Painting is easy to enter and hard to systematize. The underwriting work is in job costing, crew continuity, seasonality, and repeat referral demand.
Painting contractor acquisitions sit in a 1.8×–3.2× SDE band. Upper-band placement requires repeat repaint demand, crew retention, clean job costing, and low owner-estimator dependence.
Job costing and owner-estimator replacement define the practical painting band.
Construction sold comps provide floor context while painting-specific advisor ranges refine the band.
Demand exists, but 2026 pressure makes pipeline quality and seasonality more important.
Modest growth keeps the spotlight on crew retention and repeat referral channels.
Painting is high priority because buyer interest is common and the risks are easy to underestimate: job costing, crew churn, owner-led estimating, and seasonality.
Q2 creates the first baseline. Future rolls should keep the adjacent-comp caveat visible unless a painting-only closed-deal source is added.
Read the full Q2 2026 Atlas →The painting research stack.
Atlas for the numbers. Playbook for the framework. Apply it to the deal in front of you.
Q2 2026 Industry Atlas
Trailing-12-month band, structural conditions, sources, and methodology. Quarterly. Dated. Citable. Built to be forwarded by lenders.
Underwriting Playbook
The four-pillar lens applied to painting contractor acquisitions. Structural failure modes. Pre-LOI verification priorities. Master spoke for the vertical.
Score a Listing
Run a specific painting listing against the four-pillar framework — earnings quality, pricing, fundability, transferability — before you sign an LOI. Same evaluation each party at the table reads.
Apply the framework
Run a painting listing through the four-pillar lens.
Acquidex evaluates painting contractor acquisitions against the same neutral framework — Earnings Quality, Pricing, Fundability, Transferability — that lenders, brokers, and CPAs read. Submit a public listing URL or a CIM and we'll return a four-pillar teardown.
Consented teardowns publish here as case studies. Acquidex never names the seller, broker, or exact location without explicit written consent.
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Quarterly research, archived.
Every Atlas keeps a permanent dated URL. Cited reports never break. Compare bands across quarters; track structural shifts over time.
- Q2 2026Crew Retention, Job Costing, and the Owner-Estimator DiscountJul 14, 2026Read →
- Q3 2026Next scheduled roll-forwardOct 2026Scheduled