The $1 Trillion Industry That's Still Flying Blind

The home services industry is one of the largest and most durable sectors of the American economy. It generates over $1 trillion in annual revenue, employs more than 6 million people, and is structurally non-cyclical — people need their roofs fixed, their HVAC serviced, and their pools cleaned regardless of what the S&P 500 is doing.

It is also, by almost any technology measure, decades behind.

The Fragmentation Problem

There are an estimated 1.5 million trade businesses operating in the United States today. The overwhelming majority of them are small — fewer than 10 employees, owner-operated, often family-owned for multiple generations. This fragmentation is both a challenge and an enormous opportunity.

Consider what consolidation looked like in auto repair (Midas, Jiffy Lube), pest control (Terminix, Rollins), or storage (Public Storage, Extra Space). In each case, a fragmented landscape of independent operators was gradually assembled into platforms with shared systems, purchasing power, and brand recognition. Home services is at the beginning of that same curve.

Why It Hasn't Happened Yet

The short answer: it's hard. Trade businesses are deeply local. Their value lives in relationships — the homeowner who's been using the same plumber for 15 years, the property manager who trusts a particular HVAC tech with their entire portfolio. That relationship capital doesn't transfer easily when you parachute in a national brand and swap out the owner.

The acquirers who have tried to scale quickly — think some of the early home services roll-ups of the 2010s — often discovered this the hard way. They bought the revenue but lost the relationships.

We believe this is solvable. But it requires a fundamentally different model than what traditional private equity brings to the table.

The Data Layer Nobody Has Built

Here's what makes the opportunity in home services especially compelling right now: the data is starting to come online.

For the first time, there are enough signals — building permit filings, equipment installation records, HVAC unit age data, property transaction records, seasonality patterns — to build predictive models for when a homeowner will need a service, what they're likely to pay, and which operator in their market is best positioned to win that job.

Chisel has indexed over 500,000 trade businesses across 12 verticals and analyzed more than 500 million building permits and MLS records to build what we believe is the most comprehensive acquisition intelligence platform in the home services industry.

We use this data to:

1. Source deals — identifying businesses that meet our acquisition criteria before they ever come to market
2. Underwrite acquisitions — building data-driven revenue and margin models rather than relying on seller-provided projections
3. Run operations — AI dispatch, predictive maintenance scheduling, and demand forecasting inside each portfolio company

What This Means for Owners

If you own a trade business, the trends above are relevant to you regardless of whether you're thinking about selling. The operators who invest in data and technology now will have better margins, better customer retention, and more options — including a better exit multiple — when they're ready for their next chapter.

The consolidation of home services is not a question of if — it's a question of who builds the platform, how they do it, and whether the owners and teams who built these businesses get to participate in the upside.

We're building it to include them.