A correction, and why it is worth reading
An earlier version of this article argued that the published record for these trades rested on a single publisher, and that one source is not evidence. That was accurate when written and it is no longer true. Transaction data covering businesses reported sold between 2021 and 2025 has since been added to the record, and these trades now have three independent sources rather than one.
We are noting the correction rather than quietly replacing the page, because the standard we apply to publishers applies to us. What changed is not our opinion. Better evidence arrived.
And the better evidence tells a more useful story than the absence did.
The three sources, and how they group
CT Acquisitions, verified 5 June 2026, publishes 2.5x to 4.5x owner earnings for plumbing and 2.5x to 4x for electrical, scoped to owners with $200,000 to $2,000,000 of owner earnings.
BizBuySell transaction data covering 2021 through 2025 reports that the middle half of recorded plumbing sales fell between 1.66x and 3.15x owner earnings, and the middle half of electrical and mechanical contractor sales between 1.96x and 3.15x.
Peak Business Valuation reports transaction averages of 1.68x to 2.97x owner earnings, with no size band and no date stated.
Read together they do not scatter randomly. They fall into two groups. The two sources built from completed transactions sit close to each other. The advisory band sits above both.
The gap runs one way
This is the finding worth carrying away. The advisory figure starts at 2.5x, above the midpoint of both transaction based ranges. Its top reaches 4.5x, well beyond where either transaction source ends.
That is not a small discrepancy and it is not symmetric. A seller reading the advisory band forms an expectation above what recorded sales in the same trades actually produced.
We have seen this shape before. In insurance agencies, one publisher states plainly that its figures come from active listings rather than closed deals and should be read as a ceiling. Listings priced too high do not sell, so they stay in the sample while realistic ones close and leave it. Whatever the mechanism here, the direction is the same.
What that does not prove
Two cautions, because the neat story is not the whole one.
The transaction ranges describe the middle half of recorded sales. A quarter of sales fell below the bottom figure and a quarter above the top. The upper quarter is not visible in the band, and some of those sales may well have reached the advisory range. A middle range is not a ceiling.
The sources are also not describing identical populations. The advisory band is scoped to owners with $200,000 to $2,000,000 of owner earnings. The transaction data carries no size band at all, so it includes smaller businesses a broker advisory page may not be addressing. Part of the gap may be size rather than optimism.
What survives both cautions is that the sources disagree materially, and that an owner relying on the highest available number is relying on the one least connected to completed transactions.
Why we report the disagreement rather than resolving it
Our estimator marks these trades as carrying conflicting evidence. It leads with what plumbing and electrical businesses actually sold for, sets the advisory band against it as an asking versus sold contrast, and shows all three sources beneath with their scopes and, where they exist, their dates.
Averaging them would blend a scoped advisory opinion with an unscoped record of completed sales and produce a figure none of the three reported. Choosing the transaction data because it feels more authoritative would also be a decision we have no basis to make for the reader, since the population question is genuinely unresolved.
So the disagreement is the finding, and its direction is stated plainly.
The question that still matters more than the multiple
For these trades there is usually one issue that moves a transaction more than any published range.
Many plumbing and electrical businesses operate under one individual's master licence. If that person is the owner, a buyer needs to know what happens to the licence on a change of control, what the state requires, and whether the business can legally operate the day after closing.
That is not a valuation question. It is a structural one, answered by records and state rules rather than by assurance, and owners who have not addressed it before going to market tend to find it becomes the whole conversation.
What a buyer examines
Beyond the licence, diligence concentrates on completed work never closed out and on the durability of the service base.
- The master licence holder, and what state rules say happens on a change of control
- Open permits and completed work never inspected or signed off
- Recurring service agreements separated from project work
- Warranty obligations remaining on completed installations
- Subcontractor agreements and whether insurance certificates are current
- Bonding capacity, surety relationships, and what they rely on
- General contractor and builder concentration, and whether those relationships are contractual
What to do about it
Benchmark against the transaction based figures rather than the advisory band, and know that even those describe a middle range rather than a ceiling. Then stop benchmarking, because the remaining leverage is in what you can prove.
Resolve the licence question in writing so it is a documented answer rather than a discovery. Close out the permit and inspection record, because completed work never signed off is a liability that surfaces in diligence and is far cheaper to find yourself.
Verelume reads contracts, financials, and operating records and reports what the record supports, where documents conflict, and where a claim has no documentation behind it. Where the published sources disagree by this much and in this direction, what your own record establishes is the part of the argument you control.