What Chicagoland businesses actually sell for.

Owners ask us this more than anything else. The honest answer is a range, not a point, because the published data describes many businesses and yours is one. Here is that data as of September 2026, with its sources, and how we use it.

SDE or EBITDA, and where the line falls

Businesses of the size we serve are priced on a multiple of earnings, but "earnings" means two different things depending on size. For an owner-operated company, buyers use Seller's Discretionary Earnings, or SDE: operating profit plus the owner's salary and benefits, plus one-time and personal expenses run through the business, expressed as if one working owner ran the place. Once the business is big enough to need a paid management team, the convention shifts to EBITDA, which assumes market-rate managers are already in the cost base.

The crossover is not a rule, but the surveys draw it in a consistent place. The IBBA and M&A Source Market Pulse survey prices deals under $2 million in transaction value on SDE and deals from $2 million up on EBITDA (Q1 2026). BVR's DealStats shows the same shift in the data itself, with SDE comparables thinning out and EBITDA taking over as deal size passes roughly $5 million (DealStats Value Index, Q1 2025). If your discretionary earnings, your own compensation included, run under about $500,000 to $1 million, expect to be priced on SDE.

The earnings number has to be rebuilt before any multiple is applied: owner pay to market, family payroll adjusted, related-party rent at fair value, one-time legal or insurance items removed, personal vehicles and travel taken out. A multiple applied to an un-normalized number produces a price nobody can defend to a lender or a buyer's accountant, and the add-back schedule is the piece of paper that carries the whole valuation. Undocumented add-backs are the fourth thing a buyer's accountant finds.

Multiples by industry

The SDE ranges below are lower-quartile to upper-quartile figures from BizBuySell's industry benchmark pages, built from businesses actually sold on its marketplace between 2021 and 2025, or from its cross-industry valuation report (trailing data, Q3 2021 to Q2 2026) where no separate benchmark page exists. EBITDA figures are given where a named source publishes them. Where the public data runs out, the row says so.

Two things stand out. Manufacturing and distribution businesses in the SDE band commonly trade at 2.7x to 3.1x, the medians in the first three rows. And across every trade-services row, the single most consistent premium driver is recurring or contracted revenue, with the single most consistent discount being dependence on the owner.

Size moves the multiple more than industry does

The surveys agree on direction: multiples rise with deal size. Market Pulse (Q1 and Q2 2026) reports 2.0x SDE for deals under $500,000, 2.8x for $500,000 to $1 million, 3.0x for $1 million to $2 million, then 4.0x EBITDA for $2 million to $5 million and 4.5x EBITDA for $5 million to $50 million in Q1, rising to 5.8x in Q2, the highest since early 2022. DealStats, on a price-to-EBITDA basis at 2024 year-end, shows 3.0x under $1 million, 3.7x for $1 million to $5 million, 4.5x for $5 million to $10 million, and 7.0x above $10 million (BVR, Q1 2025).

The practical version: a business that grows from $400,000 of SDE into a company with $2.5 million of EBITDA can reasonably expect its multiple to roughly double across that range, independent of industry. Size alone is one of the largest value drivers in this market, which is one reason the right answer for some owners is to wait two years and grow.

Why the range is wide

A machine shop at 2.3x and a machine shop at 4.2x are in the same table because the surveys measure what sold, not why. The why is the five things every buyer examines, and each one maps to a discount or a premium the surveys themselves describe.

• Financial credibility. Cash-basis or thin books that can't be reconciled to tax returns and bank deposits without reconstruction are a discount. Financials clean enough to survive a quality-of-earnings review without significant rework are a premium.
• Owner dependence. No manager or salesperson besides the owner who can run operations or hold the customers is the most commonly cited discount in every trade-services category. A general manager or lead technician who could run the business through a transition is a premium.
• Customer durability. One customer, or a small handful, above roughly 20 to 25 percent of revenue is the threshold most buyers and SBA lenders flag in underwriting. Maintenance agreements, service contracts and subscription-like billing are the most consistently cited premium driver.
• Team and process. Written procedures, a CRM with customer history, and controls that don't depend on the owner support the upper end of every range.
• The deal file. Deferred maintenance on vehicles, equipment or facilities is a discount, because the buyer funds it out of the price. A complete file, assembled before diligence asks, shortens diligence and removes the reasons to retrade.

A worked example: a $3 million machine shop

The shop is hypothetical, and the assumptions are stated so you can swap in your own. Say it does $3.0 million in revenue in DuPage County with $450,000 of normalized SDE after a documented add-back review, and one working owner. The BizBuySell machining benchmark gives a raw range of 2.3x to 4.2x, which is $1.04 million to $1.89 million, with the median at 3.1x, or roughly $1.4 million. Cross-checked against Market Pulse, a deal of that size sits in the $1 million to $2 million band at 3.0x SDE, or $1.35 million. The two sources agree, which is the first thing we look for.

Now the two versions of the same shop. In the first, the owner quotes every job and holds the relationship with an OEM that is 30 percent of revenue, and the books are on a cash basis. Each of those is a discount the surveys describe, and layered together they push the working range toward and through the lower quartile, to roughly 2.0x to 2.4x. That is $900,000 to $1.08 million, and the buyer will likely want part of it in an earn-out tied to the OEM.

In the second version, eighteen months later, a shop manager and an estimator are in front of the accounts, the OEM is under 20 percent because the rest of the book grew, the books are on accrual with a monthly close, and the add-back schedule is documented. Nothing about the shop's SDE has changed. The applicable range is now the median and above, 3.1x to 3.6x, or about $1.4 million to $1.62 million, and the benchmark's own note that shops over $2 million in revenue trade near 4x says the top of that range is reachable with quality certifications and a diversified book.

The difference between the two versions is roughly $500,000 on the same earnings. That is arithmetic on published ranges, not a prediction for any particular business, but it is the arithmetic a buyer's accountant will do.

The honest caveats

Small samples. The HVAC benchmark is built on 562 sold businesses, which is a good sample. Not every category is that deep, and a quartile range from a thin sample can move a lot year to year. Treat the medians as anchors, not as prices.

Reporting bias. BizBuySell's data comes from businesses sold on its marketplace, which skews toward smaller main-street deals. Figures from private-equity networks, such as the veterinary EBITDA multiples above, skew the other way, toward platform-scale practices with several doctors. GF Data's universe starts at $10 million of enterprise value, so we use it only as a ceiling, not as a comparable.

Chicagoland specifics. No Chicago- or Illinois-specific multiple study exists from any of these publishers as of this writing. BizBuySell publishes local listing counts, not local price statistics. Our judgment, labeled as judgment: Chicago's higher wage and commercial-rent base can compress SDE margins relative to national peers without changing the applicable multiple. That is a margin effect, not a multiple effect.

Financing sets a ceiling. Under roughly $5 million in price, most buyers borrow through an SBA 7(a) loan, which typically requires about 10 percent buyer equity and underwrites the purchase against the business's ability to service the debt. A price the normalized SDE cannot support at the lender's coverage ratio will not close at that price, whatever the comp table says. It is also why Market Pulse (Q1 2026) shows sellers receiving 76 to 89 percent cash at close depending on deal size, with seller financing covering 5 to 16 percent.

How to get your own range

If you want the short version of this article, with the size bands and a second worked example, read how much is my business worth. The free confidential value range applies these sources to your revenue and industry and comes back within two business days with the two or three items a buyer's accountant would raise first. It is a starting point, not an appraisal. The two-week Exit-Readiness Review, $4,500 flat, is where we read the real numbers, rebuild SDE from the add-backs up, score the business on the five lenses, and defend a range you could put in front of a buyer. If we would want to buy the business ourselves, you'll hear that in writing at the same time, and you stay free to take it to market instead.