New Deals: Express car wash with membership program, roadside locksmith with out-of-state owner, and 3 other finds...

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NEW DEALS

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📍 Location: California
💰 Asking Price: $1,300,000
💼 EBITDA: $427,027
📊 Revenue: $2,248,447
📅 Established: N/A

💭 My 2 Cents: A house key is cut metal and anybody can sell one. A car key built in the last decade, however, is a computer, and the engine will not start until someone reprograms it. Those codes come from one industry registry, the National Automotive Service Task Force, which vets everyone it lets in. This California company has done that alongside commercial, residential and roadside work for more than three decades. Roughly 40% of its revenue comes through long-standing AAA relationships, and the rest from municipalities, property managers and walk-in retail. The owner runs it from out of state at 16 to 18 hours a week with a management team on the ground, and the sale includes a storefront and 11 equipped vans. I'd want to see what an AAA call pays versus the same job at retail, and how many of those calls end with the door opened and how many with a new key programmed, because the fee covers getting the door open and anything past that gets billed on top. I'd also want to know when each municipal contract expires, because cities award this work on a fixed price list and re-bid it on a set date, while property manager work sits on a vendor list with no date at all. The moat here is AAA's dispatch list, because a competitor can match the vans and the pricing and still not be handed the call.

📍 Location: California
💰 Asking Price: $2,750,000
💼 EBITDA: $900,000
📊 Revenue: $2,200,000
📅 Established: 2013

💭 My 2 Cents: In a body shop the paint booth is the bottleneck. Almost nothing leaves without going through it, so booth hours set the ceiling on what a shop can produce. This Southern California business runs two franchise locations, and one of them holds two drive-through booths sized for trucks inside 17,500 square feet on a busy commercial corridor. A general manager and a full production crew are already in place, and the lease on that building runs to 2038 at $15,000 a month. That said, the earnings look high once you count ten people plus $180,000 of rent and a royalty on gross sales, so the first thing I'd want is the P&L with technician pay, materials and the royalty on their own lines. I'd also want the revenue split across retail, insurance and commercial work, because a retail paint job may never come back while a fleet account books the booth on a schedule. Then I'd want to know how many hours a week each booth actually runs, because that decides whether growth needs a third site or more cars through the booths already standing (and pulling them in costs marketing money every month, cheaper than a building but not free). The booths and the ducting are bolted into that building, which makes a long lease worth more here than in most businesses, and this one is good until 2038.

📍 Location: Florida
💰 Asking Price: $4,975,000
💼 EBITDA: $1,417,127
📊 Revenue: $7,075,167
📅 Established: 1989

💭 My 2 Cents: Florida now makes a condominium of three or more habitable stories fund eight components in its reserves, and owners can no longer vote to skip them. Waterproofing and exterior painting is one of the eight, and it comes back on a much shorter cycle than a roof or a plumbing riser, every 5 to 10 years depending on how close it sits to the coast. This contractor is family owned, painting for condominium and homeowner associations alongside commercial and residential customers. It runs its own employees rather than subcontracted crews, so it keeps the labor markup a subcontractor would otherwise take and carries that payroll through the slow months. I'd want the revenue split across association, commercial and residential work, because association money is already sitting in a reserve account earmarked for that exact component before anyone bids the job. I'd also want to know how many of these associations have voted to pause their reserve funding, because Florida lets a board do that for two years when an inspection turns up structural repairs, and that money goes into concrete instead of paint. Then I'd want to know how much of the association work arrives through property management companies instead of directly from boards, since one of them can carry dozens of associations and move them together. A reserve study names the year each building is due, so a buyer is acquiring a customer list with the dates already attached.

📍 Location: Florida
💰 Asking Price: $2,200,000
💼 EBITDA: $732,014
📊 Revenue: $1,621,745
📅 Established: N/A

💭 My 2 Cents: The lake behind a Florida subdivision is not a lake. It is drainage equipment with a permit, built to hold and clean the runoff from every roof and driveway around it. The association that owns it inherited the maintenance obligation written into that permit, which makes the treatment schedule compliance paperwork rather than landscaping. This company restores and manages wetlands, lakes, ponds and stormwater systems across Florida. The earnings run well above what a business paying for crews, boats and chemicals usually produces on this much revenue, so the first thing I'd want is the P&L with applicator labor, chemical cost and vehicle expense on their own lines. I'd also want to know what share of the accounts sit on a written annual program instead of per-treatment calls, because the permit obligation belongs to the association, not to the contractor, so it only turns into recurring revenue where somebody wrote it into an agreement. Then I'd want to know who personally holds the aquatic pest control license, because Florida lets one licensed applicator cover up to 15 unlicensed people in the field, so the whole crew treats water on one person's credential. Florida rewrote its stormwater rule in 2024 and now requires those systems to be inspected and certified by a qualified inspector (a credential that comes from a training course, not an engineering degree), so a buyer has a second service to sell to accounts already on the books.

📍 Location: New York
💰 Asking Price: $2,200,000
💼 EBITDA: $375,000
📊 Revenue: $850,000
📅 Established: N/A

💭 My 2 Cents: An express tunnel can wash 60 to 120 cars an hour with almost nobody on site, because the driver stays in the car and does the vacuuming afterward. The trade is that it takes $1.5 million and a piece of land before the first car goes through, and the model only works at volume. This site runs that format, with a membership program alongside retail wash sales and fleet accounts, so I'd want the member count and how many washes the average member takes in a month. The fee is the same every month while the soap, water and tunnel time get spent per wash, so a member who comes twice a week can cost more than they pay. I'd also ask whether the land is owned or leased and how long the lease runs, since a wash with five years left on that lot is a different asset from one with twenty. Then I'd count the tunnels within a few miles, including what is still under construction, because a driver who cancels here and signs up at the new one down the road is gone every month after that, not just on opening day. Towns from Ohio to Michigan have started saying no to new car washes because their markets are already full, so the hard part of this business is a permit a buyer here already has.