Custom Home Framing Contractor, Dallas Metro Market

$3.2M

Revenue

$500K

SDE

6.5x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a residential structural framing subcontractor operating in the Dallas metro market, focused on the luxury new-construction segment. Roughly 90 percent of revenue comes from framing new custom homes, with the remaining 10 percent from remodels and additions. The business runs with 16 employees (4 full-time, 12 part-time), established crews, and documented workflows, so a buyer inherits a functioning field operation rather than a job that requires personally swinging a hammer.

The core of the model is a concentrated book of long-tenured relationships with a small group of premier residential builders and general contractors, each with decades of history, who return project after project. Turnover among these anchor accounts is described as minimal, and new work arrives through inbound calls, trade-network referrals, and job-site visibility rather than a single lead source. On roughly $3.22M in revenue (with the most recent year cited above $3.3M and growing), the business throws off about $500K in seller's discretionary earnings.

The asking price of $3,253,000 against $500K in cash flow implies a rich 6.5x multiple for a labor-heavy, project-based subcontracting business with heavy customer concentration. That is the central tension here: the earnings are real and the builder relationships are sticky, but framing is cyclical, tied to housing starts, and dependent on a handful of accounts and skilled labor that a new owner does not personally control.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is solid for the category: roughly $500K SDE on $3.22M revenue is a healthy 15.5 percent margin for a framing sub, and the listing notes year-over-year revenue growth continuing into the current period. The crews and workflows are already in place, so the earnings are not entirely dependent on the owner working in the field.
The moat is relationship depth: a small group of decades-old premier builders return project after project with minimal turnover. In a trade where reliability and quality determine repeat awards, being the default framer for anchor builders is a real, if concentrated, competitive advantage.
Dallas is one of the strongest and most durable residential construction markets in the country, with sustained population and household formation driving new custom-home starts. That macro tailwind gives a disciplined operator room to keep the current builders busy and add capacity.
The lead engine is diversified across inbound calls, trade referrals, and job-site visibility rather than paid marketing or a single rainmaker. For a buyer with construction experience, that means demand generation is baked into the trade network rather than something you have to build from scratch.

How to improve it

Attack customer concentration immediately: the large majority of revenue sits with a small group of builders, which is the single biggest value and risk lever. In the first 90 days, map exact revenue by account and start courting two or three additional mid-tier custom builders to dilute dependence on any one relationship.
Formalize the anchor relationships into master service agreements or preferred-vendor arrangements where possible. Framing is bid-and-award by nature, but pricing formulas, volume commitments, and priority scheduling terms move you from handshake dependence to contractual continuity that survives ownership change.
Tighten labor structure and retention: with only 4 full-time and 12 part-time staff, crew availability is the constraint on growth and the thing most likely to break in a handoff. Lock in lead framers with retention bonuses or profit-sharing, and document crew leaders as the operational backbone before the seller departs.
Push into the remodel and addition segment, currently only about 10 percent of revenue. Renovation work is less cyclical than new starts and higher-margin per job, giving the business a countercyclical hedge against a slowdown in new custom-home construction.
Install job-level financial controls and standardized bidding. Margin leakage in framing usually hides in material waste, change orders, and underbid labor; a simple per-project cost-tracking system would protect the 15 percent margin and surface which builders are actually profitable.
Build a light back-office and scheduling layer so the owner is a true general manager, not a bottleneck. The listing says a buyer can step in without doing field work, so codify that by adding a dispatcher or project coordinator to absorb the seller's coordination role.
Explore adjacent structural trades (concrete, decking, or trim) to sell more scope per builder relationship. Cross-selling additional labor into accounts you already own is the cheapest revenue you can add and deepens the switching cost for anchor builders.

Diligence notes

Quantify customer concentration precisely: get revenue by builder for the last three years. If two or three accounts drive 60 to 80 percent of sales, the 6.5x multiple is aggressive and you need a personal introduction and continuity plan for each before close, not just the promised three months of support.
Verify the earnings: reconcile the roughly $500K SDE and $3.3M revenue to tax returns and bank statements, and understand exactly what add-backs make up SDE. Framing is labor-intensive with thin cushion, so confirm the margin is real and repeatable rather than inflated by owner add-backs or a single strong project year.
Scrutinize the labor model and classification: 12 of 16 workers are part-time, which raises questions about whether crews are employees or 1099 subcontractors, and whether workers' comp, overtime, and immigration/I-9 compliance are clean. Misclassification or comp exposure in construction can carry material back-liabilities.
Assess cyclicality and backlog: framing tracks housing starts directly, so pull the current signed backlog, pipeline, and how revenue held up in the last construction slowdown. A book that is 90 percent new custom construction is fully exposed to a rate-driven pullback in luxury starts.
Confirm insurance, bonding, licensing, and lien history: request certificates of insurance, any bonding capacity, and a review of past mechanics liens, warranty claims, or construction-defect litigation. Structural framing carries real liability tail risk if past work fails.
Test the transition and the owner's real role: the seller offers only up to three months and is leaving for outside ventures. Determine whether the owner personally holds the key builder relationships and estimating function, because a short handoff on a concentrated, relationship-driven business is a significant execution risk.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →