428 off-market landscaping businesses in Illinois, scored on SBA loan maturity, registry age and local fragmentation. None are listed with a broker.
, from the public records named on the sources page.
The most profitable landscaping businesses in Illinois usually change hands before a listing exists. A long-time employee, a regional competitor, or a buyer who wrote to the owner first gets there while everyone else waits for a broker to publish. Listing means competing with dozens of buyers in an auction where the seller already knows the business is worth more than the asking price.
Public records show the owners approaching a natural transition years before any listing: SBA 7(a) and 504 loan maturity dates from the SBA disclosure files, business formation dates from the Illinois state registry, and local market fragmentation measured by establishment density. Scouly has scored all 428 landscaping businesses in Illinois on these three signals and ranked them by acquisition readiness. Build a free thesis to see the ranking.
2,782 Illinois small businesses in Scouly's index carry an SBA 7(a) or 504 loan with a disclosed term, and 324 of those reach maturity between 2026 and 2028. The median peak loan is $450,000. 196 of them are landscaping businesses. A balloon payment is a dated decision for an owner, refinance or sell, which is why maturity year is the timing signal Scouly weights most heavily. Full SBA breakdown for Illinois.
Scouly records a county for 405 of the 428 landscaping businesses it tracks in Illinois, taken from the state business registry rather than inferred from an address. The largest 17 counties:
| County | Landscaping businesses tracked |
|---|---|
| Cook County | 95 |
| Lake County | 66 |
| Dupage County | 62 |
| Will County | 54 |
| Kane County | 40 |
| Mchenry County | 21 |
| Kendall County | 11 |
| Mclean County | 11 |
| Winnebago County | 9 |
| Madison County | 8 |
| Sangamon County | 7 |
| Saint Clair County | 6 |
| Dekalb County | 3 |
| Macon County | 3 |
| Peoria County | 3 |
| Rock Island County | 3 |
| Tazewell County | 3 |
County totals count every tracked business whose registry record names that county, including ones scoring too low to be worth an approach. Build a free thesis to rank them.
Most landscaping businesses in Illinois never list publicly. They sell to a buyer who contacted the owner directly. The most reliable method is scanning public signals: SBA loan maturity dates from the SBA disclosure files, business age from state registries, and local market fragmentation. Scouly automates this, scoring landscaping businesses in Illinois on all three signals and ranking them by acquisition readiness.
It depends on the basis buyers in the sector use: landscaping businesses are usually quoted on a multiple of seller's discretionary earnings, with contracted commercial maintenance revenue valued well above one-off install work. Scouly does not estimate revenue or EBITDA, because public records cannot support it. What it does show is the SBA loan a lender actually underwrote for comparable businesses, which is a documented floor on the deal size the sector supports.
Owners of durable, profitable landscaping businesses rarely need a broker. Someone already close to the business makes an offer and it is gone. By the time a business appears on BizBuySell it is in an auction with 30 to 40 competing buyers and the multiple reflects it. Proprietary deal flow means reaching owners whose public signals point at an approaching transition, such as an SBA loan maturing or twenty years on the state register, before that process starts.
Three public signals. An SBA 7(a) or 504 loan approaching maturity puts a dated refinance-or-sell decision in front of the owner. Twenty to forty years of registry history means an owner old enough to be weighing succession. A fragmented local market with no consolidator means both an opportunity and a seller with fewer obvious buyers. Scouly scores every business it tracks on all three.
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