What is your business worth — with the real estate?
Most owners value the business or the building — never both, and never how they interact. Enter your earnings and your property to see enterprise value, real estate value, the combined total, and the sale-leaseback option most business brokers miss.
Get the real number — free and confidential.
If your company occupies a building you own, those are two assets with two buyer pools. Send me both and I'll show you how they price separately, which is usually more in total.
A planning estimate on simplified assumptions — not a business appraisal, security, or investment advice. Real value depends on add-backs, growth, risk, deal terms, and market conditions.
Frequently asked
How do you value a small business?
A common shortcut is a multiple of earnings — annual EBITDA (or seller’s discretionary earnings) times an industry multiple, often roughly 2x–5x for small and lower-middle-market companies. It’s a starting range, not a formal valuation; add-backs, growth, customer concentration, and the real estate all move it.
How does owned real estate change my business’s value?
If your company owns the building it operates in, the business’s earnings are usually understated or overstated because there’s no true market rent in the P&L. Normalizing to market rent changes EBITDA — and therefore the multiple-based price. Separately, the real estate itself is a distinct asset with its own value. This tool shows both so you see the full picture.
What is a sale-leaseback and why would I do it at exit?
In a sale-leaseback you sell the operating business but keep the real estate, then lease it back to the buyer at market rent. You collect the business sale proceeds now and keep the building as an income-producing asset you still own — often more total value than bundling the property into the business sale.
Can I keep the building and lease it to whoever buys my business?
Yes, and it is common. It gives a clean exit from the operation plus income from a tenant you understand. The lease signed at closing is the whole deal, so term, escalations, maintenance and assignment rights deserve full scrutiny.
The typical owner-occupied building here is 4,066 square feet
There is a way to find businesses operating out of property they own. County records carry two addresses for a parcel — where the property is, and where the owner receives mail. When they match, the owner is almost always running their company from the building.
Across the tri-county parcels where both addresses are on file, 2,772 match. Their median building is 4,066 square feet with a median assessed value of $878,250, and 2,526 of them — 91% — are under 25,000 square feet.
Tri-county commercial parcels with a structure where an owner mailing address is recorded, August 2026. An owner mailing address is present on 19,453 of 76,099 parcels, so this measures the subset where the comparison is possible. Addresses normalised before matching; no owner is named.
That is the profile: a small operating company sitting on a building worth roughly what a decent house costs, bought years ago because owning beat renting. It usually did. What most of those owners have never done is work out what happens to both assets when the company sells — and the answer is worth more than the arithmetic suggests.
The rent you charge yourself is the number that matters
If your company occupies a building you own, whatever rent appears in the books is a figure you picked. Many owners set it low, or nothing at all, because the money moves from one pocket to another. Some set it high for tax reasons. Either way it is not a market number, and a buyer will replace it with one.
That replacement is where the money moves, because businesses sell on a multiple of earnings. Every dollar of understated rent inflates stated profit by a dollar, and the buyer removes it at the multiple.
Work it through. Say market rent on your space is $120,000 a year and the company has been paying itself $50,000. Normalised earnings are overstated by $70,000. At a four times multiple that is $280,000 off the business valuation. It has not vanished — it reappears in the real estate, which demonstrably supports $120,000 of rent. But it only reappears if the real estate is valued separately and properly. Fold it into a single business sale and that $280,000 is simply gone.
So the first number to establish is market rent for your own space. It sets your true profitability and it sets the building's value. Both valuations depend on it.
Two assets, two buyer pools
A business buyer is pricing a multiple of earnings. They care about customer concentration, whether the company runs without you, and margins. Real estate raises the cheque they must write and often the financing they need, and many would rather lease and put their capital into the operation.
A property buyer does not care about your customer list at all. They are pricing the building, the location, the condition and whatever lease comes with it.
Sell both together to a business buyer and the real estate tends to be valued the way that buyer values it — as an obligation attached to the deal — rather than the way the property market values it. The alternative is straightforward: sell the company to a company buyer, and either keep the building and lease it to them or sell it separately to a property buyer. Two processes, two prices, usually more in total. That is the structuring question, and it is worth answering before anyone sees a number.
I am a broker, not a business broker, a CPA or an attorney. A transaction like this wants all three alongside me. My part is the real estate: what it is worth, what market rent for it is, and keeping it from being the piece nobody priced.
Questions about valuing a business with its real estate
How does owning my building change what my business is worth?
Through the rent line. Whatever rent the company pays itself is a chosen number, and a buyer normalises it to market before applying a multiple. Below-market rent overstates earnings by the difference, and that difference comes out at the multiple — $70,000 of understated rent removes $280,000 at a four times multiple. The value moves into the real estate, but only if the real estate is valued separately.
Should I sell the business and the building together?
Separately produces a higher total more often than not, because the two assets have different buyer pools valuing them on different bases. Selling together is simpler and sometimes right for highly specialised property, but it should be a deliberate choice rather than the default.
What is market rent for my own building?
What a third-party tenant would pay for that space today, in that submarket, at that size and condition — not what you have been charging your own company. It is the single input both valuations depend on, and it is the first thing worth establishing properly.
Can I keep the building and lease it to the buyer?
Yes, and it is a common structure. It gives you a clean exit from the operation plus income from a tenant whose business you understand better than anyone. The lease signed at closing is the whole deal, so term, escalations, maintenance obligations and assignment rights deserve full scrutiny — the buyer may later sell the company to a stranger.
When should I start?
One to two years before you intend to sell. Both valuations improve with lead time: documented market rent, current maintenance and clean permits on the property; normalised books and reduced owner dependence on the business. None of that can be done in the weeks after an offer arrives.
