Landscaping business acquisitions sit in a 2.0×–3.5× SDE band. Top-of-band placement requires maintenance-contract revenue dominance and demonstrated year-round operational continuity.
of deals co-mingled installation/enhancement revenue with recurring maintenance. Install revenue is episodic; maintenance is the recurring foundation.
SDE band stable. Peak installation year used as baseline is the most common pricing failure in Q1 2026.
Seasonal DSCR failure window for northern-climate operations. Lenders require monthly DSCR modeling — annual average masks the trough.
of deals had H-2B visa dependency with no documented renewal pipeline. Visa program continuity is a post-close operational cliff.
The most common pricing error in landscaping deals this quarter is using a peak installation year as the SDE baseline. Installation revenue is episodic — it follows housing starts, commercial construction, and owner relationships unlikely to transfer at the same volume. Isolate recurring maintenance revenue, apply a maintenance multiple (typically 2.8×–3.5×), and treat the installation book as a forward opportunity, not a multiple justification.
H-2B visa dependency is underpriced in most deal structures. A landscaping business that sources 35% of its seasonal labor through H-2B with no documented backup plan is carrying operational discontinuity risk that the SDE multiple does not reflect. Require the seller to produce prior-year H-2B application history, allocation dates, and slot counts before the LOI stage.
Read the full Q1 2026 Atlas →The landscaping research stack.
Atlas for the numbers. Playbook for the framework. Apply it to the deal in front of you.
Q1 2026 Industry Atlas
Trailing-12-month band, structural conditions, sources, and methodology. Quarterly. Dated. Citable. Built to be forwarded by lenders.
Underwriting Playbook
The four-pillar lens applied to landscaping business acquisitions. Structural failure modes. Pre-LOI verification priorities. Master spoke for the vertical.
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