Preparing to Sell Your Title Company

Preparing to Sell Your Title Company

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You’ve put your heart and soul into growing your business and now it’s time to move into your exit strategy. If you are considering selling your company, here are three steps that will help you prepare yourself, your team, and your business for a potential sale. 

1. Prepare Your Financials

We, like most companies, value a title agency based on a multiple of EBITDA. EBITDA stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Quite simply, your company is worth a multiple of your annual profits. The multiple is determined by many factors and every potential buyer will factor this differently. Knowing your historical EBITDA and having your financial records up to date allows you to recognize when you are presented with a well-researched and fair offer.

2. Know Your Vision for The Company 

Owners that have sold to Shaddock had varied reasons for doing so. Some were ready for retirement and wanted to leave their company in good hands. Others had expanded as much as possible on their own and wanted to align with a larger organization that could provide strategic and operational support, especially in terms of back-office systems, HR support, and IT resources. ( Read Testimonials)

Being able to clearly articulate your motivation and your plans for either exiting the business or staying involved, allows us to have a more robust conversation about alignment. 

3. Pick Your Team

We are often asked, who has to know I’m considering selling my company? During the early stages of the process, it makes sense to keep the exploratory conversations confidential with only company ownership in the loop.  

If initial explorations go well and we fully engage into due diligence, you may need to leverage trusted members of your team that can provide critical data points and operational insights such as:

• Policy backlog and underwriter remittance policy
• Benefits package and costs
• Historical financial performance

We understand that news of a potential sale can cause concern and disruption among staff and we will gladly support you in keeping the group that is “in the know” as small as possible.

If you are considering selling or expanding your business, we invite you to schedule a call with a member of our leadership team.