Agency valuation Apply

Publications

What your agency is worth, and how to raise it.

Practical articles for real estate media agency owners on pricing, hiring, recurring revenue and selling. Each one opens on a real agency and a real number, and ends with what to do about it. Two new pieces a month.

A drone hovering over a small house on a pedestal

Strategy6 min read

Keep the Brand, Hand Off the Back Office

What an operating partner runs, what you keep, and what it costs

One owner with three photographers went from an $84,000 month to a fifty-something-thousand month and asked me in September why he could not let go. The Growth Partner answer is a back office that runs twelve functions under your brand for 35% of collected revenue, with the shoots and 100% of the company staying with you.

What the model is
What you keep
What it costs
How it differs from hiring
+ 2 more sections

growth-partner
strategy
operations

A staircase of lit glass steps rising on navy

Strategy6 min read

The Price Rise You Hear About a Year Later

Most of the clients you lose to an increase never tell you they left

One owner raised prices, sold the agency, and learned from the new owners that eleven clients had quietly left over it. Another raised on January first and most of the list never noticed. The difference was a $25 listing website nobody had asked for.

Why nobody tells you
Never raise without adding
Why the increase happened at all
Before the next increase

strategy
acre-partner
pricing

A ring of golden light on navy

Strategy6 min read

Three Ways Out of the Middle

Sell now, keep going alone, or bring in an operating partner

One owner with a $35,000 to $50,000 a month book asked me in August why we didn't just buy it and write him a check. Under $300,000 in revenue that check is 45 to 60 cents on the dollar, and the last one the advisor in our group sold went at 40. The other two doors keep 100% of the company, and the difference between them is who carries the back office through a slow quarter.

Door one: sell now
Door two: keep going alone
Door three: bring in an operating partner
The four lines side by side
+ 1 more section

growth-partner
exit
selling

A cut-paper mountain of blue and gold layers with a camera at the peak

Strategy6 min read

What Running Your Own Back Office Costs

The worksheet to fill in before you compare anything to 35%

One owner did the math on a call in September without being asked: his admin, his editing and his three full-time editors already cost about $14,300 a month, and 35% of his $45,000 residential month is $15,750. His number will not decide it for you. Yours will, and most owners have never written it down.

The worksheet
The comparison
Where 35% is more, and where it is less

growth-partner
finance
operations

A blueprint elevation of a house with measurement callouts

Article9 min read

How We Value a Real Estate Media Agency

The actual math, in the open, because every buyer you will meet keeps theirs in a drawer

A million-dollar agency can hear three honest numbers in one week: 0.4x revenue from the shop across town, 1.7x on owner earnings from our model, 2.83x on EBITDA from a consolidator. All three can describe roughly the same wire transfer. Here is the math we use and where every number in it comes from.

Three quotes, one agency
The lens changes with your size
Start with the right earnings number
What moves you inside the band
+ 3 more sections

valuation
selling
sde

Rows of blue houses funnelling toward a single gold one

Article11 min read

The Squeeze on the Middle

The floor came up, the ceiling came down, and you are standing in between

One owner in the group now pays 43 cents an image for daytime editing, down from 85 cents with human editors. A shop with a laptop can buy the same subscription. Meanwhile a platform held us to $10,000 a month for seven months on a contract that auto-renewed, at a point when we were already hurting. Nothing in your business broke. The position it sits in did.

The floor came up
The ceiling came down
And the middle pays rent
Working harder in the middle is not a strategy
+ 2 more sections

trends
ai
growth

A blueprint diagram of arrows cycling around a house

Strategy10 min read

Paid Ads That Pay for Themselves

The Boosted Social Funnel, and the five steps that come before it

One video ad in the Seattle market produced 150 warm leads and $5,740 in fourteen days against a first $500 of spend. It was a boosted post that took about sixty seconds to set up, and it was step six of six. The five steps in front of it are what decide whether the money comes back.

Only three percent of your market is ready to buy today
The five steps before you spend a dollar
The ad itself takes about sixty seconds
Where the money gets burned
+ 1 more section

strategy
acre-partner
marketing

A grid of white marble houses with a single gold one at the head

Article10 min read

The Consolidation Wave Is Already Here

The call you got in January was not random

There is a buyer working through our industry right now paying about 2.83x earnings, and he runs twelve cold callers at four dollars an hour to find owners having a bad quarter. The agencies selling to him are not run by worse operators than you. They just took the call in the wrong month.

The consolidators are not waiting for the market to settle
What the buyers have that you don't
Why 2.83× is a perfectly rational price
The offer is priced on your situation, not your business
+ 2 more sections

trends
consolidation
selling

A camera and a stack of prints on a desk under lamplight

Strategy8 min read

A Profile That Sells While You Shoot

Treat your Instagram as a landing page, not a portfolio

One month of a single assistant sending messages off an optimized profile produced 570 messages, 121 responses, 45 warm leads, and four booked listings. Nine times out of ten an agent checks your profile before replying, which is how a feed of nice houses quietly costs you the outreach too.

Your profile is a landing page
Sell the process, not the result
Give the link a reason to be clicked
Where operators get this wrong
+ 1 more section

strategy
acre-partner
marketing

Two floor plans joined into one on a blueprint

Article10 min read

Buying the Agency Across Town Without a Big Check

The math that lets consolidators buy your market works just as well in the other direction.

One owner in this group is buying the shop across town right now for $30,000 up front and $20,000 over twelve months, paid as a share of revenue from the clients that come with it. One advisor in our orbit came in on the exit of a nine-year private equity roll-up, and the whole effort returned about 9% a year. Buying the agency across town is still the cheapest growth you will find. Just do not confuse it with getting rich quickly.

The tired owner across town is an asset, not just a rival
Structures that work when you don't have the cash
What you're actually buying, and what you're not
Integration is where deals die
+ 1 more section

buying
growth
deal-structure

A blueprint dial with a gold segment

Strategy10 min read

Financial Management for Growth

Most agency decisions get made on a feeling, and the feeling is usually out of date

Two shoots grossed $2,300. After video editing, photo editing, a floor plan, listing sites and card fees, $1,758 was left, and the owner had touched the work for 11 hours. That is $160 an hour, which is the number to argue with. Ask an owner why they have not hired yet and you get: I do not think I have enough. Enough for what?

Turn every feeling into a number
Start with your baseline, not your revenue
Budget by percentage, then hire against the calendar
Move the cash forward
+ 1 more section

strategy
acre-partner
finance

A small gold block resting on stacked blue tiers

Article10 min read

The Price Is Not the Payout

The headline number and the wire transfer are two different numbers

A $6 million offer can wire you $4.2 million on closing day, or it can wire you $2.4 million. Same business, same handshake, and $1.8 million of difference sitting in terms most sellers only read carefully after they have already accepted the price.

The multiple gets all the attention, and it should get some
The number you hear is not the number you get
Two numbers, not one
How earn-outs actually work
+ 2 more sections

selling
deal-structure
exit

A photographer on a tripod outside a lit home at twilight

Strategy10 min read

Training Shooters in Sixty Days

How to build a bench that holds your standard when you are not on the shoot

By person eighteen, somebody forgets their Zillow camera at home. At one agency that got past this, a single creative lead trained eight specialists himself and the video lead trained ten to twenty editors over five years. Almost nobody there was trained by the founder.

Hire for what you can train
Teach one workflow, hands on, and let it copy itself
Put quality in a loop instead of in your inbox
Pay for the standard you are asking for
+ 1 more section

strategy
acre-partner
team

A glass block lit from within, on a dark surface

Article10 min read

Clean Books Are Quiet Leverage

The most valuable work you will ever do on your agency is invisible until the day someone makes you an offer.

Due diligence runs $15,000 to $25,000 per brand and it is billed by the hour, so every month where the bank activity and the reported revenue do not line up is somebody's billable time. You pay for messy books twice. Once in the fees, and again in the discount a buyer puts on whatever nobody could verify.

Buyers price what they can verify
The add-backs you can't document aren't add-backs
What diligence actually looks at
Clean books change the close, not just the price
+ 1 more section

selling
finance
exit

A marble town carved on top of a single column

Strategy10 min read

A Team Foundation Before Headcount

The work that decides whether a hire succeeds happens before the job is posted

One creative missed a Matterport scan and went back to reshoot without telling anyone, so the agent walked in on a photographer at her listing she had not scheduled. That client was worth $35,000 to $50,000 a year and has been referring business elsewhere since. Nearly everything that decides whether a hire works happens before the job is posted.

Start with the hire you actually need
Put a number on the role before you post it
Hire on the calendar, not in the panic
Where operators get this wrong
+ 1 more section

strategy
acre-partner
team

A cut-paper figure holding an agency's camera, drone, and house on strings

Article10 min read

The Founder-Dependence Discount

If the business needs you daily, a buyer is not purchasing a company

Somewhere in the process a buyer will ask what happens here if you are unavailable for ninety days. On $600,000 of earnings, the honest answer is worth $1.2 million, because the same agency prices at 3x or at 5x depending on how much of it runs without you in the room.

The dependence hides in three places
Why it shows up as a discount, not a discussion
Leadership is the constraint, not the tooling
What actually removes the discount
+ 1 more section

growth
valuation
operations

A cut-paper burst of blue and gold around a white house

Strategy9 min read

Selling Content Retainers

How to turn a client who books you per listing into one who pays you every month

One former owner sold content retainers to agents at $2,000 to $2,500 a month, did good work, and watched every client cancel at 90 days, no matter what. They kept booking their listings. What died was a bundle of shoots, which invites the client to do arithmetic on the units. Sell the second Tuesday and a number the agent can read each month, and it has a chance.

Sell to the agents who cannot keep up with themselves
Package a month, not a shoot
Price it so a slow month still pays
Where this goes wrong
+ 1 more section

strategy
acre-partner
recurring-revenue

A small house at the centre of a ring of gold

Article9 min read

Recurring Revenue Changes the Math

The same fix that solves January solves your multiple

An agency doing $3M at a 20% margin earns about $600K, and that same $600K sells for anywhere between $1.8M and $3M. Same clients, same crew, $1.2M of difference, decided mostly by whether the revenue arrives on a contract or has to be resold from scratch every thirty days.

Project revenue is a treadmill you rebuild every month
Growth on project revenue can make you poorer
The predictability premium is a real number
What building it actually looks like
+ 1 more section

growth
recurring-revenue
valuation

Two people exchanging a small box across a desk

Strategy10 min read

Winning Brokerage Partnerships

You do not win these at the top, and you never win one once

One Coldwell Banker relationship ran over a hundred listings a month at seven to eight hundred dollars a booking. It took six to nine months to build, and the people who kept it alive were the office managers and marketing coordinators, not the broker who said yes.

These deals are won from the bottom
Ask what the brokerage is short of
Where these deals fall apart
What a real one looks like a year in

strategy
acre-partner
sales

A staircase of blue and gold steps leading up to a house

Article9 min read

The First Offer Is Not a Valuation

What a buyer is actually pricing when the call comes out of nowhere

A buyer offered me one million dollars for Aerial Canvas the year we did $4.3 million in revenue. Two years earlier, at $7 million, the offer had been $6.7 million. Same company, same founder. An unprepared seller lands near fifty cents on the dollar, and the work that closes the gap happens years before the call ever comes.

An offer prices your situation, not your business
The buyer had a number before they had your name
Why the first number tends to land near half
What actually creates leverage
+ 1 more section

selling
negotiation
exit

A white paper house set into torn strips of blue and gold

Strategy10 min read

Consult, Don't Quote

The fastest revenue in your business is sitting in bookings you never call about

A $250 drone job came in on an island listing with no structure on it. The consultation ran fifteen or twenty minutes, the project came out over $1,500, and it kept growing after that. The crew was driving there either way.

The call has a shape
Where operators get it wrong
What changes when it works

strategy
acre-partner
sales

Gold steps rising to a small white house

Article9 min read

What Moves the Multiple

Same earnings, different price. The gap gets built years before anyone names a number.

Two agencies both cleared $600,000 in adjusted EBITDA last year. One sold for $1.8 million. The other sold for $3 million. That $1.2 million gap was decided two or three years before either owner ever took a buyer's call.

What a multiple actually measures
Lever one: can anyone predict next year
Lever two: does the business need you specifically
Lever three: what kind of company do you appear to be
+ 2 more sections

valuation
multiples
growth

A tiered marble cake topped with a brass camera

Strategy10 min read

Pricing for Average Order Value

The revenue you already booked is the cheapest revenue you will ever add

One agency in the group raised prices almost 35% in July, told the list across three emails written as questions and answers, and two people out of thousands asked about it. The crew was already driving to the property, so most of that increase landed as profit.

Small price moves are almost all profit
Price the job, not the deliverable count
Package it, then present from the top
Roll the increase like a launch, not a decision
+ 1 more section

strategy
acre-partner
pricing

A marble model house on a stepped plinth

Article11 min read

What Your Agency Is Actually Worth

The number that decides your exit is not on your P&L

Run $75,000 of personal and one-time costs through a P&L built for tax season and you have not lost $75,000 of value. At a 4x multiple you have lost $300,000, and the buyer who spots it before you do has no reason to raise a hand.

Nobody is buying your revenue
The bottom line of your P&L is the wrong earnings number too
The four add-backs
What that number is worth
+ 2 more sections

valuation
exit
finance

A blue card with a gold band on navy

Strategy9 min read

The Irresistible Offer

Stop selling services and start selling the decision

Top producers pay an extra $200 a shoot because the agency carries a $7 million insurance policy and a team that picks up the phone. That is what an offer is. The photos are the same.

Value is an equation, not a price list
Bundle the job, not the services
Stack outcomes and make the next step obvious
Where operators get this wrong
+ 1 more section

strategy
acre-partner
offer

A house shape made of many smaller cut-paper houses

White paper33 min read

The $27M Question

What Happens When the Best Agencies Stop Building Alone

A buyer offered one founder a million dollars for an agency doing $4.3 million a year. There was no number on the other side of the table to argue with. This paper is about where that offer comes from, and why private equity will not take the meeting under $3 million in combined earnings.

Part I: We Know What You're Dealing With
Part II: What's Already Happening Around You
Part III: What Vendors and Partners Keep Telling Us
Part IV: The Real Goal Is a World-Class Company
+ 4 more sections

white-paper
thesis
valuation

Newsletter

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What agency owners in the group are seeing on pricing, offers, platforms and AI, with the numbers attached. Unsubscribe whenever. No pitching.

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