TOPIC: Buying a home inspection business, help.

I have the opportunity to buy a 1 man home inspection business that has been in business for a little over 10 years.  Can anyone share their experience or opinion on the value of such a business.  Since the business is a 1 man operation I fear that his clients may not have any loyalty to me when I take over or even like the way I inspect.  The name of the inspection company is also his name "First name Last Name Home inspections".

Because the business is "his name home inspections" I feel that it is even worth less because I am (obviously) not him.

Your thoughts please?

Regards

Offer to buy his phone number and website the rest is a waste.

Luke, taking over a 1 man shop isn't easy as it seems you already know. The guys that are able to sell their business are going to be multi inspector firms. I agree with John, assuming that his website is ranked well.

Luke, one idea that might make this work would be if the selling inspector was willing to team inspect with you for 6 months or so. That way his agent base at least has a chance to meet the two of you together.ds

All you are buying is someone else's reputation, initial contacts and maybe a website.  If the owner is not willing to physically introduce and recommend you to ALL his contacts, there is no value.  There are certain things that would need to be known before you should even consider buying an unknown entity.

1.  Who will have the liability for inspections performed prior to the purchase?
2.  Who will do the transfer of all documentation, business licenses, tax accounts, and properties?
3.  Monthly inspection records to include all inspection information, monetary income and outflow.
4.  What else is included?  Vehicles?  Tools?  Training materials?  Advertising media?

Remember you are selling a service, not goods.  There is no inventory.  There is only you.

I went to initial training with a nice guy that bought an existing business.  The seller gave him everything listed above and stayed for 6 months.  After the next 6 months, once the original owner left, so did many of the agents who had secondary inspectors they switched to.  5 years later he closed shop still making payments to the original business owner.

Check the Small Business Administration for more information on buying an existing business. 

All good reply's, thanks everyone!  This was along the lines of what I was thinking as well.  In discussion on how we could make this work one thing that was talked about was me doing insoections with him in order to meet his clients and have them warm up to me.  Still once he is gone so might his clients, risky deal I guess.  I agree with most that the value is in the phone number and website (website is number one when searching HI in our area) but with it being "his name HI .com" hmmm not sure how to manage that.

My idea is to start my business entity, name, logo, etc.  Learn his style of inspecting and get to know his clients. I'm not trying to steal the business from him as I respect him and think there is some value in him mentoring me though the process as well as getting to know some of his clients.

I guess a better question is how to put a price on that and maybe a way to pay him for referrals.....