Buying a Finish Carpentry Business
Why Searchers Target Finish Carpentry
Thirty-two thousand employer businesses averaging about five and a half employees and one and a third million dollars of receipts, which is squarely inside the size a single buyer can finance and run. It is also the most owner-visible trade on this shelf: the work is what a homeowner or a tenant actually looks at, so reputation compounds and price competition is weaker than in the trades hidden behind drywall. The shop half of the business carries equipment and a fixed address, which is unusual on a shelf otherwise made of crews and trucks.
What the Market Pays
An appraisal firm publishes 1.73x to 2.63x owner earnings for carpentry, and separately an EBITDA band for larger companies, which describes a different population and must not be read as the same range widened. Sold listings in the building and construction class ran 1.81x to 3.13x with the middle at 2.43x, and that class scope sentence never names carpentry, cabinetry or millwork, so the class assignment here is our judgment. The two floors sit within a tenth of a turn of each other and the ceilings half a turn apart, which is what an appraiser's working range does against a transaction quartile.
A Cabinet Is a Fixture, or It Is Materials
California draws the line at ninety percent: a cabinet is a prefabricated fixture when nine tenths of the direct cost of labor and material is incurred before it is affixed to the building. On the fixture side the shop is a retailer selling a product; on the other it is a contractor consuming materials. The tax is measured differently on each, the seller's own invoices can be measured against the rule, and the federal definition of this industry lists both a site-built cabinet and a prefabricated one as examples of the same trade.
It Takes Less Work In Than Its Neighbors
Twenty-four percent of this trade's receipts arrive as work subcontracted in from another contractor and ten percent goes back out, which is the lowest share taken in on this shelf. Read that as a strength and a caution at once: more of the book is billed to an owner on the shop's own terms, and less of it is protected by the volume a general contractor's schedule brings. Ninety-four percent of the construction work is on privately owned projects, so public backlog is not part of this business.
What to Verify in Diligence
Two of these are records a shop keeps without thinking of them as diligence, and one is a notice practice that silently writes off receivables.
- Which side of the ninety percent line the last three years of invoices actually fell on
- Supplier statements on file for the panel products in every cabinet, and how far back they run
- Preliminary notices served on open private jobs, and how many were served late
- Payment bond notice dates on any federal work, against the last day of labor on each
- Which standard the fixed shop is inspected under, against the crews out on installs
Financeability Notes
Size is a non-issue here and that is itself the fact: the federal size standard for this industry is nineteen million dollars of average receipts against a trade averaging one and a third million, so there is room for a multi-shop roll-up before size becomes a question at all, subject to affiliation. The license is the timing risk. California's cannot transfer under any structure, so a share purchase does not carry the credential across, and Virginia's goes void on an entity change with thirty days to return it. In Nevada the bid ceiling is reset off the buyer's own balance sheet, so a thinner-capitalized buyer can acquire a business whose maximum single contract drops below what the seller was bidding.
Terms in This Industry
Fixture classification
Whether a cabinet is a fixture the shop sells or materials the shop consumes.
Composite wood certification
The supplier paperwork proving the panel products in a cabinet meet the formaldehyde limits.
Payment bond notice window
The dated notice a second-tier subcontractor must serve to keep a federal bond claim alive.
Preliminary notice window
The notice served early on a private job to keep a lien or bond claim available later.
Shop versus jobsite standard
Which safety rulebook governs, since a millwork shop and its own installs are not the same.
What the Data Says
32,219 establishments employed 177,042 people in 2023 with $10.52 billion of annual payroll, about five and a half employees per establishment.
Source: US Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023 (NAICS 238350)
$42.7 billion in receipts across 32,189 establishments in 2022, an average of $1.33 million each, with 24.4 percent of receipts subcontracted in from other contractors, 10.2 percent going back out, and 94.1 percent of construction work on privately owned projects.
Source: US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census (NAICS 238350)
Carpenters: 670,090 employed nationally, median annual wage $60,580, mean $65,630, with the 25th percentile at $48,510.
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025 (SOC 47-2031)
Enter earnings to apply this industry's cited band.
A sanity check against asking prices, not a valuation.
Holding a live deal in this industry? Underwrite it with the comps, cited band, and charge-off rate pre-loaded.
Compare bands across industries in the cited multiple bands by industry.
Who Else Is Buying in This Industry
No consolidator is confirmed in this trade from a primary source. Silence means unverified, not uncontested: check the current list before assuming a quiet market.
Buyers is the shelf these come from, ordered by who closed something most recently.
What It Costs to Replace the Owner
The multiples above are quoted on SDE, which adds the owner's pay back into earnings, so they hold only if you do the owner's job. Hire someone instead and the going rate for the role comes back out. For this trade that is usually the lead who runs the trade crews, paid a median of $79,920 a year nationally. Subtract it from SDE before applying any multiple, because at a 3x multiple that wage also takes about $239,760 off what the business is worth to you.
First-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers, BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (2025), national, all industries, before payroll taxes and benefits. Every role, and the same arithmetic worked end to end, is in Manager Wages.
The Numbers That Run This Business
- Subcontracted-in share of revenue
- Shop hours against field hours
- Fixture revenue against materials revenue
- Preliminary notices served on time
- Rework hours as a share of shop hours