How much is a garage door business worth?

Short answer: a local garage door shop sells on SDE at small-deal multiples — the big private-equity checks you read about went to scaled platforms, not to a three-truck shop, and this page will not pretend otherwise. There is no verified trade-specific realized multiple for garage door companies in the data below, so the number here is built from category data and labeled that way. See the Garage Door page, then run your shop in the valuation calculator.

The number

BizBuySell's trailing-five-year realized multiples do not list garage door companies separately, so no trade multiple is quoted here — inventing one would be easy and wrong. Use the size ladder instead. Size moves the multiple more than almost anything. The IBBA Market Pulse survey (Q2 2026) puts realized pricing at 2.0x SDE for deals under $500K, 2.8x SDE at $500K-$1M, 3.1x SDE at $1M-$2M, 4.8x EBITDA at $2-5M, and 5.8x EBITDA at $5-50M. Same trade, same margins — a bigger, less owner-dependent business simply gets a different multiple.

For an anchor, public companies in Business & Consumer Services trade at 14.26x EBITDA — Damodaran Online, January 2026. There are no public pure-play garage door service companies; this broad services bucket is a labeled proxy. That is not your price. It is the opportunity-cost anchor a buyer measures your shop against: money parked in large, liquid companies earns that multiple, so a small, illiquid one has to be cheaper per dollar of earnings.

Worked example — shown math, assumptions labeled:

• Revenue: $900,000
• SDE margin: 25% — an assumption; repair-heavy shops run richer than builder-install shops, check which one you are
• SDE: $900,000 x 25% = $225,000
• Multiple: 2.8x SDE — IBBA tier for a $500K-$1M deal (Q2 2026)
• Indicated value: $225,000 x 2.8 = $630,000, before debt; trucks and door inventory are normally inside a deal this size only if titled to the company — confirm, do not assume

How buyers actually value a garage door business

Garage door demand is beautifully non-deferrable — a broken spring strands the car, and the homeowner pays today. Buyers price which revenue you have, not just how much. Repair and replacement for homeowners is the premium book: high margin, paid on completion, no receivables. New-construction builder work is the discount book: bid thin, paid in 45-60 days, and one builder can quietly become 40% of revenue — that is concentration, and buyers haircut it hard. Commercial service sits in between, and rises in value when it comes with maintenance agreements instead of break-fix calls. Buyers also price your demand engine: in this trade, Google reviews and Local Services Ads are the storefront, and a shop with 600 reviews and a cost per job the owner can state out loud transfers; a shop living on one lead platform does not. Finally, revenue per tech and per truck. Two techs billing what three should is not a staffing problem to a buyer — it is a margin story they will pay for only if it is documented, month by month.

What raises the price — and what kills it

Raises it:

• Repair/replacement mix above install — margin and same-day cash, not receivables
• Tune-up and maintenance plans that put you back in the same garage every year
• A review engine and call tracking that prove where jobs come from and what each costs
• Techs who run their own trucks and close their own tickets — you dispatch, you do not rescue
• Clean parts discipline: springs, openers, and panels counted, not guessed

Kills it:

• One builder or one property manager above roughly a fifth of revenue
• You are the best tech, the dispatcher, and the after-hours phone
• Unreported cash work — a buyer cannot pay for earnings a lender cannot see
• Aging trucks with the replacement bill arriving the month after closing
• Opener and door inventory bought on your personal credit, titled to nobody

Move your number

Shift the mix before you chase size. Ten points of revenue moved from builder install to homeowner repair raises SDE margin on the same trucks — and margin times multiple is the whole game. Get paid at the door, cheaply. Card-on-completion, deposits on special-order doors, and ACH for commercial accounts cut both fees and receivables; the Finix payments team builds that setup for service trades. Systematize the follow-up. The unclosed quote from Tuesday is next month's replacement sale if someone — or something — follows up; automated quote follow-up, maintenance-plan renewals, and review requests are the ClaroPro team's bread and butter. Make the operation legible. Dispatch, call tracking, and per-tech numbers in one system a buyer can open is the work of a Nova engineering team when your shop outgrows spreadsheets. Then re-run the calculator, prefilled for garage door, and watch which lever moves your number most.

This is an educational framework with shown math, not an appraisal. A real price is set by a real buyer on a specific day. Every caveat here is aimed at protecting you, the owner — from overpaying for the shop across town, from underselling the one you built, and from signing a deal priced on revenue a buyer was never going to underwrite. Never invent, show the math, and stay on the owner's side: that is the standard this page holds itself to.