Real comps come from three places, and a comp set built from any one source alone is fragile.
1. Closed transactions in the last 18 months in your region. Hardest to get and most valuable. Sources:
- Brokers (will share anonymized comps to win your business)
- Industry associations (some maintain transaction databases for members)
- Direct conversations with buyers and sellers in your region (small industry, people talk)
- Public records for asset sales above certain thresholds (rare for pool routes but worth checking)
2. Active listings at similar revenue and account count. Easier to find. Bias to closed comps when possible because asking prices skew high. But active listings tell you what the market is currently willing to consider.
3. Broker market reports, regional, not national averages. National averages mask huge regional variation. A Phoenix route comps very differently from a Buffalo route.
Adjusting comps. Any two routes are different. Adjust your raw comps for:
- Geography, region, drive density, traffic, commercial vs residential mix
- Recurrence rate, % auto-pay, % weekly recurring, % one-time
- Account size, average ticket, ticket distribution
- Tenure, average and weighted-average customer tenure
- Included equipment, truck, trailer, chemicals, software
- Transition support, included or extra
- Year of sale, pool service multiples have generally trended up over the past decade; older comps need an upward adjustment
- Market conditions, interest rates affect financing-dependent buyers; comps from a low-rate era need adjustment
A national average is a starting prompt, not an answer. A "12.5x" national average tells you very little about what a specific 64-stop, $11k MRR route in a specific zip code should command.
Build a comp table. For each comp:
- Route description (revenue, accounts, geography, key attributes)
- Sale price and structure (if known)
- Implied multiple
- Key adjustments needed to make it comparable to your subject route
- Adjusted multiple
Three to five well-adjusted comps are more useful than fifteen poorly-matched ones.
Triangulation. A defensible valuation typically comes from triangulating: comps + a discounted-cash-flow style buyer-return model + a simple replacement-cost analysis ("what would it cost to build this from scratch?"). When all three converge in a range, you have a number. When they diverge, you have more diligence to do.