At the start of April, Oak Hill Capital bought Guild Garage Group in a deal that got tongues wagging in certain corners of the private equity market.
The transaction valued the Orlando business at $800 million, making it the largest PE-backed acquisition yet of a US garage door supplier. And at a 16x EBITDA multiple, according to PitchBook data, pricing was more in line with an IT or data services business than a typical residential services company.
Acquisitions of garage door installation and repair businesses have turned from a trickle to a relative flood in recent years. There were 26 PE-backed deals in the sector during 2025, including add-ons, according to PitchBook. This was a touch behind the record year of 2024, when there were 29, but both years dwarfed what came before.
A lot of the excitement around garage doors stems from the market dynamics they share with heating, ventilation and air conditioning businesses, which proved to be an immensely successful rollup play.
Businesses in the two sectors tend to be cashflow-generative, offer services deemed critical to people’s homes and businesses, and there are lots of them.
The US garage door market is highly fragmented, with 90% of it composed of more than 15,000 independent businesses, according to research by FMI, an investment bank and consultancy focused on the construction and residential services industries. This makes the sector ripe for consolidation.
The performance of these businesses is relatively uncorrelated with the economic cycle. If your garage door breaks, you’re likely to prioritize fixing it, and if you do need to get it fixed, you’d be wise not to do it yourself.
According to data from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, in 2024, there were 371 injuries involving garage doors from a sample of 100 emergency rooms in the US. Annual, nationwide estimates in the past have reached as high as 35,000, including some fatalities. Their coiled springs hold serious potential energy, which can cause havoc if accidentally unleashed.
“I have three garage doors; if they broke, I wouldn’t fix them myself,” said Jarrett Turner, founder and managing partner of lower-mid-market private equity firm Soundcore, which acquired commercial garage door and loading dock equipment business US Dock & Door in 2023.
The sector also got a boost from publicity around C.H.I. Overhead Doors. The Illinois-based company was bought by KKR in 2015 for $600 million and sold in 2022 for a 9.8x return, making it one of the PE giant’s best-ever investments. KKR granted equity to all the company’s employees, turning some into millionaires at exit.
“Firms realize there’s a big opportunity to drive incremental gains, whether it be growth or margin, by implementing technology and best practices,” said Jeff Mettam, a principal with Oak Hill focused on residential services. “In addition, you have the obvious M&A lever.”
Although the market is growing, it is a drop in the ocean compared with HVAC. FMI estimates the US garage door market at $16 billion and expects it to grow to $19.6 billion by 2030. The HVAC market in the US is around $150 billion in size, depending on how you measure it.
And garage door investments are no gimme. One of the things that makes the sector attractive—fragmentation—also makes it difficult to find good targets, at least of the size and sophistication that PE firms typically seek in a platform company.
When you do find one, you have to pay up for it. PitchBook understands that other significant platform deals, such as Leonard Green & Partners’ 2024 acquisition of DuraServ, were done at a high-teens multiple to EBITDA.
For those willing to roll up their sleeves, there is an opportunity to buy smaller, less sophisticated businesses and build them into the kind of platforms that are attractive to PE, said Turner of Soundcore.
“If we can buy in at 6 to 7 times and sell for 12, we’ve made a huge home run. If we can sell for 14 to 17 times, it’s going to return our entire fund,” he said.
The market has experienced a surge in competition, participants say, as PE firms that typically focused on other segments look to the trades for protection against the disruptive threat of AI.
“I think some of the historical perspective on blue collar services and just construction, as being kind of a dirty word in private equity, that’s gone,” said Paul Giovannoni, a partner at FMI.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly called FMI, IFM. The name has been corrected. (April 20, 2026)
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