To buy a laundromat is to buy a room of machines and the lease that keeps them there, with the takings as the proof that people use them. It attracts buyers because there are few staff and the cash arrives daily, and it disappoints them for the same reasons: nobody is watching the machines age, and cash is hard to verify. This page reads the store the way a lender will, which is the only way the buyer's own stack gets funded.
The machines are the business
Ask for the equipment schedule with the make, model, age and service history of every washer and dryer. A store of twenty machines at the end of their lives is a store whose price should reflect the replacement bill the buyer inherits. The schedule is a diligence item with a date on it, not a walk-through, and the register in Pro keeps it as one.
The lease keeps the machines where the customers are
A laundromat cannot move without becoming a different business. Read the lease term, the renewal options and the assignment clause before the offer, and align them with the note: an SBA 7(a) note on a purchase without real estate runs at most ten years, and a lease that ends in year four is a problem the lender sees before you do.
The takings, proved by the bills
Cash businesses are proved by their utility bills. Water and gas consumption track loads, and loads track revenue; card readers and coin counts fill in the rest. Once the takings are believed, the calculator's stack applies: on its worked example a $450,000 store needs $110,000 at the keys and pays $68,731.68 a year across the notes, covered 131% by $90,000 of earnings after the buyer's pay.
Questions people ask about buy a laundromat
Is a laundromat really passive?
It has no staff to manage and every machine to maintain. Budget the repairs and the collection visits as your time, and price your own pay into the stack rather than assuming zero.
What is the first document to ask for?
Two years of utility bills, because they prove the volume the seller claims without relying on the seller's word.
What does Pro keep for a laundromat?
The store as a target with its equipment schedule, lease dates, utility figures and costed stack, alongside the other stores you look at, for $14 a month.