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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 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
Read
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
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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
Read
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
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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
Read
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
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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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