How Much Is My Business Worth in Fort Myers?
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How Much Is My Business Worth in Fort Myers?
Hurricane Ian came ashore at Cayo Costa in Lee County on September 28, 2022, a Category 4 with 130-knot winds. It impacted at least 52,514 structures in this county alone and produced 283,003 insurance claims, more than any other county in Florida.
Four years on, it is still in your numbers. So if you are asking how much your business is worth in Fort Myers, understand what a Lee County buyer is doing in 2026: he is underwriting your earnings and, at the same time, working out how much of those earnings were the storm.
One thing before the arithmetic. We have closed more than 1,000 transactions in 25 years, and none of them were in Lee County. We are not going to invent one, so everything below is public data or a view of our own that is labelled as ours.
What is a Fort Myers business actually priced on?
For a business under roughly $5 million in value, price is a multiple of seller's discretionary earnings — one working owner's cash flow, rebuilt from the tax return. What is different in Lee County is that a buyer builds that number three times, once for each of your last three fiscal years, and decides which one he believes.
SDE is your net profit plus your own compensation, plus the personal costs the company carries, plus genuinely one-time items. If the term is new to you, start with our plain-English explanation of the recast and come back.
The second half of the definition catches people out. A price assumes the business changes hands with no debt and no cash in it, and with enough working capital left inside to run the next month. Your receivables, your truck notes and your equipment loans get settled at the closing table — they are not paid on top of the price.
Which three years will a Lee County buyer underwrite in 2026?
Fiscal 2023, 2024 and 2025 — and the first of those still holds the rebuild. Lee County issued 38,538 roofing permits between December 2022 and March 2023, against a pre-Ian run rate near 1,314 a month, and was back to 1,544 by March 2024. That shape sits in more books than roofing.
It shows up wherever a house had to be dried, re-roofed, re-screened, repoured or repiped. It also shows up in businesses that never touched a claim, because crews were scarce and prices held firm for two years.
Here is the part worth acting on. The window rolls. A deal signed in late 2026 and closed in 2027 is underwritten on 2024, 2025 and 2026 — three ordinary years, with the spike finally outside the frame.
That cuts both ways. If your best year was 2023 and you have been waiting for a buyer to pay for it, the wait is costing you the year you wanted paid for.
Notice also what did not spike. New private housing units authorized in Lee County ran 13,394 in 2021, 13,621 in 2022, 13,556 in 2023 and 15,411 in 2024. The county's construction pipeline stayed flat while repair work tripled, which tells a buyer the surge was replacement demand pulled forward, not growth.
What does the arithmetic look like on a Cape Coral contractor?
Take an aluminum and screen-enclosure contractor in Cape Coral: $2.41 million of revenue in 2023 falling to $1.88 million in 2025, and $147,000 of net income on the most recent return. Rebuilt properly, that return carries about $348,000 of seller's discretionary earnings. It is the 2025 line a buyer prices.
Three years, one business, and a $141,000 spread in earnings. At 2.25x, that spread is roughly $317,000 of price — which is why the argument over which year counts is the whole negotiation.
The seller will argue for an average. The buyer will argue for the most recent year, and he has the better case, because 2023 contained rebuild work at rebuild pricing and 2025 does not.
The way to win part of that argument is to tag every job as storm or non-storm going back to 2021, then show the non-storm book as a clean line with its own margin and job count. An owner who does that is negotiating over a multiple. An owner who hands over one revenue total is watching someone else pick his baseline.
Now the add-backs a buyer will strike, which cost sellers more than they expect. A daughter running the office at $52,000 stays in the costs, because the job has to be filled. A "one-time" crane rental that appears in all three years is a recurring capital need. Cash work that never reached a deposit record is worth nothing, and asking for it costs you credibility for the rest of the deal.
One Lee County item belongs on that list too. If your general liability, commercial property or fleet insurance has repriced since 2022, a buyer builds his pro forma off the current renewal, not a three-year average. Present the current number yourself.
What multiple should a Lee County trade business expect in 2026?
Between 1.75x and 3.5x SDE, depending on the trade and on how much of the company runs without you. The only independent anchor that exists is national: construction businesses (NAICS 23) sold at a median 2.3x SDE and 3.6x EBITDA in 2024, against an all-industry EBITDA median of 3.8x.
No independent source reports trade-by-trade Fort Myers sale multiples. This table uses broad sector evidence and Sailfish's stated underwriting view, not county comps.
So the table below does two separate things, and the labels matter. The multiples are ours — the ranges we underwrite Florida trade businesses at in 2026 — and the independent reference sits underneath them.
Want your own number instead of a range? We will build the recast on your actual returns, separate the storm years the way a buyer will, and tell you what we think it sells for. Nothing owed unless we close it. Book a call.
Does Fort Myers itself make your business worth more or less?
Both, and the pull is stronger in each direction than in most Florida markets. Growth adds: Lee County reached 875,607 residents by July 2025, up 15.1% in five years, with 29.2% of them 65 or over. Insurance and seasonality take away, against an average homeowners premium including wind of $3,576.
Start with the demographic, because it is the most underrated asset a Fort Myers service business owns. Nearly three in ten residents are retired, which means a customer base that is home during the day, pays on time and does not cancel a service because money got tight in February.
Then the housing base. There are 479,540 housing units in Lee County against 327,803 households — a gap of roughly 150,000 units. A large share of those are second homes and seasonal properties, and a buyer wants to know how much of your billing goes quiet from June to October.
Insurance is the drag everyone here already feels. Lee's $3,576 average homeowners premium including wind sits below Pinellas at $4,063 and Monroe at $7,863, but it is money that leaves your customer's budget before it reaches you. The state's litigation picture has improved sharply — Florida's share of US homeowners suits opened fell to 41.29% in 2025 from 73.15% in 2024, and Citizens held 293,465 policies on June 5, 2026, its lowest in 25 years — which is good news for a homeowner and mixed news for anyone whose revenue came through claims.
Now the buyers, because that is what actually sets your price. Lee County has 22,756 businesses with employees and 99,927 without, and the base case under about $2 million of revenue is still an individual buyer with an SBA loan, often someone who moved here in the last five years and wants to own rather than be employed. Above that, the most motivated bidder is usually a regional operator from Collier, Charlotte or Sarasota who can absorb your crew without opening a new market. National platforms did come into Southwest Florida during the rebuild, but no independent dataset tracks their acquisitions county by county, so we will not name any.
Take the growth line and the insurance line together. A county adding people at 15.1% is also a county where the cost of owning the house those people live in has been repriced — and buyers underwrite both.
What belongs in a valuation before you trust the number?
Four things at a minimum: a three-year SDE recast with the storm year shown separately, a multiple with the reasoning attached, a working-capital and debt adjustment, and a written list of what would move the number. A single figure with no recast behind it is a listing pitch, not a valuation.
Ours also includes the uncomfortable page — what we would fix first. That is usually owner dependency, a licensed qualifier who is you, one customer above a quarter of revenue, and a set of books that cannot produce a clean job-level export. Most of those take 12 to 18 months to repair, which is the real reason to ask what your business is worth well before you want to sell.
For a Fort Myers business there is a fifth item. Current-year insurance, both yours and your customers', should sit in the pro forma at today's cost rather than a trailing average, because a buyer's lender will use today's number and you would rather be the one who put it there.
One point on formality. An opinion of value is not a certified appraisal. If your buyer finances with an SBA 7(a) loan and the intangible portion of the deal exceeds $250,000, the lender must commission an independent valuation from a qualified source under SOP 50 10 8 — that happens later, on the lender's schedule, and it is a separate document from anything a broker hands you.
Tax treatment of the price belongs with your CPA. Transferring a DBPR qualifying agent, and what your entity structure does to that, belongs with your attorney. We will explain how both generally work in a deal, and we will not tell you what to do about yours.
FAQ
How much is my business worth in Fort Myers?
For most Lee County trade and service businesses, worth lands between 1.75x and 3.5x seller's discretionary earnings, with the trade and your management depth deciding where. On $348,000 of SDE that is roughly $610,000 to $1.2 million. The single biggest swing factor is whether the business runs a full week without you in it.
Does my 2022 and 2023 storm revenue still count toward the price?
It counts as proof of capacity, not as baseline earnings. Lee County issued 38,538 roofing permits in the four months ending March 2023 and was back near 1,544 a month by March 2024. Show storm work as its own line with its own crew, overtime and material costs, and let the non-storm book carry the valuation.
Is a Fort Myers business worth more than the same business in another Florida market?
Sometimes, and the reason is the customer base rather than the city. Lee County grew 15.1% in five years and 29.2% of residents are 65 or over, which makes residential service revenue unusually steady. Working against that: seasonal billing across roughly 150,000 more housing units than households, and insurance costs that squeeze customer budgets.
Most of my customers are seasonal residents. Does that lower my price?
It lowers the earnings a buyer can count on, so it lowers the multiple rather than the revenue. Lee County has 479,540 housing units against 327,803 households, so seasonal exposure is normal here and buyers expect it. Split your book into year-round and seasonal billing before you go to market — very few owners have.
How does Lee County's insurance market affect what a buyer will pay?
Two ways. Your own premiums belong in the pro forma at today's renewal cost, not a three-year average. And if your revenue arrives through insurance claims rather than homeowners writing checks, expect a discount — Florida's share of US homeowners suits fell to 41.29% in 2025 from 73.15% in 2024, and that channel keeps narrowing.
I want out this year. Does a short timeline cost me money?
Usually some, but less than owners fear if the books are clean. Six to nine months from valuation to funded closing is normal, and lender underwriting owns about a third of it. What costs real money is going to market without a storm-normalized recast, because the first buyer to build one builds it in his own favor.
We work every Florida market from the Panhandle to the Keys — start at our Florida business broker hub for the statewide picture, or see how we work this coast on our Fort Myers page.
If you want a real number on your own returns instead of a range from a table, we will build the recast and tell you what we think it sells for. Success-fee only, so we are paid when you are. Book a call.