Resources

Everything we know about buying and selling cleaning businesses, written down. Guides, working spreadsheets, and original research from our own listing data — not recycled blog filler.

FeaturedDeal Breakdown

This Week’s Deal: Why the Utah Janitorial Company is Hot

Deep-dive on a $2.5M revenue cleaning business with $600K in cash flow. Valuation, financing structure, the risks nobody flags, and what we’d pay.

Read the breakdown →

Guides

The long-form stuff. Start here if you’re early.

Valuation

Cleaning Business Valuation Guide

How commercial cleaning businesses actually get valued — SDE vs. EBITDA, where the multiples land, and what moves them.

15 min read

Sellers

The Definitive Guide to Prepping Your Business for Sale

Twelve months of prep compressed into one document: cleaning up books, de-risking customer concentration, and timing the listing.

20 min read

Market

Commercial Cleaning Industry Overview

Market size, fragmentation, consolidation pressure, and where the acquisition activity is concentrated.

10 min read

BuyersComing soon

The First-Time Buyer’s Field Guide

What to look at in the first 48 hours after an NDA, and the five things that should make you walk immediately.

14 min read

FinancingComing soon

SBA 7(a) Financing for Cleaning Acquisitions

Down payment expectations, seller note structures, personal guarantees, and how long the process really takes.

18 min read

Tools & Templates

Things you can download and actually use on a deal.

SpreadsheetComing soon

SDE Add-Back Worksheet

A spreadsheet for normalizing owner comp, personal vehicles, and one-time expenses without overstating your own earnings.

CalculatorComing soon

Customer Concentration Calculator

Enter your top ten accounts and get the concentration risk profile a buyer will build anyway.

ChecklistComing soon

Buyer Diligence Checklist

Eighty-one line items across financials, contracts, employees, equipment, and insurance. Print it.

TemplateComing soon

LOI Template for Small Acquisitions

A plain-English letter of intent with the exclusivity, diligence window, and escrow terms filled in as defaults.

SpreadsheetComing soon

Route Density & Margin Model

Model gross margin by drive time and square footage per contract. Useful for janitorial roll-ups.

TemplateComing soon

Employee Transition Letter Pack

Three drafts for announcing a sale to staff — day of close, week after, and the one for your key supervisor.

Data & Research

What we see in the listing data that nobody publishes.

Live Data

30-Day BizBuySell Listing Audit

We tracked every cleaning listing for a month and documented the stale listings, duplicate posts, and phantom inventory.

Position

Why CleaningExits Exists

The data quality argument, with screenshots. This is the short version of everything we believe.

ReportComing soon

Quarterly Cleaning Multiples Report

Median asking multiple by revenue band, updated every quarter from live listing data. No survey, no self-reporting.

ReportComing soon

Days on Market by State

How long cleaning businesses actually sit, broken out by geography and price band.

ReportComing soon

The Relist Index

Businesses that came back to market after a failed deal, and what that pattern tells you about pricing.

Get the Top 10 every Monday

The ten best cleaning businesses on the market this week, with our notes on why they made the list. Free, and you can leave whenever.

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