Tampa Bay Landscape, Irrigation & Maintenance Company, 30-Year Pasco County FL Contractor

$3.2M

Revenue

$710K

SDE

4.5x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a scaled landscape services operation in Pasco County, Florida serving the fast-growing Tampa Bay residential-development market. Founded in 1995, the company runs three complementary divisions: landscape design and installation, irrigation, and ongoing maintenance. That breadth matters because it creates multiple revenue lines, natural cross-selling between install and maintenance, and stickier builder relationships that extend past any single project.

The business is currently active across roughly 10 major residential developments with established ties to prominent homebuilders. It runs on a team of about 17 to 20 employees, including divisional supervisors who manage field production and daily operations. The owner focuses on estimating and bidding, hiring and payroll, key customer relationships, and overall oversight rather than swinging a shovel, which gives a buyer a real management layer to build on rather than a one-person show.

Operations run from an approximately five-acre site with office, warehouse, yard, sheds, and storage. Importantly, that real estate is NOT included in the asking price: the seller retains it and will lease it back at market terms, so a buyer should model rent as a real ongoing cost. On $3.25M of revenue and $709,875 of SDE, the 4.5x asking multiple reflects a business with genuine scale and infrastructure but heavy dependence on a small pool of homebuilder accounts in a single housing cycle.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is solid for the category: $709,875 of document-supported normalized SDE on $3.25M revenue is a ~22% owner margin, healthy for landscape services. The three-division model (install, irrigation, maintenance) spreads earnings across project work and recurring maintenance, which softens the boom-bust nature of pure installation work.
The moat here is operational capacity plus relationships, not a single crew. Established homebuilder relationships across roughly 10 active developments, divisional supervisors, a trained 17 to 20 person team, and a five-acre yard create real barriers versus the small independent contractors most landscape buyers face. Replicating this footprint from scratch would take years.
Tampa Bay is one of the strongest residential-growth markets in the country, and this business sits directly in the new-development pipeline. As long as builders keep breaking ground in the region, installation and irrigation demand follows, and every home installed becomes a future maintenance candidate.
The owner already works on the business rather than in it, focusing on estimating, bidding, and key accounts. That means a capable operator or a bolt-on acquirer inherits a functioning management structure, and the clearest lever, converting one-time installs into recurring maintenance contracts, is sitting untapped.
The sale includes about $565,000 of vehicles, equipment, and tools plus $120,000 of inventory, so a meaningful slice of the asking price is hard assets. Combined with available seller financing, that gives a buyer both downside protection on the balance sheet and structure flexibility on the deal.

How to improve it

Attack the recurring maintenance base immediately. Every home installed across those 10 developments is a maintenance lead, so build a systematic post-install handoff that converts new homeowners and HOAs into monthly contracts. Recurring revenue is worth a higher multiple than project work and stabilizes cash flow between building cycles.
Push irrigation cross-selling on every landscape install. The listing flags this directly: install and irrigation should be bundled by default in bids, not sold separately. Attaching irrigation to existing install jobs raises average ticket with near-zero customer acquisition cost.
Diversify beyond the current homebuilder concentration. A handful of builders driving revenue is the single biggest risk here, so add commercial accounts, additional builders, and HOA maintenance contracts to reduce dependence on any one relationship or any one housing cycle.
Formalize and delegate the estimating and bidding function. The owner still owns this, so document the process, hire or train an estimator, and remove the key-man dependency. This both de-risks the transition and frees the buyer to focus on growth and account development.
Renegotiate and lock the facility lease before close. Since the seller keeps the five-acre yard, get a long-term lease with defined rent, term, and renewal options in writing. An unfavorable or short lease on the operating base would undermine the whole acquisition, so this belongs in the purchase terms, not a handshake.
Geographic expansion into adjacent Tampa Bay submarkets. The infrastructure (yard, equipment, supervisors) can support more crews, so add developments in neighboring counties where builder activity is strong. Incremental crews spread fixed overhead and improve margins.
Tighten pricing and job costing on installation work. With a real estimating function in place, implement job-level cost tracking to identify which project types and builders actually drive margin. Cutting low-margin work and repricing the rest can lift SDE without adding revenue.

Diligence notes

Verify the homebuilder concentration and contract terms. Get revenue by customer and by division for the last three years to see how much depends on the top few builders, whether relationships are contractual or handshake, and how they would survive an owner transition. This is the central risk in the deal.
Scrutinize the lease-back economics on the five-acre facility. The seller retains the real estate and will lease it at market terms, so confirm the proposed rent, term, and renewal rights and model that ongoing expense against SDE. Note that the reported $709,875 cash flow may not reflect the new market rent the buyer will pay.
Confirm the SDE normalization and the FF&E schedule. Ask for the specific add-backs behind the $709,875 figure and verify the $565,000 of vehicles, equipment, and tools is current, functional, and owned free and clear. Aging fleet with deferred maintenance could mean meaningful near-term capex.
Address Florida licensing and the post-close management structure. The listing flags applicable Florida licensing requirements, so determine which licenses the business holds, whether they transfer, and whether a qualifying individual must be on staff. Also confirm the divisional supervisors intend to stay, since they run field production.
Assess exposure to the housing cycle and builder activity. Because revenue is tied to new residential development, review how the business performed during slower building periods and what percentage of revenue is recurring maintenance versus one-time installation. A downturn in Tampa Bay starts would hit installation work first.
Review workforce stability and labor costs. With 17 to 20 employees driving all field production, examine wage rates, turnover, use of any seasonal or subcontract labor, and I-9 compliance. Labor availability is explicitly cited as a competitive factor, so any staffing fragility directly threatens capacity and revenue.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →