Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - Would You Pay $11M for Two Car Washes?

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

In this episode the hosts dissect a two‑location Virginia car wash business listed at $10.999 M with ~$940K cash flow and debate whether it’s a real estate play or a tough operating bet.Business... Listing – https://www.empirebusiness.com/business-opportunity/10056/2-car-wash-locations-in-virginia-579956/Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous – the #1 podcast for small business M&A. Every week, we break down businesses for sale and talk about buying, operating, and growing them.💰 Sponsored by:Main Street Summit – Join 1,000+ business owners, operators, and entrepreneurs for three days of actionable content, intimate peer connections, and specialized tracks led by real-world practitioners. Bill is speaking this year, and he describes it as one of the highlights of his year. Don’t miss it—secure your spot now at https://www.mainstreetsummit.com/Capital Pad – A platform connecting accredited investors with vetted small business acquisition deals. Discover exclusive opportunities at https://capitalpad.comIn this episode of Acquisitions Anonymous, the hosts dive into a deal: two separate car‑wash locations in Virginia being sold as a package for just under $11 million. The listing reports combined revenue of $1.6 million and cash‑flow of $940K, and includes the real estate. They unpack what drives the valuation, what portion might be real estate vs operations, and whether the numbers make sense for a buyer.Key Highlights:- Asking price: ~$10.999 million for two car wash locations in Virginia; listed cash flow ~$940K.- Combined revenue ~$1.6 million; cash‑flow margin appears very strong (~59 %).- Real‐estate “kicker” likely substantial: the hosts estimate a big portion of the value may reside in land rather than operations.- Operational risks: labour management, equipment/maintenance (touchless wash, dryers), vehicle liability, subscription model sustainability.- Financing nuances: If real estate value is high enough, 25‑year term SBA financing may apply; otherwise harder loan structure.Subscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at contact@acquanon.com

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, everybody, Mills Snell, one of your co-hosts, welcome back to Acquisitions Anonymous, the Internet's number one podcast for buying small businesses. Me and Heather have an amazing conversation today about a two car wash portfolio in Virginia. And I'm learning a little bit about car washes and the way that they change hands in the M&A environment. They're very hush-h. There's no information. You can't figure out where this is.
Starting point is 00:00:24 It's just Virginia generically. But it's an almost $11 million asking price. just under a million dollars in free cash flow. Heather and I talk a lot about the different dynamics for this business, what drives value, what are the trends that might be impacting this industry. It's a really fun conversation. I hope you enjoy. Stick around after a quick word for our sponsors. Hello, another episode of Acquisitions Anonymous. We don't have 100% beers anymore. And thumbs downing on just the plus inventory line. Hey, everyone, it's Bill. And I want to tell you about an event.
Starting point is 00:01:01 that's honestly become one of the highlights in my year. And that's Main Street Summit in Columbia, Missouri. I've been a speaker and an attendee at Main Street Summit for a couple of years now, and I'm going to tell you firsthand, it's really not your typical conference at all. It's more like a thousand business owners, operators, and entrepreneurs, all gathering in Columbia, Missouri for three days of practical and actionable business content. It totally takes over downtown Columbia, and they have probably 20 different venues. It's very cool.
Starting point is 00:01:29 One of the things that really sets Main Street Summit apart for me is their relationships. I wrote on X after last year's event that it was great talking about business in life with people who really have become a much more than just conference buddies. Business really can be a great vehicle towards deep friendship if you're willing to go there with people. And that's exactly what happens at Main Street Summit. You're really not sitting in massive auditoriums. You're in intimate settings, art galleries, small classrooms, et cetera, with world-class business
Starting point is 00:01:56 owners and operators who have lived the challenges that are keeping you up at night. So really no matter what industry you're in, from plumbing to e-commerce, there are specialized tracks designed for real practitioners like you. Main Street Summit is coming up. It is November 4th through 6th, 2025. It is in Columbia, Missouri. Do not miss this chance to connect with people who really get what you're building. You can visit MainstreetSummit.com to grab a ticket, and I will see you there. I'm speaking again this year. So if you find me, come up and say hi. See you at Main Street Summit. Hey, Heather. How are you? I am great. I just got back from a conference.
Starting point is 00:02:31 So that was always, that's always energizing. It's fun to see people in person when we do so much online. Yeah. We were too busy making our travel arrangements. I'm going to be in person with Heather next week for our recording. But I forgot to ask, because you were at the Buy Them Build conference. It was. How was it?
Starting point is 00:02:50 The very first of their conference. Yeah, it was great. It was, you know, a smaller conference as some of them go, which I really prefer, because you really get to talk to people a little bit more. And just a great group of people. I mean, all the who's who and some really great buyers. And it was, it was really fun. Chelsea was there.
Starting point is 00:03:10 Chelsea was there. She was, that was her show. I mean, she put the whole thing on and she did a great job. It was, it was really great. Did you ever met Chelsea in person? We record with her, like semi-regularly. I've never met her in person. I met her in person at a broker conference that happened to be right here where I live
Starting point is 00:03:27 in Orange County a couple of years. years ago, she and Walker were there. And then this time it was in their home turf, which is St. Louis, which I have never been there before. So that was pretty cool, too. That's awesome. Yeah. I brought a deal for us today. And I've stumbled on a broker. I think we're going to, we're not going to name brokers unless they sponsor us. So I'm not going to name this one. But it'll be on YouTube for people who are on YouTube. But this broker, I was like just poking around and they have like a really, really high number of car washes. And so I just kind of started going through the list and being like, okay, what makes a good car wash? What is a bad one? And so this one is two car washes. It's two car wash locations in Virginia. And their asking price is $10,99,99,99. I don't know the psychology behind that.
Starting point is 00:04:24 I know like when you are buying a pack of gum or a bag of chips, like, you know, being under. a dollar or $2 matters. I don't know why $11 million is the wrong price for this business, but yeah. The cash flow that they list is $940,000. And it says this is a package of two car washes for sale in high traffic areas. Both locations offer touchless car washes and detailing services. The businesses include the properties and have been owned and operated for over 20 years, providing a strong foundation for new ownership. One location also offers lube services and other maintenance work, increasing potential revenue streams. Customers can choose from a variety of wash and detailing packages. Wash packages can be purchased as a monthly subscription, which provides
Starting point is 00:05:14 recurring revenue for the business. These established car washes present a great opportunity for a buyer looking for a profitable investment in a growing industry. A signed, in all caps, a signed confidentiality agreement is required for the the exact location. Business owners, we represent qualified clients that are very interested in buying all types of businesses. If you have any interest in selling your business, we keep it confidential, all these different things that they say.
Starting point is 00:05:38 So they do give a little bit more info, but not a ton that says the revenue, the combined revenue for these two car washes is $1.6 million, and the cash flow is $940,000. They don't list EBITDA, FF&E, inventory. And I think that's really it. That's all. Do they tell us what they think the real estate value is? They don't parse it out. They just say it's included.
Starting point is 00:06:06 Yep. Okay. And all we have is Virginia, not even a city. Virginia, not northern, not southern, because they are like two different states, Virginia. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
Starting point is 00:06:20 Okay. Well, the real estate obviously is it got to be a pretty big part of the valuation. since the cash flow is only 900,000. And that would be, you know, almost an 11 multiple of, or more than 11 multiple of the cash flow. So they've got to be asking you to pay a pretty fair penny for the real estate. But what else is this real estate good for besides being a car wash? Maybe you get lucky and it's like a seven acre parcel, you know, on a corner and the car wash
Starting point is 00:06:52 only takes up like half an acre or something. Right. I'm so intrigued by this whole. car wash thing because I'm going to tell on myself, I have a car wash subscription for our family many. And I think it's like $30 a month. And you can go once a day. And it's like $15 for a single car wash.
Starting point is 00:07:12 To me, it's like the best bang for your buck. And I get it. They want recurring revenue and like they're willing to, you know, really, uh, incentivize that. But I'm a huge fan of, I mean, we will just go. When we had young kids, we would just take. take them in the car to the car wash just so that they would, you know, fall asleep from the lull of the car wash. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:32 But they've got the crazy good vacuums. You know, I like vacuum out like, you know, $100 worth of Chick-Balay French fries once a week out of the minivan. I think it's just a huge value proposition. But it seems like, and I don't know about where you are in Orange County, but at least in South Carolina, we went from having like, you know, sporadic kind of mom-and-pop car washes. and like the occasional small car wash at the back of the gas station to now just a proliferation of these car washes and they're touchless or their drive-through or you get out of your car,
Starting point is 00:08:10 you stay in the car, there's self-service, there's full service. I mean, it is like, it's like a mad land grab for these car washes, like, you know, drive-thru coffee. Do you have that in your market? You know, I think because we don't have a lot of unused land. you know, we pretty much every parcel you can imagine is already built out into something. We didn't have that much of that. Like, I do still have the old mom and pop car wash down the, down the road and they don't even offer subscriptions. And I do kind of always scratch my head when I'm there, like, they could at least do that with, you know, what they've got, but they don't. So, no, I haven't
Starting point is 00:08:47 seen it as much, but certainly as a lender, I've seen it a lot in other areas. And I get it. You know, there's the self-serve and there's the coin operation. and there's, but they're all going for the subscription model. So that becomes your car wash. You take all the family cars there and you are the recurring, you know, revenue customer. And, you know, yes, recurring revenue is more valuable, obviously than not. But is it this valuable? You know, I guess, I guess my question is, is private equity rolling these things up?
Starting point is 00:09:19 Is somebody doing something that's driving up these values? It seems like the consolidators in the, this space are really just growing with new sites. I don't, I have not really seen, I've seen brand new car washes right next to old like shuttered car washes, you know, and I think that the, I was with my kids the other day and we passed one and it was called an auto spa. Like I was like this, I mean, there's probably like hot towels, you know, I'm not sure what happens. But I do think that so many of them are like the aesthetics matter, the branding matters, like, you know, and they're not going to go, they're not going to move into the old one and spiff it up. They're, you know, rinse and repeat.
Starting point is 00:10:01 They're growing through new de novo sites and they're just a machine at sourcing the capital, allocating the capital and project managing these sites and getting them open. But I think a lot of the mom and pop ones, at least like the few that I know in our town, they, the, the, the, the real estate ended up being more valuable than the operating business. Yeah. And they just ended up like one of them that's right around the corner. It's like a stone stir from here. They just bulldozed the building and sold the dirt for like several million dollars.
Starting point is 00:10:33 The car wash was never worth that much. Right. So to your point, you know, let's just say, let's just say the real estate in this case, it's $11 million asking price. Let's say the real estate is worth $6 million and the business is worth a five times multiple or something like that. Yeah. I mean, this is such a tricky scenario. to separate the real estate value from the operating business value because you can't move next door without spending several million dollars to build a new car.
Starting point is 00:11:02 There's no business if you move, basically. And this is what we call location dependent, right? There's a big risk, even if you could move, that the new location just isn't as good, the traffic count or whatever isn't as good as this one. So, yeah, it has to be that you're buying this. If you had pay that much for the real estate, It has to be that a couple things that you think that the real estate's going to appreciate, and maybe you do sell it for some other use down the road, you know, home development,
Starting point is 00:11:28 or something like that. And there's sort of the financing component, at least if it was a little bit smaller, if it was SBA sized. A lot of the people that we see buy real estate like this look at the fact that they could finance the whole thing over 25 years as opposed to 10 years, which is what you'd get for an enterprise-only loan. So in SBA, if you're buying both and the real estate is worth more than the business, you can get the whole thing on a 25-year-old. I didn't realize that. Okay.
Starting point is 00:11:58 So it's not like, it's not like a blend, you know, a blended am. It's all or nothing on a $5 million SBA loan, if the real estate's worth $2.6, the whole thing gets a 25-year-A. Exactly. If the real estate's worth $2.4, it's a blended average term. Oh, okay. 2.6, it's a 25-year term. Interesting. Yeah, it's just one of the rules that SBA has.
Starting point is 00:12:23 And so it tends to happen more in the West where real estate is more expensive or in metro areas where it's more expensive where you find these businesses where the real estate is worth more than the enterprise. And so, yeah, the financing play can kind of make sense that way because you get the 25-year amortization. But it's still a tricky sort of valuation because, you still only have the cash flow that you're going to get. This is still 900,000-ish of cash flow,
Starting point is 00:12:53 and it's not very easy to grow that cash flow in a car wash. Not at all. I think, though, you know, this is one of those cases where most of the people are looking at this like a real estate play. And if you're just looking at this from a real estate cap rate scenario, this is a very attractive yield. Yeah. The problem is this is,
Starting point is 00:13:15 this is not a passive business. This is not, I mean, maybe if it was a coin operated, you know, and it was, you know, you wash your own car and this is just a stall that, you know, stalls that you pull into, but it's not that. It seems like there's employees, there's detailing. One of them has, you know, a maintenance, you know, and loob service. I mean, this is, this is far from, you know, mailbox money. Yeah. And this is the kind of, you know, this is the kind of staff that it's not that easy to find. and maintain and manage. And dare I say, at least in my part of the country, there are car washes who have had ice raids. Yeah. You know, right? So that's got even more difficult is, you know, do, do, do, do, do, are you buying, does the seller have the correct documentation, the I-9s and
Starting point is 00:14:05 everything on all these employees? Uh, this is not the easiest labor pool to find and manage and make sure it is legal. Yeah. So, yeah, there's, there's, this is not collecting rents. So yeah, it seems like an attractive yield. Do you realize you're going to be working pretty hard here? Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:14:23 I had this old client when I was doing M&A work and wealth management. I had this client who owned a couple car washes. And it was, there's like a whole persona that goes with it. And he, one funny thing on the labor pool that just this. reminding me of that hadn't thought about since. He would have, he had a work release program with the prison set up and they would bring inmates and they would wash the cars. It was like a full service, not touchless, not high tech. And they would bring the inmates. And he was always having to fight with like, you know, the inmates took the change out of the, you know, people's car, you know,
Starting point is 00:15:05 cup holder and all kinds of stuff like that. But I asked him just very, like, nonchalant and unknowing. I was like, you know, hey, how many cars do you guys get a day? And it was like I had broken the golden like rule of car wash. You don't ask people their counts. He was like, we never talk about our counts. We are very tight-lipped. Nobody talks about their account. I was like, and I, then in hindsight, it kind of made sense. Like, okay, this is, you know, revenue matters, but I think it's more just that like, you know, his counts versus the guy on the opposite corner, They're so, you know, just judicious about that kind of thing. It was just really funny.
Starting point is 00:15:47 I'll never forget this little, this little like 65-year-old man. It was just like, we never talk about our guy. How dare you? Yeah, how dare you ask me that? Oh, gosh, that's funny. I didn't know that. I probably would have asked the same thing. I'm like you.
Starting point is 00:15:59 I go into all these small businesses and start thinking, why don't they, you know, have a subscription program? And I wonder how many cars per day, especially when you're sitting around waiting for your car to get washed. You start observing. Yeah, you're like, I've seen 10 people. pull out of here. Like, they must do a lot of business.
Starting point is 00:16:14 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So it's not an easy business to run. You've got two locations. They don't really tell us how far apart they are. And this is the kind of business also where density matters. You know, how close is the nearest competitor?
Starting point is 00:16:28 Yeah. Is there, because this is such a booming, you know, trend, a booming industry, is it possible a competitor is going to be putting a new one in near you? Yeah. You know,
Starting point is 00:16:39 and you better look at the permits and look at what's, going on around these locations to make sure you know about that because you know that's the other thing why are they selling yeah you know yeah they don't tell us anything about it i mean this broker when you uh look at their listings i mean i think there were like there were like 400 something listings and at least 75% of them were car washes um and they're all over which is really interesting to me like this one is in massachusetts there's one in there's another in virginia that says it's a trophy asset. It's $7 million.
Starting point is 00:17:16 There's a self-serve and tunnel laser car wash. I'm not sure what that is. It's $400,000 with $30,000. A tunnel laser car wash? I need to know what this is. $37,000 of cash flow. That one's in Ohio. So one in Connecticut, $3 million asking price, $228 of cash flow.
Starting point is 00:17:37 I mean, they're all over the place. So it's a broker that's specialized in industry, which I love. Yeah. I love seeing more brokers do this because as a lender that looks at lots of different industries, you know, you get a few that you start to get pretty good at after you've seen enough of them. But, you know, every industry is so different. And it's nice to, you know, have a broker that really gets it all the way through. And probably they're less likely to put things out at crazy valuation.
Starting point is 00:18:09 that we sometimes see. Although this one does feel that way to me, I hate to say. No, but I mean, you know, if like maybe that's what they trade for. And you're right, these guys know, like they probably, you know, control a lot of the market. And a lot of the market in this case could be like 5% of the market. Hey, everyone, it's Bill. And I want to tell you about maybe the most exciting sponsor we've had in a long time on the pod. It's called CapitalPad. And it is the thing that I wish existed when I started my journey of operating and investing in small businesses. So CapitalPad is a marketplace for acquisition entrepreneurs.
Starting point is 00:18:44 That is, people who want to buy a business and need capital, to list their deals and solicit capital from other people who want to invest in acquisition deals. So if you want to back somebody buying a small business, CapitalPad is a place to do it. And if you want to buy a business and need capital, you can go on a business. CapitalPad to be introduced to investors. So the really great thing, too, from the investor side is that CapitalPad takes care of all of the details that can get hairy with small business acquisitions. They handle standardized terms, standardized governance, standardized distributions all up front in black and white. Basically, CapitalPad professionalizes investing in small businesses.
Starting point is 00:19:29 And the returns can be really, really good. I'm so stoked they exist. It's founded by my friend Travis, who is a phenomenal entrepreneur in his own right. So if this sounds like something that's appealing to you, if you want to buy a small business and need capital, or if you want to invest in small businesses, go check out Capitalpad.com and tell them that Acquisitions Anonymous sent you. This one is interesting. So this is the laser tunnel thing, and it doesn't really tell us what that is. But it's 55.
Starting point is 00:19:59 This one's no employees. It's like self-service or you just drive through. Um, it's 24-7. That's also kind of interesting, but it's, uh, 55,000 in revenue and 37,000 in cash flow. So, I mean, I thought ours that we started with was high margin at, you know, basically like 50-ish, 55%, uh, you know, net margins. This, they can be much more than that. Um, so it's kind of intriguing. Yeah. I mean, that's laser must be just be just totally automated. And it made the laser sort of guides. Yeah. car through or something like that. Yeah, interesting. Have you ever seen Heather those like freestanding, um, self-serve ice kiosks? No. So we have them here that, you know, they're, they're almost like the size of like a small shipping container. Um, and they're like permanent. They're not on a trailer. They just get like installed, um, you know, on a concrete pad. And it's like $3 and you can go get, uh, like a 20 pound bag of ice whereas if you go to a gas station, it's like a 10 pound bag of ice is three. Yeah. Oh, so is it like a machine, like a nice machine? It's an ice machine. Yeah. And like it dispenses a bag and then like, you know, you put the bag at the bottom and it fills it up. They're, you know, they're in kind of random locations, but like a lot of like we have a big lake here. That's like a big recreational area. There's a bunch of them around there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Cool. I looked at them at one point.
Starting point is 00:21:31 And I think it was like maybe around, if I remember right, it was maybe around like $90,000 to buy one of these. And they kind of, they're all kind of branded. I think they're all kind of branded a little bit different. I think this one was called Twice the Ice, which is like the big name in that space. And it reminds me of this a little bit because it's just kind of like this covered land play a little bit. Like there's good cash flow. The ice things take up like no space. You could put it in like somebody's out parcel, you know, in their parking.
Starting point is 00:22:01 lot if you needed to. Yeah. But the like lingering fear that I had with the, the ice kiosk was, you know, you're constantly like doing like refrigeration repairs and like your freezer's going to go down. And like, what if the bill dispenser or the credit card scanner goes out and like a lot of these people end up like a portfolio? You know, they own like 10 of these things. And I just thought, I don't really know enough about refrigeration in order to maintain it. But, um, you know, it's in this kind of same category of like kind of quasi passive, but, you know, it could definitely teeter more on the line of like very hands-on at certain times. Yeah, right.
Starting point is 00:22:45 I mean, small business is not really ever passive. No. Right? Everyone wants it to be, but it is not. And yeah, anything that's kind of going 24-7 to, that's another level because you're not going to be able to sleep at night sometimes, you know, and have to go out. the, you know, in the middle of the night to go repair things and deal with the problems. But that is interesting. I'll have to look around and see if they have those and I just
Starting point is 00:23:10 haven't seen them, but that's pretty cool. They're fascinating, yeah. The nice thing about this business, though, going back to the car wash is, you know, there's probably almost no inventory. You know, they're like buying soap and wax and, you know, probably air fresheners and stuff like that. The, I would be really curious, like what their water bill is. I mean, they've got to just use a crazy amount of water and and then maybe the utilities too like depending on like if it's a touchless dryer and like some of these are like heat you know power dryers and things like that I would be worried and I'm sure the industry has some like threshold for this and it's a known
Starting point is 00:23:50 thing but what if you mess up somebody's car you know what if like I know that they have solved for it and and that's just like kind of the cost of doing business in this industry but you know, what if the machine gets like a little off kilter and instead of the brush rubbing against the first 80s, you know, G-Wagon? It's, you know, it's this like mechanical arm that just gashes the side of like, those things have to happen. It's not a matter of, you know, if it happens, it's just when. And probably there's insurance for it, I would imagine. But the car wash that I go to, I have a Tesla and it's got these little automatic kind of touch doors. I cannot go.
Starting point is 00:24:29 they will not let my car go through the car wash. It has to be hand wash. And I was like, oh, no, I don't need a hand wash. Like, no, we won't allow it. And I'm like, what happened? Well, of course, one of those doors opened up and caused a bunch of damage. And so, yeah, absolutely. So that's what can happen.
Starting point is 00:24:45 And I think the more modern cars can cause problems, you know, going through these car washes. They put pressure on the button that opens your door and the door opens out. Yeah. Oh man, that's interesting. Yeah, I had not thought about that. Yeah, because, like, you know, there's always like the old cars, it was like you would unscrew your antenna, you know, before you went. It wasn't even a retractable antenna. You unscrew your antenna before you went.
Starting point is 00:25:11 I remember that. I have a ladder rack on my truck because of work. And so I can't, I can't really go into a car washing my truck. But, yeah, this would be one of those things. It would be probably just really interesting to talk to the broker. Yeah. And just go, hey, enlighten me. You know, maybe it's not this.
Starting point is 00:25:28 specific listing that you have, but just enlighten me on the industry as a whole. And, you know, who are the big like movers and shakers? Who's consolidating? You know, what are the trends? These industries would have like, I'm sure there's like everybody's kind of chasing the, like it's probably a small tam. So they're all chasing. Like, how do we edge out our competitors? Yeah. And what's the new thing that gives us some little bit of competitive advantage to kind of drive it? it probably be a really fascinating industry. I used to say this. I think it's not true anymore because of the way credit cards are used.
Starting point is 00:26:06 But way back as a lender, we would mostly not lend on car washes because their tax returns never showed hardly any income. And I'd say, but no, no, we really make X. And they're like, well, that's cash and you're not reporting it. And therefore, we can't underwrite to what you do. don't report, but that that used to be very, very, very common with car washes to the point that like as lenders, we kind of considered them non-financeable. Wow. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:26:36 Yeah. But I think that's probably changed a lot now. That is, that is in line with the, the former client that I had. He was that way. It was like, you could tell he had like cash under his mattress, you know, and, uh, he, he would cut cash deals with people left and right. We tried to manage a portfolio for him. And it was just like his personality just did not handle, you know, liquidity very well and,
Starting point is 00:27:00 and like riding, you know, the, the market. I always thought the business owners that I ran across that I knew they had a lot of cash and what they were doing, I always thought it would be kind of scary. Yeah. You know, like they're living on the edge with all this cash. Where is it? It's in their house. And, you know, in their walls, who knows.
Starting point is 00:27:18 But it probably makes them a little paranoid because they constantly, you know, they're hiding it from everybody. You know, kind of weird. So you think this is probably financeable, but not SBA, obviously, because the purchase price. Well, it could go SBA. There is a scenario here where if you put enough equity, it could go SBA. Because you could use a full $5,000. You have $5,000.7A.
Starting point is 00:27:46 When you do another program that's just for real estate's called 504, you get effectively like another, like $3 million. worth of real estate loan, you know, could go into the 504 the way that it works. Yeah. So maybe there is a play here for a 7A, 504 combination, but you'd be kind of shoehorning it in a little. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But there's no way, right, that it would, like debt service coverage. There's no.
Starting point is 00:28:14 Yeah, right. That's the problem. Right. So I wonder, I mean, I wonder if a lot of these, I wonder if a lot of these car washes just change hands, like with little to no finance. If it, if just the math, if it doesn't pencil, you know, maybe, maybe they're all like 50%, you know, loan to value deals and that's the only way they get done or just 100% financing. And it's just kind of still mom and pop. Yeah. I think maybe a lot of seller financing or, you know, kind of a private real estate lender does the real estate piece and they figure out seller financing on the enterprise, maybe something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. It's very interesting. I've never really looked hard at a, at a car wash, but now it makes me wonder, like, which ones would be for sale in my market, you know, and how frequently do they change hands? Is this one of those things that, like,
Starting point is 00:29:05 the one that I know that I referenced that got bulldozed, it was in this family for like, I think, like, 50 years. It went back so far that they used to have a, they used to have a pet tiger at the car wash. And it was like, you would get out of the car and, like, you could come inside and, like, see it in a cage. Like talk about like very old school and nostalgia. Wow. That sounds fun. Yes.
Starting point is 00:29:29 Yeah. Yeah. I think the Tiger's name was happy. But yeah, it makes me wonder like what's, what's out there and makes me want to do like a little bit more research and due diligence on it. Yeah. Yeah, but I, yeah, I'm baffled on the valuation. I don't know how you make this work. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:29:48 So your thumbs down. Just. Thumbs down. But math, the math wins. The math. Yeah. Not math thing for me. me. Yeah. All right. Well, this was a fun one. Thanks for entertaining me. I've really tried to
Starting point is 00:29:59 bring my best deals. Heather, after I was bringing you like Russian music right and stuff like that, I was like, I really got to up my game. Yes. This was excellent. You did a fine job this time. Good job. Okay. And I will, we're going to record again later this week and then next week will be in person. So I need to bring up a really good deal for our in person. Yes. Okay. We have to make sure it's a really good deal for that one. Yeah. That's going to be fun. All right, everybody. Well, thanks for tuning in and sticking around for our episode on the car wash. If you enjoyed this episode, please check out our website, acqueu anon.com, where we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of deals that we've talked about across all industries, pretty much, I don't know, I'm still shocked
Starting point is 00:30:40 that we come across things that we haven't talked about before, but I think we've covered, if you're looking for it, we've probably covered it. You can search on the website. And yeah, thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.