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Commercial Cleaning Businesses for Sale

Commercial janitorial contracts are some of the stickiest recurring revenue in service businesses — annual auto-renewing agreements, predictable labor costs, and a fragmented market ripe for consolidation.

Typical Revenue
$500K – $3M
Typical SDE
$100K – $500K
Valuation Multiple
2x – 3x SDE

Why buy a commercial cleaning business?

  • Recurring multi-year janitorial contracts
  • Low equipment capex — labor is the main input
  • Easy to bolt on adjacent services (floor care, windows, post-construction)
  • Highly fragmented — roll-up opportunity

What to look for

  • Average contract length and auto-renewal terms
  • Customer concentration (no client >15% of revenue)
  • Labor model: W-2 vs. 1099 (1099 = misclassification risk)
  • Insurance, bonding, and workers' comp history

Red flags

  • Misclassified 1099 cleaners (large liability)
  • Reliance on a single building or property manager
  • No documented training program — quality risk on transition

How buyers finance it

SBA 7(a) is the standard. Because asset bases are thin, lenders weight customer contracts and historical retention heavily.

Frequently asked questions

What's the profit margin on a janitorial company?

Well-run commercial janitorial businesses earn 10–20% SDE margins. Specialty cleaning (medical, food-grade) commands higher margins.

How are cleaning contracts valued?

Buyers pay roughly 1x to 1.5x annualized contract revenue for a clean book of stable, multi-year commercial accounts.

See Commercial Cleaning deals before they hit the market

Our members get off-market commercial cleaning & janitorial businesses matched to their buy-box. Apply for access — approval takes 1 business day.