Who buys roofing companies? The four buyer groups, what each pays, and which one fits your size

Four groups buy roofing companies: SBA-financed individuals and search funds, regional roofing groups, public strategics, and private equity platforms. Each one prices a different line of your earnings and each one fits a different size of company.

The SDE range comes from Peak Business Valuation. The EBITDA bands come from Ad Astra Equity, which sets the bottom quartile at 3.75x for a single-truck roofer with no commercial maintenance, the median at 5.25x for $500K to $1.5M of EBITDA in residential reroof in a single market, and the top quartile at 7x for $2M+ of EBITDA with mixed residential and commercial work across multiple markets. The 8x to 11x platform range, also from that firm, applies only to commercial-maintenance-heavy roofers; storm-chaser residential businesses are capped at 3x to 4.5x. Axial observed a range of 4.3x to 7.0x.

Never cross the columns. SDE is net profit plus one owner's full compensation plus documented add-backs. EBITDA is SDE minus a market-rate salary for the manager who replaces you. An SDE multiple applied to EBITDA, or the reverse, produces a number no buyer will sign. Our roofing valuation page walks through both calculations in more depth.

Before you take a call from any of these buyers, recast your last three years into both SDE and EBITDA so you know which row of this table your company actually sits in.

Tecta America is the commercial consolidator. Vertex Service Partners, Infinity Home Services, Omnia Exterior Solutions and Ridgeline Roofing & Restoration buy residential roofers. Quick Roofing and Greenwood Industries were acquired by new sponsors in January 2024 and May 2025.

Worked example: one EBITDA figure, four prices

Take a roofer with $9,000,000 of revenue and $2,200,000 of EBITDA, measured after paying a general manager $150,000. Because that salary is already deducted, this is EBITDA, not SDE. Adding it back would give $2,350,000 of SDE ($2,200,000 + $150,000), but a platform will never price that figure.

The earnings are identical in every row. The spread from $6,600,000 to $24,200,000 comes entirely from revenue mix and how durable the platform believes that revenue is.

What a platform checks in diligence

• Contracted maintenance share. That data credits commercial maintenance above 40% of revenue with +1.5x to +3.0x.
• Management depth. Project managers who run jobs without you add +1.0x to +2.0x. If you are the primary salesperson or estimator, expect -1.0x to -2.0x.
• Footprint. Three or more branches add +0.5x to +1.5x. Single-state or single-storm-region concentration costs -0.5x to -1.0x.
• Safety and insurance. Named-carrier insurance programs add +0.5x to +1.0x. A low EMR and clean OSHA history add +0.25x to +0.5x.
• Storm normalization. The platform separates structural earnings from storm-cycle revenue before it applies any multiple.

Capital items found in diligence, such as a fleet that needs replacing, come off the purchase price. They do not reduce EBITDA before the multiple is applied, so disclose them early and negotiate them as a price line rather than letting them reopen your earnings.

If your commercial maintenance share sits just under 40%, moving recurring customers onto signed multi-year MSAs before you go to market is the change that moves you between rows of that table.

A strategic buyer purchases a roofing company to add a market, a customer base, or crews it cannot hire fast enough on its own. Strategics include regional roofing groups in the $2M to $15M EBITDA band and public acquirers such as FirstService through Roofing Corp of America.

Strategics price on EBITDA, then look at what they can combine. Your office, estimating and dispatch functions may overlap with theirs, and they will plan around that. If keeping your staff matters to you, raise it before the LOI, because it gets harder to protect after exclusivity. Our answer on asset sale vs stock sale explains how the deal structure decides which contracts, liabilities and employees carry over.

The license question strategics ask first

According to contractorlicenserequirements.com, 17 of 51 jurisdictions require a statewide roofing license, 3 require state registration, 13 depend on scope, and 18 have no statewide license, though local rules may still apply. Florida requires a Certified Roofing Contractor license. California uses the CSLB C-39 classification. Texas, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Colorado have no statewide roofing license.

Where a license exists, it is tied to a qualifying individual and does not transfer in an asset sale. A strategic already licensed in your state can put its own qualifier on your jobs on closing day. A strategic entering your state cannot, so expect it to ask you to stay on as qualifier through a transition period.

What strategics discount for

• A single general contractor or property manager above 20% of revenue, which costs -0.5x to -1.0x.
• Open claims, frequent callbacks, or water-intrusion and workmanship claims.
• Uncapped warranty exposure or missing claims documentation, which costs -0.5x to -1.0x and can trigger an escrow.

What they pay up for: 12+ months of visible commercial backlog, manufacturer certifications, and a documented labor warranty history that shows claims were rare and resolved.

In the first meeting with any strategic, ask who will hold the license qualifier on closing day and which of your project managers they plan to keep after the transition.

Yes, if your owner earnings fall in the range individual buyers target and survive a lender's historical coverage test. Ad Astra describes individual owner-operator targets at $1M to $10M of revenue and $300K to $1.5M of SDE. Those figures are buyer-target ranges, not closed-deal statistics.

Worked example: a $280,000 SDE roofer

A roofer with $1,200,000 of revenue and $280,000 of SDE, priced on the SDE multiples from Peak Business Valuation:

• Low end: $280,000 of SDE at 1.88x = $526,400
• High end: $280,000 of SDE at 2.73x = $764,400

This example sits just under the $300K floor of the buyer-target range, which puts it at the edge of what search funds screen for. An individual owner-operator who will run the trucks is the closer fit.

What the lender does with your numbers

• Valuation. Both prices are above $350,000, so under SOP 50 10 8.1 the lender must order an independent business valuation from a Qualified Source (an ASA, CBA, ABV, CVA or BCA). It cannot use a valuation you or the buyer commissioned. The SBA loan plus any seller debt not on full standby cannot exceed that valuation. Any price above it must come from buyer equity or debt on full standby.
• Coverage. For an Initial Acquisition or Owner Buyout, SOP 50 10 8.1 requires at least 1.25x debt service coverage on historical results, either the last fiscal year or a two-year average. A Business Expansion needs 1.15x. Projections cannot be used to meet it. If your last year included a storm spike, the lender will normalize it, and the two-year average may be the figure that carries the loan.
• Equity. For a complete change of ownership, the buyer injects 10% of total project cost. Up to half of that can be a seller note on full standby, so 5% buyer cash plus a 5% standby note is common.
• Rate. On loans above $350,000 the variable rate is capped at the base rate plus 3.0%, which is 10% at the 7% prime in effect since September 17, 2026.

If you agree to a standby note, understand what you are agreeing to. You receive no principal or interest for the entire life of the 7(a) loan, and the business-acquisition portion amortizes over up to 10 years. Interest can accrue and is paid after the SBA loan is retired. Price that wait into your decision.

Search funds and individual buyers both underwrite the same weakness: an owner who is the primary estimator and salesperson. The buyer is replacing you with one person, and if your customer relationships leave with you, the lender's normalized earnings shrink. A Quality of Earnings report becomes mandatory for SBA purchases of $3,000,000 or more, so a company at the size in this example avoids that requirement.

Run your SDE through the acquisition calculator before you set an asking price, because a price the lender's 1.25x historical test cannot support will not close with an SBA buyer.

Match three things: your earnings size, your revenue mix, and what you want after closing. A buyer that can pay the most on paper is the wrong buyer if your company does not meet its requirements, because the price gets cut in diligence.

Decisions you can make now

1. If you sit below $2M of EBITDA, stop modeling platform multiples and build your plan around SBA buyers and regional groups.
2. If commercial maintenance is close to 40% of revenue, decide whether to spend a year converting customers to written MSAs before selling.
3. If you are the estimator, decide whether to hire or promote a project manager into that seat before you go to market, since that single fix is worth +1.0x to +2.0x when it removes the owner dependency.
4. Decide now whether you will accept a standby seller note, because it determines whether SBA buyers can reach your price.

Munera does not list businesses publicly. Your company is shared only with buyers who have signed an NDA and been vetted for capital and fit, using a blind profile until a buyer qualifies, drawn from a network of 4,000+ buyers. If your business matches one of our active buyer clients, the buyer pays our fee and you pay nothing. If we run a confidential search, the fee is a success fee paid at closing with no monthly retainer, and a $5,000 engagement deposit is credited against it.

From the decision to sell, plan on 3 to 6 months to a signed LOI and another 60 to 90 days to close, depending on the buyer's financing and diligence.