Who is buying HVAC businesses in 2026: the PE platforms, the public companies and the SBA buyers

Part of the HVAC guide: buying, selling, valuation and who is buying.

Who is buying HVAC businesses in 2026? Three kinds of buyer: private equity-backed home services platforms, public mechanical contractors, and individual buyers with an SBA loan. This post names the active ones, says what each buys, and links each to a public source. An owner learns who may call; a buyer learns who they are bidding against. It is part of our guide to buying or selling an HVAC business.

Which private equity platforms are buying HVAC businesses?

The residential HVAC, plumbing and electrical market is now full of private equity platforms. Each one is a holding company with a sponsor behind it that buys local shops, keeps the name and the manager, and adds a shared back office. Below is one line per platform, with the sponsor, what it buys, and the most recent public item we could verify. Where a release gives no price, we write "terms not disclosed".

A few notes on the table. Apex's own release calls it the largest residential HVAC, plumbing and electrical business in the country. Sila's sale to Goldman Sachs was the biggest sponsor change in residential HVAC in 2024. The Service Logic sale to Bain Capital and Mubadala was the biggest on the commercial side in 2025. For Wrench Group, the newest sponsor announcement we could find is Leonard Green's 9 November 2022 notice. We found no 2025 or 2026 Wrench deal release and say so rather than guess.

Redwood's sponsor is worth a second look. ACHR News reported on 9 May 2025 that Altas Partners invested in Redwood alongside Union Main Group. Redwood then had more than 2,500 employees and more than $500 million in annual revenue. One year later it bought a five-company platform in one go. That is the pattern now: platforms buying platforms, not only platforms buying shops.

TruTemp is the smallest name in the list and the most useful for a first-time buyer. It shows a sponsor starting a new platform in 2025 and adding family shops in towns of 30,000 people within a year. We wrote up both deals in TruTemp acquires D&D HVAC and Sandhills.

Which public companies are buying HVAC businesses?

Two public companies buy HVAC contractors in volume, and both buy commercial and industrial work, not residential service. If your company installs rooftop units on hospitals and data centers, these are your buyers. If it fixes furnaces in houses, they are not.

Comfort Systems USA (NYSE: FIX). Its FY2025 annual report, filed with the SEC, describes a mechanical and electrical contractor with 50 operating units, 190 locations in 142 cities and about 22,700 employees. The same 10-K lists its 2025 purchases. They were Century Contractors (1 January), Right Way Plumbing and Mechanical (1 May), a New York mechanical contractor (31 May), and Meisner Electric and Feyen Zylstra (both 1 October). The filing says it looks for a strong workforce, a good safety record, consistent positive cash flow and a desirable location.

EMCOR Group (NYSE: EME). EMCOR calls itself a leader in mechanical and electrical construction and building services. Its largest recent deal was electrical, not HVAC. EMCOR's own press release says it completed the purchase of Miller Electric Company of Jacksonville on 3 February 2025 for $865 million in cash. Miller was expected to make about $805 million of revenue in 2024. We found no 2025 or 2026 EMCOR release for a mechanical contractor, so we do not claim one.

What about the equipment makers? We looked for 2025 or 2026 releases in which Lennox or Carrier bought a service contractor and found none, so neither is in this list. The buyers of contractors are the contractors and the sponsors, not the manufacturers.

Who is the third kind of buyer: individuals with an SBA loan?

The third buyer is a person, not a fund. It is an operator or a first-time owner who buys one HVAC company with an SBA 7(a) loan, a seller note and some of their own cash. The SBA's 7(a) page lists "changes of ownership (complete or partial)" as a permitted use and caps the loan at $5 million. That cap is why this buyer and the platforms rarely compete for the same company.

Individual buyers matter more than the press releases suggest. A platform wants a shop with a manager who stays, clean books and enough size to be worth its diligence. A large share of HVAC companies for sale are too small for that, or the owner is the business and wants to leave. Those companies sell to individuals, and the individuals set the price in that part of the market.

We work with these buyers every day. Our AI scans 15+ business-for-sale marketplaces daily and screens each listing against a client's buy box, and most of our clients close in 60 to 120 days. If you are an owner who would rather sell to a person than to a platform, tell us about your company. Talk to a CPA before you accept any structure; the tax treatment of a seller note and an earn-out differs and the difference is real money.

What does each buyer type pay for?

Each of the three buyers pays for something different, which is why the same HVAC company can get three very different offers in one month. The numbers behind this are in HVAC business valuation multiples, from IBBA's Market Pulse by size band and from our own reading of live listings. Here we explain what drives the offer, not the figure.

Platforms pay for recurring revenue and a manager. Membership agreements, service and replacement work, and a general manager who stays on are what a sponsor's model rewards. The Sierra deal release counts "active membership agreements" as a headline number for a reason. New-construction work for homebuilders is worth less to them, because it swings with housing.

Public companies pay for scale and backlog. Comfort Systems' 10-K says 63.2% of its 2025 revenue was new-construction installation and 45% came from the technology sector, which means data centers. A commercial contractor with a signed backlog, a safety record and a project team gets its attention; a residential shop does not.

Individuals pay for cash flow the loan can cover. An SBA buyer's offer is set by what the business earns after a new owner's salary and the loan payment. That buyer cannot pay a platform's price for a membership base they cannot borrow against. They can pay a fair price for a solid company that is simply too small for a fund.

If you are the seller, this is the whole game: know which buyer your company fits before you go to market. Our glossary post on what a platform acquisition is explains why a sponsor's first purchase in a region is priced differently from its tenth.

How do you find out who is buying in your area?

Start with the releases. Every platform in the table announces its add-ons, usually on PR Newswire or Business Wire and in the trade press (ACHR News, Contracting Business). Search the platform's name plus your state, and you will see whether it already owns a brand near you. A platform with one brand in your metro is a likely buyer of a second; a platform with none may be a year away.

Then look at who is sending letters. Most HVAC owners we talk to in 2026 have had a call or a letter from a platform's development team. Keep them. The firms that write to you are the firms that will bid, and the names on the letters tell you which sponsor is active in your market this quarter.

Finally, remember that the list changes. Sponsors sell platforms to other sponsors every few years. Sila went from Morgan Stanley Capital Partners to Goldman Sachs, Service Logic from Leonard Green to Bain Capital, and Apex has just brought in Apollo. A new owner usually means a new push for add-ons in the first 18 months. This post explains who the buyers are; it is not a recommendation to sell to, invest in or avoid any of them.