Established South Florida Commercial Landscaping Business, 23-Year Miami Contractor · Accredited

Published NOV 4, 2026

Established South Florida Commercial Landscaping Business, 23-Year Miami Contractor

Miami, Florida

$2.9M

Revenue

$1.2M

SDE

4.5x

Multiple

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Andy

Ben Sampson

Full Editorial Writeup

This is a 23-year-old commercial landscaping company operating across South Florida, providing landscape maintenance, design, installation, and improvement services. The customer base is squarely commercial and institutional: shopping centers, commercial properties, condominium associations, managed residential communities, hotels, and institutional facilities. Roughly 80% of revenue flows from recurring maintenance contracts, with the balance coming from higher-ticket design and installation project work. The company reports around 35 service contracts, mostly annual agreements with automatic renewal provisions and many customer relationships running 10 to 15 years.

What separates this from the typical owner-dependent landscaping business is the operating structure. There is an experienced operating manager, four field supervisors, an established workforce of about 19, and an in-house mechanic maintaining an owned fleet of vehicles, trailers, and specialized machinery valued near $366k. The current owners report only about six hours per week of involvement, mostly accounting and key customer relationships, and the operating manager has expressed willingness to stay post-close. That makes this a genuinely manager-run operation rather than a job disguised as a business.

At $2.9M revenue and a seller-reported $1.22M SDE (a 42% margin), the business is priced at $5.5M, or 4.51x cash flow. The seller is retiring after two decades. Notably, the deal structure is unusual and demanding: no SBA, no bank financing contingencies, only up to 10% seller financing, and buyers must prove liquid funds for at least 90% of the price. That cash-heavy structure plus a premium multiple for a services business means the burden falls entirely on verifying the earnings and contract durability.

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How to improve it

Install a dedicated sales and business development function in the first 90 days, since the company has grown entirely on referrals and property-management relationships with no sales department. The South Florida commercial market is large and fragmented, and a single competent salesperson calling on property managers could add accounts without changing operations. Each incremental maintenance contract drops largely to the bottom line given existing crew and equipment capacity.
Expand within existing property-management portfolios by cross-selling. The company already has relationships with property managers who control multiple properties, so winning additional sites within those same portfolios is the lowest-cost growth available. Map every property each current PM contact manages and systematically pursue the ones not yet served.
Grow the higher-margin installation and improvement project pipeline, currently about 20% of revenue. These projects carry better margins than routine maintenance and can be upsold directly to the existing captive maintenance base. Formalizing a seasonal improvement proposal process to every maintenance client turns a passive book into a project engine.
Lock in the operating manager with a retention and incentive package before close, because the six-hours-per-week owner model depends entirely on that person staying. Structure equity, a bonus tied to contract retention, or a multi-year agreement. This single hire is the difference between a smooth transition and a scramble.
Formalize and re-paper the contract base, confirming that the 35 agreements truly carry auto-renewal and documenting pricing, term, and escalation clauses. Add annual CPI-based price escalators where missing, since landscaping labor costs rise and many long-tenured accounts may be underpriced. Even a 3 to 5% price increase across an 80% recurring base materially lifts SDE.
Introduce basic digital marketing and a professional web presence, which the listing notes is absent. A simple lead-capture site plus a Google Business presence costs little and supplements referral flow. This is cheap insurance against over-reliance on word-of-mouth.

Diligence notes

Verify the seller-reported SDE line by line, because the listing explicitly states SDE includes proposed adjustments subject to supporting documentation and verification. Reconcile the $1.22M against tax returns and bank statements, and scrutinize every add-back for legitimacy. A 42% margin is high for this industry, so confirm whether it reflects genuine efficiency or aggressive adjustments.
Pull and review all 35 service contracts for actual term length, auto-renewal language, cancellation provisions, and concentration. Identify how much revenue sits in the largest few accounts, since losing one or two major condo or shopping-center contracts could materially impair earnings. Confirm the auto-renewal claims are contractually real, not just customary.
Scrutinize the labor model, given 19 workers described as a mix of W-2 employees and 1099 collaborators. Misclassified 1099 field labor is a common and expensive liability in landscaping, and reclassification could raise true payroll cost and compress the reported margin. Confirm workers comp, immigration compliance, and payroll tax exposure.
Stress-test the deal structure and financing reality, since there is no SBA, no bank contingency, and only up to 10% seller financing against a $5.5M cash price. That means roughly $4.95M of your own capital at a 4.51x multiple on seller-provided numbers, a demanding profile. Make verified earnings and contract durability the gating conditions before committing that much cash.
Confirm the facility lease terms, because the 6,000-square-foot warehouse is owned by the seller and offered for lease under terms to be negotiated, not included in the sale. Nail down rent, lease length, and renewal options before close, since fleet and equipment storage is operationally critical. An unfavorable or short lease from a departing owner is a hidden risk.
Assess the true condition and remaining life of the $366k fleet and equipment, including vehicles, trailers, and specialized machinery. South Florida heat and heavy use age equipment quickly, so budget for near-term replacement capex that the SDE figure may not reflect. The in-house mechanic is a plus, but confirm the fleet is not deferred-maintenance debt in disguise.