Thinking about selling
your preschool?

Scale moves it more than anything else, and the earnings basis matters as much as the multiple. Across 425 day care and child care centers actually sold between 2021 and 2025, half went between 1.94x and 4.03x seller’s discretionary earnings, averaging 3.27x, at a median sale price of $395,000. Preschools specifically averaged 3.12x SDE at a median $435,000. Professionally managed schools get quoted differently, on EBITDA, where sector specialists publish worked examples at 6x and 7x. Those are not competing numbers, they are different denominators: SDE includes your own compensation and EBITDA does not, so a 3x on SDE and a 6x on EBITDA can describe the same school. We do not quote the per-center-count ladders you will find on brokerage sites, because the two we checked disagree by 100% at the entry tier and neither shows a dataset. Our childcare and daycare valuation guide sets out the figures, and our valuation tool gives you a starting range in about two minutes.

Usually not in the same transaction, and not to the same buyer without pricing each piece separately. Most acquirers of preschools buy the operating business and lease the buildings, which means the rent you set in that lease directly changes the EBITDA the multiple is applied to. Above-market rent lowers the operating company’s value. Below-market rent raises it but reduces what the real estate is worth to an investor. Owners who separate the business, the buildings, and the lease terms deliberately tend to get paid properly for each. Owners who let a buyer bundle them usually get paid once.

Maybe not, if the offer is genuinely strong, and we will tell you honestly if it is. But an unsolicited approach from a national acquirer is a number built to work for them, arriving before you had any chance to create competition. The Congressional Research Service found that of the 16 largest for-profit providers, 13 have known current or past private equity investment. That is a small, knowable buyer universe, and they know it too. Before you sign anything, it is worth knowing where you would land with more than one of them at the table. Here is how strategic and private equity buyers differ.

A well-run process generally takes six to nine months from engagement to close, with first offers usually on the table within about 30 days of going to market. Early childhood diligence has its own long poles: state licensing files, staff-to-child ratios, director and lead teacher tenure, enrollment and utilization by classroom, waitlists, and lease or deferred capex issues at each site. Getting those in order before you go to market is most of what shortens the timeline. Here is our full breakdown of how long it takes to sell a business.

No, though you should know what scale does to your multiple. In the sold data a center at roughly $850,000 of annual sales may go near 4x earnings while one below $400,000 goes closer to 2x or less, and single sites are underwritten as owner-dependent. Groups of five or more start attracting private equity as genuine buyers rather than theoretical ones. If you are one or two centers and not in a hurry, the highest-return work is often building enrollment, director tenure, and clean financials for a year or two before a sale rather than during one. We are based in Chicago and work with school owners nationally, and we will tell you honestly whether now is the right time or whether you should wait and build first. It is also worth knowing how a sell-side advisor differs from a business broker.