[Crystal-clear]

Or just go to the north east and buy a rental property for £30k and enjoy £350 a month rental income , take your £10k+ and buy a van leaflets, uniform web site and start knocking leafleting and advertising it won't take long to build up a couple of hundred customers and will be priced well too.

Gambling £40k on a list of names and numbers is to risky and doesn't compare to buying say something real like a house , a shame cos the round will make alot more but its speculative and I think the outlay would be too great hence to much risk, maybe if the round was all direct debited up that way and only that way I feel it could be worth looking at but then if it was all direct debit the seller wouldn't sell it

[supernova77]

Could be a lot of his customers are every 2 months, that would raise the average price.

It never fails to amaze me that people belittle decent window cleaning businesses.  Other businesses sell for up to 31/2 times the annual turnover.  Why should a window cleaning business be considered so inferior?

In 1998 I sold a window cleaning business that was turning over £1,500 per week for £30,000.  I could have sold it several times over.  The average job price was around £5-£6.

There is no rule that says a window cleaning business is only worth "3 times the monthly take" or whatever.  A good, well established business with a proven track record is worth as much as any other type of business.

Where else could you obtain a ready made career with executive level income from day one for £10,000?

I totally agree with Ian's point about being able to buy a ready made business.

However the average job price is too low for me to be interested...

Ian - Surely your £5 / £6 houses from 1998 would now be £12 - £15 houses?

Andy

[SeanK]

My take on this is:


He has something for sale

He wants £40000 for it

End of.

If your not prepared to pay that for it, then dont buy it.




I want £80,000 for my wife (not that I have a wife) and im not prepared to sell her for any less as shes a good cook.
You can either buy or you cant, and i'm not going to budge on the price cos shes good looking aswell.

Catch my drift?

O.K. £80,000 it is then.
How do you want paid and would you take my wife in part exchange she cant cook can be a bit grumpy
and her hobbies include constant nagging.

[Ian Lancaster]

Spruce:

Question to Ian Lancaster.

How would you see buying this round for your business? I appreciate that prices per clean probably are less than yours due to the North/South divide. But if it was in your area, could you as a Franchisor see a potential in buying the business and you wouldn't be cleaning it yourself?

No, but I'm not the sort of person who would view this as a good opportunity.  I am confident in my ability to generate work and develop it into a viable business.  The type of person who is going to see this as an answer to his prayers will probably have spent his working life in factory or some similar form of employment where all decisions were made for him and no-one held him responsible for creating a market for his efforts.  Suddenly his world is turned upside down, no comfortable 9-5 (or whatever) and a limited cash lump sum after which he has no prospects whatsoever.  Then he sees an advert for a business that he feels he might be able to handle, earning way in excess of anything he's earned previously and better still he can start at the top - no months of insecurity and doubt while he tries to gather a few customers together.  He spends a couple of days out with the vendor, sees how simple (and lucrative) window cleaning is and the pound signs light up in his eyes.  The £40,000 looks like an excellent investment - it's going to take him less than a year to earn it back, why wouldn't he jump at the chance?


Ian - Surely your £5 / £6 houses from 1998 would now be £12 - £15 houses?

Andy

They certainly would Andy, and the turnover would have increased in proportion


Cozy:

Yeah Ross, but there's the problem for some people. Door knocking and leafleting, AND contact with people face to face is not everyone's "thing". Some people couldn't have got into this game without buying work. So buying the gear and getting customers isn't a "no brainer".

And we are living proof of that.  Each new franchisee we take on is first invited to an informal chat (not an "interview") where we are completely open with them about what it is they may be buying into.  One of the questions is: "Plenty of other window cleaners just go out and build their own rounds, why would you want to pay us £8.950 to join our organisation and then pay 20% of your turnover?  The answers vary from "but you guarantee the work" to "I feel safer being part of you, you've been doing it for a long time"  Going back to our chap who's been made redundant from his nice cozy job, he would never have the self belief to start from scratch.  OK, I know there are plenty of you on here who have done just that, but there are plenty more like our hypothetical ex factory man who couldn't.

[SherwoodCleaningSe]

Remember that the 4K/month turnover isn't for extras so the annual turnover should be substantially higher.  However 40k is still a bit pricey if it was in the region of 25k we would all be lining up, maybe he is pricing it like a car and waiting for reasonable offers.  The thing to remember though is that to get through the amount of customers he is talking about he must be a pro, not many can turnover that amount of customer per week although it can be done.  So the round will instantly devalue if you can't keep the pace up.

Simon.

[CleanClear]

Its currently done by two men in just over three weeks, so you'd need to pay a wage too. So you won't recoup your outlay in less than a year.

[KS Cleaning]

Or.......spend £10,000 on a van and equipment, start up own window cleaning company.

£30,000 in the back pocket for a rainy day.

No brainer.

If you have a lump sum of cash surely it would be better buying a ready made round turning over 4 grand a month from day one rather than trying to build your own round with minimal income for a long time. The money invested, lets say 30k,  will be worth a lot more due to growth and price increases in the future. What will the 30k be worth if you put it in your pocket for a rainy day?....yep, that's right 30k

[trippyboy]

The problem with selling  window cleaning round is the price based on turn over.No other business prices are based on turn over.I have my dough's, this fine gentle does all this work on his own. I don`t think so, if this is true the net profit will be greatly reduced and this fact will through the spanner in the works of pricing.
The rule of thumb with business is twice the net profits less the salary for some one to does the owners work.
               This was the formula we used as my years in industrial and commercial business broker in S A . One needs to separate the self employed from the business value side. The reason you need to separate the self employed part is because you might not be able to clean window and unable to keep the customer and if you can clean you will be paying for your own ability to keep the customer happy.Its a very complex situation.

I need time to think about this.

Trippy says it takes 2 men (including himself) 3 weeks to do 650 customers. Over 3 weeks that is 22 houses each per day, ie 44 houses between them.

Now I can't talk for any others, but if I bought this round for the asking price, I would have to employ another person as I couldn't do 22 houses on my own wfp, let alone trad due to my age and health situation. On the days I have pushed and done 15 houses I can't move the following day.

So what you are saying Smithie is that I would value the round a lot less than a younger fitter person due to my ability (or inability) to actually do the work myself. This does make sense, but as you say, it is a very complex situation. If I employed 2 people and didn't touch the round, then what would it be worth? I'll ask Ian how he feels.

However, the younger and fitter the buyer is, then the lower the chance of his having the money the buy the round, so this is the sting in the tail.

If we accept that purchasing this round has a value even although its goodwill, wouldn't that value stay within the business, available to be sold (subject to finding a purchaser) at a similar price or even more in the future? So in a way, isn't it still a form of asset.

If we sold the initial round we bought (- lost customer + new customers) we will recoup the money we spent, perhaps selling it for more than we paid for it as it is worth more.

Question to Ian Lancaster.

How would you see buying this round for your business? I appreciate that prices per clean probably are less than yours due to the North/South divide. But if it was in your area, could you as a Franchisor see a potential in buying the business and you wouldn't be cleaning it yourself?

Not my round mucka, I only noticed it for sale and stuck it on here for a topical discussion

[Richard iSparkle]

£4500 divided by 650 customers = £6.92 average price, and he wants 40k

Could be a lot of his customers are every 2 months, that would raise the average price.

It never fails to amaze me that people belittle decent window cleaning businesses.  Other businesses sell for up to 31/2 times the annual turnover.  Why should a window cleaning business be considered so inferior?

In 1998 I sold a window cleaning business that was turning over £1,500 per week for £30,000.  I could have sold it several times over.  The average job price was around £5-£6.

There is no rule that says a window cleaning business is only worth "3 times the monthly take" or whatever.  A good, well established business with a proven track record is worth as much as any other type of business.

Where else could you obtain a ready made career with executive level income from day one for £10,000?

100% agree 

[8weekly]

If you want to treat it like the purchase of a business then the value is should be derived from profit. 60k a year. Don't count your own labour as a business profit is after labour costs and you may just use staff anyway. Let's say using very cheap adult llabour at £16k each a year, plus van etc. and fuel and all other costs say for example £10k. So profit is around £18k. That should be the starting point in a business purchase.