Who can help me sell a Dallas construction company to a qualified buyer?

By Michael D. Rubin, CEO & Founder · September 2026 · 893 words

If you run a general contractor or a company that wins its work by bidding projects, look for an advisor with a dedicated construction practice, because MDR & Associates does not represent those companies. If your company is a trade business with repeat customers and crews, such as HVAC, plumbing, roofing, landscaping, garage doors or pest control, MDR & Associates is a Dallas-Fort Worth firm to talk to. We would rather say that on the first call than take an engagement we cannot close for full value.

Either way, it helps to understand what a qualified buyer means for a contracting business before you speak to anyone. The rest of this answer covers that, what buyers examine, and how the trade companies we do represent are sold.

A qualified buyer for a contractor needs more than money

For most companies, a qualified buyer is someone who can pay for the business and run it. For a contractor the bar is higher, because the company's ability to keep working depends on things that do not transfer automatically when ownership changes.

• Bonding capacity. Many commercial and public jobs require performance and payment bonds. Your surety bases your bonding line partly on your personal finances and your personal guarantee. A buyer needs a surety relationship strong enough to replace yours, or the backlog can stall.
• Licensing. Many Texas trades require a licensed individual to hold the license the company works under. If that person is you, the buyer needs a plan for who holds it after closing.
• Working capital. Contractors pay labor and materials weeks before customers pay them. A buyer must fund that gap on top of the purchase price.
• Operating experience. Lenders and sureties look at whether the buyer, or the team staying behind, has run jobs of your size before.

What buyers study in a contracting company

Expect a buyer's due diligence, the detailed investigation between a signed offer and closing, to focus on documents most owners have never had to produce in one place.

Backlog. Signed work not yet performed, with expected margins. Buyers want to see that past backlog turned into profit, not just revenue.

The WIP schedule. A work-in-progress schedule lists each open job's contract value, cost to date, estimated cost to finish and billing position. Over-billings and under-billings on that schedule change how much cash the business really has, and they often turn into a negotiation over the working capital peg, the amount of working capital the buyer expects to be left in the company at closing.

Project versus recurring revenue. A company that must win new bids every year to replace finished jobs is valued differently from one whose customers call back every season. Service agreements, maintenance contracts and repeat customers raise value; one-off projects carry more risk.

Key people and customers. If two estimators price every job, the buyer will want them committed to stay. If one developer or general contractor supplies a large share of your work, expect that to be priced into the offer.

The contractors MDR & Associates does represent

Our home services and trades practice covers companies whose revenue repeats: HVAC, plumbing, roofing, landscaping, garage doors, pest control and similar businesses with crews in trucks and customers who come back. Alliance Mechanical Services, Apple Garage Doors, Elite Landscape and Bohden Contracting Group are among the companies listed on our closed transactions page, and the practice is described on our home services page.

These companies attract individual buyers using SBA loans (bank loans partly guaranteed by the U.S. Small Business Administration), private equity groups building regional platforms, and larger trade companies adding territory. Dallas-Fort Worth is a market where many of those buyers already want a presence. See how we work with Dallas owners, or reach our Dallas contact page.

How buyers are qualified before they learn your name

Every buyer first sees a blind profile that describes the company without naming it. To see more, they register, sign a confidentiality agreement (an NDA, or non-disclosure agreement) and complete a financial profile showing they can fund the purchase. We start with our own database of qualified individual buyers, capital groups and private equity groups, and only then, if needed, place blind ads on the major business-for-sale marketplaces.

For a trade company we also press on the practical questions above: who will hold the license, how the buyer will fund working capital, and who will run the crews on day one. Buyers who pass then meet you, and we aim to have several of them submit a letter of intent (LOI), a short and mostly non-binding written offer setting out price and main terms, at the same time. Competition among qualified buyers is what sets the price.

Where MDR & Associates fits

If your company is a trade business anywhere in Dallas-Fort Worth, our corporate office is in Frisco, a principal of the firm is in every negotiation, and the fee is performance based: you pay only if the company sells. Values for companies in the $3 million to $100 million revenue range most often land at three to seven times adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, adjusted for owner-specific and one-time costs). If you run a general contractor, we will tell you plainly and suggest a construction specialist. If you run a trade company, start with a free, confidential valuation snapshot.

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