“Should I sell now or wait?”
Every home care agency owner who contacts us at some point asks this question. It is, frankly, one of the hardest questions in the M&A process — because the right answer is different for every seller, and it requires thinking through a set of factors that are genuinely complex.
This article does not give you a simple “sell now” or “sell later” answer. It gives you a framework for thinking through the three critical dimensions: market timing, personal situation, and business readiness. Work through all three honestly, and you will have a clearer picture of what the right decision is for you.
The macroeconomic and industry environment affects your sale price in real and significant ways. Understanding the current market context matters.
No matter when you sell, you are operating in a market with long-term structural tailwinds. The 65+ population in the United States is projected to grow from approximately 58 million today to over 80 million by 2040. Home-based care is the fastest-growing segment of healthcare delivery. Private equity and strategic consolidators see this demographic reality — it is one of the primary reasons home care M&A has been so active for the past decade.
This does not mean you can wait indefinitely, but it does mean you are not operating against a ticking clock in the industry fundamentals sense. The demand for home care agencies (as acquisition targets) is not going to disappear.
Several factors can compress or expand the multiples buyers pay in any given 12-month window:
Interest rates: Higher interest rates increase the cost of the debt PE firms use to finance acquisitions, which compresses EBITDA multiples. When rates are elevated, buyers may offer modestly lower multiples than in a low-rate environment. This was a factor in 2023–2024, though the home care market proved more resilient than many other sectors.
PE fund activity: When a large home care PE platform is in active acquisition mode near a planned exit, competition for quality agencies increases and multiples can spike. Conversely, when platforms are in integration mode (digesting recent acquisitions), buyer activity slows.
Regulatory environment: Medicaid rate changes, CMS Conditions of Participation updates, or Medicare reimbursement reductions can shift buyer appetite. A state that announces a major Medicaid rate cut may see a temporary pause in buyer activity.
Strategic buyer consolidation pace: Major national operators’ appetite for acquisitions cycles. When they are concentrated on integration, acquisition pace slows; when they are growth-focused, they are aggressive competitors for quality agencies.
The honest assessment for 2026: The M&A market for quality home care agencies remains active. Multiples have stabilized after the modest compression of 2022–2023 and are in a healthy range. PE activity is robust across private pay, skilled, and specialty care. There is no strong indication that waiting another year will dramatically improve multiples — but the fundamentals also don’t suggest a rush.
The most important point about market timing: trying to time the M&A market precisely is largely futile. You cannot know whether multiples will be 5.5× or 6.5× in 18 months versus today. What you can control is:
These factors — which you control — have a greater impact on your outcome than market timing factors you cannot control.
This is often the most decisive dimension — and the one sellers are sometimes reluctant to think about directly.
Running a home care agency is demanding. If you find yourself increasingly disengaged, frustrated, or burned out, the financial cost of delaying is real. A seller who is emotionally done can see EBITDA erode as they take their foot off the gas — which directly reduces their sale price.
Ask yourself honestly: Am I still running this business at the same level I was 3 years ago? If the answer is no, and the gap is widening, then waiting may be costlier than selling at a slightly lower multiple but earlier.
Unfortunately, health events are a common trigger for rushed, unplanned transactions. Some of the most difficult situations we see involve an owner who had been “planning to sell in a couple of years” for 10 years — and then a health event forces a sale under time pressure, which dramatically weakens negotiating leverage and frequently results in a below-market outcome.
If health is a consideration, selling proactively from a position of strength is almost always better than selling reactively from a position of need.
Do you have a family member or management team member who wants to succeed you? Family transitions and management buyouts are legitimate alternatives to external sales — but they have their own complexity and typically produce less liquidity than an external transaction.
If succession is not a realistic option, then an external sale is the path. The question becomes when — and the longer you wait, the more you need for the business performance to remain strong throughout the delay.
The sale of a home care agency is often the single largest financial event in an owner’s life. Understanding your personal financial situation — How much net liquidity do you need from this transaction? How are you managing the tax consequences? What does your retirement plan look like post-sale? — is essential context for the timing decision.
Working with a wealth advisor and tax attorney before entering a sale process is strongly recommended. They can help you model what a sale at different price points and timings means for your personal financial outcome.
Even if market conditions are favorable and your personal situation calls for a sale, your business may not yet be in a position to command the best price. This dimension is fully within your control — which makes it the most actionable of the three.
The most important financial factor buyers consider is trajectory. Is the business growing or declining?
If your business had a rough year due to an identifiable and resolved issue (key staff departure, referral source disruption, COVID impact), waiting 12 months to show restabilized performance can recover a full multiple turn — potentially worth hundreds of thousands or millions in purchase price.
How dependent is your business on you personally? If all the key referral relationships, clinical oversight, and strategic direction flow exclusively through you, buyers will price that risk into the multiple — or require a long, actively managed earnout.
Building management depth — even 12 months before a sale — can meaningfully increase value. If you can install an Administrator or Agency Director who runs day-to-day operations with minimal involvement from you, your business is worth more and more attractive to buyers.
Compliance issues, open regulatory matters, or undocumented processes create due diligence risk that buyers translate into either price reductions or deal uncertainty.
If you have compliance issues that could be addressed with 6–12 months of focused work:
…it is almost always worth resolving them before going to market. Disclosed and unresolved issues reduce purchase price. Undisclosed issues discovered post-close become indemnification claims.
Buyers expect 3 years of clean financials (tax returns, P&Ls, balance sheets, general ledger). If your financial records are not well-organized, or if you have commingled personal and business expenses for years, the cleanup work itself may take 3–6 months and the resulting EBITDA normalization analysis will be more complex.
Work through these questions honestly:
Market timing:
Personal situation:
Business readiness:
If the market is reasonable, your personal situation calls for a sale, and the business is in good shape → move forward with the process now.
If market conditions are acceptable but the business has declining performance → invest 12 months stabilizing and growing, then sell from a position of performance.
If there are significant compliance or documentation issues → invest 6–12 months resolving them, then proceed.
If everything is ready but your personal situation is not yet → build a more detailed transition plan, but don’t indefinitely delay — the “right time” often never arrives.
One of the most underappreciated risks in M&A timing is what business owners call “owner fatigue tax” — the gradual erosion in business performance as an owner who is emotionally transitioning mentally checks out while still nominally running the business.
This is not a moral failing — it’s a natural human response to being ready to move on but not having moved on. The financial consequence is real: a business that could have sold at $4.5M at peak performance may sell at $3.5M after 18 months of flat-to-declining EBITDA from reduced owner engagement.
The lesson: when you know you want to sell, run the process — don’t wait for a perfect moment that may never come.
Often, the most valuable first step is a confidential conversation with an experienced M&A advisor — not to start a sale process, but to get an honest, informed assessment of where you stand on all three dimensions.
At Hendon Partners, we regularly have confidential preliminary consultations with owners who are somewhere on the 1–5 year planning horizon. These conversations are free and without obligation. We can give you an honest perspective on what the current market looks like for your business type, what your business is likely worth today, and what steps would improve your outcome.
Schedule a confidential consultation →
Hendon Partners advises home care agency owners across all stages of exit planning — from early-stage conversations to active sale processes. Our advisors help you think through timing, preparation, and strategy before you need to make a final decision.
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