dynamics of your local landscaping market.

Marketing Your Business and Evaluating Buyers

So far, you’ve established objectives, verified and cleaned up financial records, gathered all legal documents, and optimized business processes. Working with an M&A advisor, you’ve arrived at an accurate multiple range for your company.

Now you want to market your business towards the right buyers and evaluate any interested parties.

There are several challenges here, including landscaping-specific challenges:

• How do you find enough buyers to get the deal you want? State-specific licensing requirements mean you’re working with a reduced buyer pool.
• How do you work towards getting a maximum sale price if revenue is down? 42% of landscaping companies reported a decline in revenue in 2024. If you’re in this boat, how can you target buyers who will still offer you a premium price?
• How do you manage buyer interest? The more buyers you get, the better. But this also means handling several negotiations, confidential information, answering questions, etc.

An M&A advisor will help you with all of the above.

Access to Networks of Buyers

Most businesses don’t have a network of buyers they can target. But the more interested buyers you have, the higher the chance you’ll get the exit you want. That’s why you want to work with an M&A advisor with relevant deal experience, because they have access to a network of buyers interested in companies like yours. This includes buyers who already have licenses in your state or operate in adjacent states where they can easily obtain licensing.

Your advisor can also tailor the story around your business based on the type of buyer they’re targeting. For example, if you’re marketing your business to a private equity firm, the advisor will highlight things PE firms want to see, like recurring revenue, growth potential, and likely return on investment.

Strategically Targeting Specific Buyers to Get a Premium Offer

Although you and your M&A advisor worked to get an accurate valuation of your business, that number is really for getting your company to market. The real final value of your landscaping company is what someone is willing to pay for it.

Different buyers have different motivations when acquiring a company. For example, an M&A advisor can recommend targeting specific buyers, like strategic buyers, who may be more likely to offer a higher valuation.

Strategic buyers will be existing landscaping companies, related service businesses, or any company seeking vertical integrations. They tend to pay more for your business as they see synergistic value. In short, they believe that absorbing businesses can help grow their own.

A trade-off here is that a strategic buyer won’t offer much in terms of stewardship. This can mean your brand, legacy, and current workforce will end after you sell your company.

You can learn more in the Axial guide on Strategic Buyers vs Financial Buyers.

Managing Buyer Interest

Finally, M&A advisors are skilled at managing a buyer funnel, saving you time. While you want more buyers interested in your business, that also means a lot more legwork and negotiations. For example, one recently closed deal started with 290 interested buyers. That’s how many buyers signed an NDA to learn more about the business. From there, 60 of those buyers issued an Indication of Interest. From that 60, the business ended up with 12 serious buyers.

That means the advisor had to target a) more than 290 buyers and b) manage the buyers going in and out of the funnel. Your M&A advisor will manage this process for you.

Negotiating and Structuring the Deal

When you identify a purchaser who aligns well with your exit objectives, you’ll finalize a Letter of Intent (LOI). This represents your buyer’s commitment to purchase, and it means your company is effectively removed from the market for a specified period (typically 90 days). This allows the purchaser to conduct due diligence and present a formal offer, assuming everything meets their evaluation criteria.

As you navigate through negotiations, it’s crucial to recall the selling motivations that you established in step one of your business exit planning. The ultimate transaction price isn’t merely a figure; it also represents what you hope to preserve and what’s required to support the upcoming phase of your personal journey — whether that’s a fresh investment opportunity, retirement planning, or funding your family’s educational needs.

Your advisor will assist you through the final decision process and help you organize the transaction to achieve your post-sale objectives.

For instance, a purchaser might propose a reduced initial cash payment or a higher payout distributed across multiple years, dependent on achieving operational benchmarks. This is called an earnout. Earnouts enable the purchaser to minimize their exposure by paying less at closing while compensating you if business performance continues as projected. In the landscaping sector, earnouts are frequently linked to client retention percentages, maintenance contract renewals, or seasonal revenue targets.

A seasoned advisor can help you impartially assess these proposals, utilizing their understanding of your landscaping operation and the prevailing market conditions to identify the optimal deal framework for your situation.

Next Steps: Finding an M&A Advisor to Help You Sell Your Landscaping Business

Throughout this post, we covered how you can value and sell your landscaping business. A key part to navigating this process successfully is to partner with an M&A advisor.

M&A advisors can:

• Increase buyer coverage to improve your chances of getting the exit you want
• Increase your final sale price between 6% and 25%
• Save you 30+ hours a week, based on estimates from a survey we ran within our network

However, these benefits depend on working with the right M&A advisor. At Axial, we specialize in helping small-to-midsize business owners find the best advisor who can bring them these results.

We start by pairing you with an Exit Consultant who gets to know your business and your exit goals.

Your Exit Consultant will leverage Axial’s network of 3,000+ M&A advisors to create a shortlist of candidates with:

• Recent, relevant deal experience in the landscaping industry.
• Track record of advancing prospective buyers from initial interest to submitted bids.
• Strong down-funnel success, including the number of bids generated and successful sales completed within the Axial network.
• Positive feedback on professionalism, reputation, and responsiveness.

We’ll send you a curated list of 3–5 qualified landscaping industry advisors, complete with detailed insights to help you evaluate your options and resources to prepare for meetings with your candidates.

Schedule your free exit consultation today.

Additional Resources for Owners Looking to Sell Their Business

At Axial, we offer several resources for small business owners looking to sell their company, learn more about the M&A process, and better understand the value of their business.

Here are just some of the resources that can be helpful to you:

• Free Business Valuation Calculator: Use this calculator to get a rough estimate of your business’s value, based on an industry-specific DCF analysis trusted by M&A advisors.
• Checklist for Selling Your Business: We break down the selling process into an easy-to-follow checklist, including a business exit timeline to help you determine when to start the M&A process.
• Business Brokers vs. M&A Advisors: We clear up the confusion around the roles of business brokers and M&A advisors, explaining how each operates.

These are just a few of the resources we’ve created for business owners. You can find more here.

FAQs

How Do You Calculate the Value of a Landscaping Business?

There are several ways to calculate the value of your landscaping business. One of which is figuring out your EBITDA.

EBITDA is your net profit + interest + income taxes + depreciation and amortization.

But then you want to determine which multiple to apply to your EBITDA. This is because your company’s value exists within the context of the market. That is, what other companies like yours have been valued at and what buyers are willing to pay.

Smaller companies will sometimes use the Seller’s Discretionary Earnings (SDE) to value their business.

SDE is your net profit + owner compensation + income taxes + nonoperating and nonrecurring expenses and income + depreciation and amortization.

This works for smaller companies because owner compensation is a big chunk of expenses. This method still requires a multiple to give you an accurate picture of your company’s value.

How Much is the Landscaping Industry Worth?

Current estimates place the landscaping industry’s worth at $182.48 billion (in 2024).

The industry demonstrates robust growth trajectories across multiple segments, driven by increasing environmental consciousness, technological innovations, and rising disposable incomes that fuel demand for both residential and commercial landscaping services.