Buy laundromat: the lease, the meters and the machines
- What assembling it costs in your own time
- $2,730
- Hours to assemble the whole pack
- 36
- Hours a week to be ready in time
- 5
Every figure here comes from the figures you enter and the method stated beside it: your document count, your own hourly worth, your expected price. This site publishes no valuation, no tax position and no legal opinion; what a clause means for your deal is your solicitor's and your accountant's.
A laundromat is one of the few small businesses that genuinely runs with little labor, which is why it attracts buyers who want an asset rather than a job, and why the numbers are unusually easy to overstate. There are rarely customer records, often a lot of cash, and the two things that decide the outcome are the lease and the age of the equipment. This page is what to examine and how to test the revenue claim. It does not value a business and it is not legal advice on any lease.
Open the Selling a business checklist Free to use. No account, no card, no sign-up.
Verify the revenue before anything else, because the records may not exist
Ask for the water and utility bills for three years, the machine cycle counts if the equipment records them, and the deposit history. A laundromat's water consumption is the closest thing there is to an independent measure of how many loads were actually washed, and it either supports the claimed revenue or it does not. Card systems make this easier and coin operations harder; either way, a seller who cannot corroborate the number is asking to be believed rather than checked.
The lease is the business, because the plumbing does not move
The fit out is expensive and site specific, so a laundromat with a short lease and no renewal is a depreciating asset in somebody else's building. Read the remaining term, the renewal rights, the rent review mechanism, who is responsible for the plumbing and the drainage, and whether assignment needs consent. If the term is short, the renewal is the whole negotiation and it should happen before the price is agreed, not after.
Machines are a replacement schedule, not a fixtures list
Every washer and dryer has a remaining life and a replacement cost, and a store full of equipment at the end of its life is a large capital bill arriving shortly after completion. Age each machine, ask what has been replaced and when, and find out whether the equipment is owned, leased or financed, because a lease that does not assign is a liability the buyer discovers late. Water efficiency matters too, since the utility bill is the largest operating cost after rent.
What the day actually looks like, and what it costs to not be there
Attended and unattended stores are different businesses. An unattended store trades lower revenue for almost no labor; an attended one earns wash and fold and vending revenue and needs somebody present. Price the version you intend to run rather than the version being sold to you, and if the seller is the attendant, cost a replacement before deciding what the earnings are.
Will it do what you need for Buy laundromat?
Tell us where you are in selling your business and what you are trying to keep track of.
Buy laundromat: common questions
What are the questions to ask when buying a laundromat?
What do the utility bills say the store actually washed. How long is left on the lease and on what terms. How old is each machine and what is owned rather than financed. Who does the work today and what would it cost to replace them. And what has been spent on the plumbing, because that is the repair that closes a store.
Is buying a laundromat a passive business?
Less passive than it is sold as, and genuinely less demanding than most retail. Collections, repairs, cleaning and the occasional flood are real work even in an unattended store. What is true is that the labor does not scale with revenue in the way it does in a service business, which is the actual attraction.
How is a laundromat priced?
On adjusted earnings once somebody is paid to do whatever the owner does, with the equipment schedule and the lease as the two constraints on what that multiple can be. Where the machines are near the end of their life, the expected replacement cost is negotiated out of the price rather than ignored, and that argument is easier to have with an aged schedule in hand.
Does buying a laundromat business include the property?
Usually not, and where it does the two are valued separately: the trading business on its earnings and the building as real estate. Owning the site removes the lease risk entirely, which is worth a great deal in this trade specifically, and it also changes the financing and the tax position, so it is a decision to take deliberately rather than a bonus.
Exitvo Pro
Keeping what you make
The checklist is free. Pro is what happens once a buyer is actually asking: the documents go in as records, each request is tracked against the person who made it, and every version carries the date it was shared, so nobody has to remember which copy anybody has.
- Download the pack as a file you can send on
- Your packs and indexes without our name on them
- Save the sale file and open it again next week
- Your business name and logo on every pack and index
- Export the whole sale file in one go
- Send a document from inside the file rather than from your inbox
- Take a deposit without leaving the record
- Connect QuickBooks or Xero to your account
$24per month, one sale
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