Business brokers in Fort Myers, FL
Fort Myers is not a market we cover from somewhere else. We are based here in Lee County, and most of the owners we work with we meet face to face. If you are thinking about selling a business in Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Estero, Bonita Springs, or Lehigh Acres, this page explains how we work—and what buyers ask about businesses in this specific market.
Lee County
What a Lee County business usually looks like
The county’s business base is narrower than most sellers expect, and it concentrates in four places.
Healthcare, and everything attached to it
Lee Health is the county’s largest employer with more than 17,000 employees, and in March 2026 it topped out an $824 million hospital campus in Fort Myers—Southwest Florida’s largest-ever healthcare construction project, which the system committed to delivering primarily with Southwest Florida contractors. For sellers the relevant point is second-order: that spend flows into medical office buildout, equipment servicing, staffing, facilities maintenance, and specialty trades.
Construction and the trades
Lee County led the state in new residential construction permits through the early 2020s, and the Cape Coral–Fort Myers metro remains one of the busiest construction markets in Florida—over-the-counter trade permits clear in hours, new commercial review in 10 to 15 business days. That throughput is why the county supports so many mid-sized trade contractors.
Marine
Cape Coral has more navigable waterways than any city on earth, which produces an unusual density of boat sales and service, dock and seawall contractors, engine repair, and waterfront property services—a category most Florida markets do not have at this concentration.
Premium residential services in the south county
Bonita Springs and Estero skew toward retirees and high-income households relocating from northern states, supporting higher-margin home services, landscaping, pool, and property management businesses.
Local transaction data
What businesses in Lee County have actually been selling for
We looked at over 500 closed business sales in Lee County recorded over the past decade. Three things in that data are worth knowing before you form a view of what your business is worth.
Size moves the multiple more than anything else
Sorted by annual revenue, the median sale price as a multiple of owner earnings (SDE) ran:
| Annual revenue | Median multiple |
|---|---|
| Under $500,000 | 1.66× SDE |
| $500,000 – $1M | 1.90× SDE |
| $1M – $2M | 2.23× SDE |
| $2M – $5M | 2.27× SDE |
| Above $5M | 2.62× SDE |
That gradient is why a single “average multiple” for Lee County is close to useless. Nearly half of all recorded sales were businesses under $500,000 in revenue, so the headline county-wide median sits at about 1.84×—well below what an established business actually achieves. Among sales at $2M of revenue and above, the median business sold for roughly $1.33 million on owner earnings of about $550,000, or about 2.5×.
Southwest Florida leads the state at owner-operator scale
Across the region, businesses earning $300,000 to $500,000 recorded a median of 2.42×—the strongest figure of any Florida region in that band, and the size range we most often represent. Lee County itself recorded 2.27× among businesses above $300,000 of owner earnings, across over 100 recorded sales.
Category matters nearly as much as size
Within the same county and the same period:
- Route-based businesses—recurring, contracted revenue—2.86×, the strongest in the county
- Marine businesses 2.67×, median sale price $570,000
- Pool and spa 2.05×
- Landscaping and grounds 1.93×
- Construction and the trades 1.83×, median sale price $550,000—the largest single category by a wide margin, led by HVAC, roofing, and plumbing contractors
- Restaurants 1.62×
The pattern behind those numbers is consistent, and it is the thing worth acting on: businesses with contracted, repeating revenue sell for materially more than businesses that start every month at zero.
Pricing here has been stable
Sales over the past five years show no meaningful difference in multiple from the decade as a whole. What has changed is size—the businesses changing hands are larger than they were, with median revenue among recorded sales rising from roughly $537,000 across the full period to about $671,000 in the recent half. Buyers are not paying more per dollar of earnings. They are buying bigger companies.
The local valuation problem
The storm years are the hardest part of valuing a business here
This comes up in nearly every Lee County engagement, and it is the one most owners have not thought through.
Hurricane Ian made landfall on 28 September 2022 as a Category 4 storm, driving record storm surge of up to 18 feet into Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel, and Pine Island, and pushing catastrophic flooding inland through Fort Myers, Cape Coral, and Lehigh Acres. Helene followed in September 2024, and Milton in October 2024 added wind damage on top of partially completed Ian repairs—Cape Coral saw gusts above 80 mph that finished off roofs which had been patched but never replaced.
For a contractor, restoration company, roofer, or supplier, that sequence produced revenue years that do not repeat. A roofing business that ran at one level before 2022 and two or three times that during the rebuild is not a business with that growth rate. It is a business with a normal baseline and a storm spike on top.
Buyers know this. Every sophisticated acquirer looking at a Southwest Florida trades business will attempt to normalise 2022 through 2025 revenue and pay on the sustainable base—and their first offer usually normalises it further than the facts justify. The work on our side is showing precisely which revenue was catastrophe-driven and which was underlying demand growth from population and permitting, so the discount applied is the correct one rather than a blanket haircut.
Two related points affect Lee County valuations specifically. Insurance costs distorted the expense line—property and liability premiums moved sharply after Ian, and a normalised earnings figure has to account for where premiums have actually landed, not where they sat in 2021. And labour costs spiked during the rebuild and have not fully reverted; buyers model forward wage costs, not trailing ones.
If you own a trades business in Lee County and plan to sell in the next two years, the single most valuable thing you can do is start segmenting storm work from base work in your accounting now. It is very difficult to reconstruct that split retroactively, and its absence costs real money at the negotiating table.
Buyer landscape
Who is buying in Lee County
Private equity platforms
Concentrated in home services—HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, pest control. Population growth makes Lee County a density target: a platform that already owns a Tampa or Naples operation wants Fort Myers and Cape Coral to complete the corridor. These buyers pay the strongest multiples, but they buy management depth, not owner-operated businesses.
Regional strategic buyers
Established Florida operators expanding their footprint. Common in construction supply, distribution, commercial services, and marine.
Relocating operators
Southwest Florida attracts buyers moving here who want to own the business they run. They usually finance through SBA, which caps practical deal size and shapes structure, but they will often pay well for a clean, turnkey business with a real management layer.
What we sell here
Businesses we most often sell in Fort Myers
Ordered by what actually transacts in this market.
- Trades and home services—HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, and pest control, the deepest category in Lee County
- Marine businesses—service, repair, dockage, and waterfront trades
- Property management—supported by seasonal and second-home ownership across the county
- Landscaping and grounds maintenance—commercial and HOA contracts across Estero, Bonita, and Gateway
- Medical practices and healthcare services
- Distribution and construction supply
How we work
Working with us here
We are based in Fort Myers, and for Lee County engagements that means we come to you. We walk the operation, meet on your schedule, and take buyer meetings in person—at your premises, or somewhere neutral when discretion matters, which for most owners it does.
On a home market we can also be more useful on the informal side: what a specific buyer group has actually paid locally, which lenders are genuinely closing Southwest Florida deals, and who is really in the market rather than browsing.
Confidentiality
Fort Myers is a market where employees, competitors, and customers overlap socially. That is the reason most owners call rather than list themselves.
- Every buyer is screened before contact
- A non-disclosure agreement is signed before they learn your name
- Your staff, customers, and competitors hear nothing until you decide
FAQ
Selling a business in Fort Myers: common questions
Will buyers discount my revenue from the rebuild years?
Almost certainly, and you should expect it. The question is by how much. A buyer’s opening position usually treats every above-baseline dollar from 2022 to 2025 as non-recurring. The work is demonstrating which portion was catastrophe work and which was underlying growth from population and permit volume, supported by job-level records rather than assertion.
How long does it take to sell a business in Lee County?
Six to ten months from engagement to closing is realistic for a well-prepared lower middle market business, with roughly the first two months spent on preparation and materials before any buyer sees anything.
My revenue is seasonal because of snowbirds. Does that hurt the valuation?
Not by itself. Southwest Florida buyers expect seasonality and underwrite it. What hurts is seasonality you cannot document cleanly, or a business where the off-season is loss-making rather than merely slower. Consistent seasonal patterns across several years are far easier to finance than volatile ones.
Do I have to tell my employees?
Not until you choose to. The process is built to stay confidential through to a signed agreement. Most owners tell a small number of key people late in diligence, and we help plan that conversation.
What about my Florida contractor licence?
It is one of the first things a buyer’s counsel examines. If the qualifying licence is held personally by you, the business cannot legally operate the day after closing without a plan. This is solvable, but it needs solving before going to market, not during diligence.
Start here
Ready to sell your Fort Myers business?
Start with a confidential conversation and an honest read on your value, your likely buyers, and your timeline.