The numbers
As stated by the listing on August 25, 2026.
- Asking price
- $389,999
- SDE
- $244,239
- Gross revenue
- $1,436,700
- Multiple
- 1.60x
- Established
- 2013
- Employees
- 4
Why we like it
When a house floods or burns, the structure gets gutted by one crew and the contents, the furniture, the clothing, the photographs, the electronics, get boxed up and hauled off by another crew, because drying out a house and restoring what was inside it are two different disciplines with two different sets of equipment. That contents side is the trade this Houston company runs: pack-outs, ultrasonic cleaning, ozone and odor treatment, and the specialized fire and smoke work that follows a loss, all billed against an insurance claim rather than a homeowner's checkbook. Houston's exposure to hurricane season and its low-lying flood plain keep the phone ringing in a way a drier market would not, but the calls tend to come from adjusters and third-party administrators who route work to a short list of vetted vendors rather than from homeowners searching online. Four employees run the trucks and the warehouse under one owner, doing the estimating, the carrier relationships, and the technician certifications that keep the firm on those vendor panels in the first place. The thing to check first is how that panel access was built and whether it survives a change of ownership, because a restoration company's revenue often lives inside referral relationships earned by a specific person's name rather than by the LLC. Where this actually scales is warehouse throughput and truck count moving more contents faster, not marketing spend.
You probably need a licence to run this
Contents restoration itself is not a state-licensed trade in Texas, but insurance carriers and TPAs generally require the firm and its technicians to hold IICRC certifications (such as WRT, FSRT, and odor control) to stay on vendor panels, and those certifications attach to people, not the entity. If any of the water damage work crosses into mold remediation, Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation requires a separate individual mold license for jobs over the statutory threshold. A buyer without existing certifications would likely need to earn them quickly or hire someone who already holds them to keep panel eligibility intact.
What worries us
- Referral panel dependenceIf most work arrives through insurance carrier or TPA vendor panels, those relationships are often tied to the current owner's name and certifications, and a change of ownership can trigger re-vetting or even removal from a panel, which would hit revenue directly.
- Owner-held relationships and estimating knowledgeWith only four employees and one owner, the person who writes Xactimate estimates and answers adjuster calls may be the owner alone, so the business could be hard to run on day one without that specific relationship and skill set.
- Storm-driven revenue swingsHouston's flood and hurricane exposure can pull a single catastrophic year's revenue well above a normal year's, so the stated revenue figure needs to be checked against a multi-year history rather than taken as a steady run rate.
The callSuits a buyer who can quickly build or inherit insurance panel relationships and certifications, not someone wanting a passive asset in a weather-driven trade.
Our calculations
Our standard SBA 7(a) acquisition structure applied to the asking price. Assumptions below.
Sources
| SBA 7(a) loan | $369,002 |
| Seller standby note | $20,500 |
| Buyer cash at close | $20,500 |
| Total sources | $410,002 |
Uses
| Purchase price | $389,999 |
| Closing costs (est.) | $11,700 |
| SBA guaranty fee | $8,303 |
| Total project | $410,002 |
- Monthly payment
- $4,724
- Annual debt service
- $56,693
- DSCR
- 1.94xSTRONG
- Injection check
- Meets 10% ($41,000 against $41,000 required)
- Closing costs estimated at 3% of asking price
- Owner salary of $120,000, loaded
- Rate of Prime + 2.25% = 9.25%
- 10-year term, fully amortizing
- Injection split half cash, half seller standby note
How we would go about buying it
The order matters. Every step below is free until the last one, and each is a chance to walk away before it costs you anything.
- 1
Call the broker, not the bank
The listing is brokered, so the broker is the gate. Ask for the CIM and the last three years of tax returns, and expect to sign an NDA first. Do this before you talk to a lender: no lender will size a loan without the numbers, and the broker will not release them to a lender you have not engaged.
Open the listing - 2
Ask these before you spend anything
Specific to this business, from our read of the listing. The answers decide whether the numbers above survive contact.
- What percentage of jobs come from direct insurance carrier referrals versus third-party administrator vendor panels versus general contractor referrals, and do any of those panel agreements require re-approval or a new background check upon a change of ownership?
- What IICRC certifications does the current owner and each technician hold, and does the firm's certified status transfer to a new owner or need to be re-earned?
- Who currently writes the Xactimate estimates and manages the adjuster relationships, and will that person stay on after the sale?
- Is any mold remediation performed as part of water damage jobs, and if so, who holds the required Texas mold license?
- Can you show revenue and job count broken out by year, including any storm-catastrophe years, so I can see how much of the top line depends on weather events rather than steady referral flow?
- 3
Take it to lenders who do this size
Talk to more than one. Rate is the least of it: the lender who has done fifty of these in Texas will close, and the one who has done two will waste your quarter. Below are the lenders whose typical deal size actually fits this one.
- 4
Structure the offer around the coverage
Our structure clears the floor at 1.94x, and a lender will run its own version with its own add-backs. If the earnings come back lower than stated, the price has to come down or the seller note has to grow. Model both before you make an offer.
Model it yourself
Who we would call
Active Texas acquisition lenders whose typical deal size fits this one.
- Huntington National Bank
142 loans in TXmedian $422,000median rate 9.25%~32 days to first disbursement
- Live Oak Banking Company
133 loans in TXmedian $825,000median rate 9.00%~20 days to first disbursement
- First Internet Bank of Indiana
45 loans in TXmedian $980,000median rate 9.75%~23 days to first disbursement
Loan counts and medians are that lender’s change-of-ownership loans in Texas, FY2025 to FY2026 Q3. Funding speed is the lender’s national median from approval to first disbursement. Names link to our data profile for each lender.
The fine print
The statements this write-up makes about the trade and its rules, as opposed to the figures, were checked against public sources on August 24, 2026. 5 claims were checked.
Worth verifying yourself
These are industry statements we could not confirm against an authoritative public source. They are not contradicted by anything we found, but treat them as leads to check rather than settled facts.
- Insurance vendor panel eligibility is often tied to specific certified individuals and can require re-vetting when a business changes ownership.
Run your own numbers
The deal analyzer models price, seller note, equity injection, and DSCR under current SBA terms, with every assumption adjustable.
Open the deal analyzerListing facts as stated by the listing on August 25, 2026, not independently verified. Structure, payment, DSCR, and injection figures are our own computation under the assumptions above, using the Prime rate as of September 28, 2026. Lender shortlist from the SBA 7(a) FOIA file, FY2025 to FY2026 Q3, as of June 30, 2026. Methodology. See an error? Email us and we will correct it.