The Real Cost of Waiting: What Staying One More Year Does to Your Firm’s Value

Most CPA firm owners think about the decision to sell as a lifestyle question. Am I ready to walk away? Do I have a plan for my time? Can my team run without me in the room? However, that perspective lacks another key consideration: financial.

We talk with firm owners every week who assume their practice is worth roughly what it was worth two years ago, give or take. In today’s market, that assumption is often wrong and rarely in the seller’s favor. Three forces are converging at once: valuations are being actively repriced based on readiness, a wave of retiring owners is about to hit the market at the same time, and private equity buyers who once bought almost anything with a pulse are getting selective. Each of these forces rewards owners who move now and penalizes owners who wait.

The Multiple Moves Both Ways

Accounting firms are currently selling for 0.8x to 1.5x annual revenue, with most landing around 1.0x to 1.2x, or roughly four to five times EBITDA. Well-run firms with strong recurring client accounting services revenue can command 1.3x to 1.5x or higher, but that premium is earned. It comes from low client concentration, staff depth, clean financials, and a growth story a buyer can trust.

Firms that spend the next 24 months actively addressing those factors can increase their multiple meaningfully, from the low single digits toward the seven-times-EBITDA range that disciplined buyers reserve for well-prepared sellers. Firms that do nothing do not simply stay flat. Client concentration creeps up as a few relationships grow faster than the rest of the book. Owner dependency deepens with every year the founder keeps handling the firm’s largest accounts personally. Margins erode as staffing costs rise faster than fees. If you sold today, do you actually know which number a buyer would pay, and which specific levers would move it higher?

The Clock Is Already Running

Roughly 75% of CPAs have reached retirement eligibility, and in firms with $2 million to $10 million in revenue, nearly two-thirds of partners are already over 50. Despite years of warnings about this exact moment, only about 30% of firms have a formal succession plan in place. This is not a distant demographic trend to monitor. It is happening now, inside firms very much like yours.

What that means practically is straightforward. A large number of owners are going to be thinking about exit at roughly the same time, and supply moving into the market shifts leverage toward buyers. Owners who move deliberately, while their segment still has more demand than supply, negotiate from strength. Owners who wait until health, energy, or circumstance forces the decision typically negotiate from urgency, and urgency shows up in the price. We understand why so few firms have a documented plan. Partners are buried in client work, tax season never seems to end, and succession planning feels like a project for someday.

Selective Buyers, Not Endless Demand

Private equity investment in accounting accelerated sharply in 2025, with more than 50 PE-related transactions recorded and nearly half of the top 30 U.S. CPA firms now carrying some form of private equity investment or alternative practice structure. Deal volume tracked across the industry rose from roughly 22 transactions in 2023 to over 100 in 2025, and early 2026 has already outpaced last year’s monthly average. For firms that are positioned well, this is a genuine seller’s market.

Positioning, though, is doing a lot of work. Buyers pay premiums for recurring revenue, diversified client relationships, and a management layer that can operate without the founder. They discount hard, or walk away entirely, from firms with client concentration above 20% to 25%, messy financials, or a book of business that lives entirely in one partner’s head. The firms capturing today’s strongest multiples are the ones that were already built for diligence before a buyer ever asked to see the numbers. That readiness does not happen in a weekend. It takes time, and runway shrinks every year an owner waits to start.

What One More Year Costs

Waiting a single additional year does three things at once, and none of them work in the owner’s favor. The math is not dramatic, but it compounds quietly in the background whether an owner is watching or not.

• Operational weaknesses like concentration, owner dependency, and thin margins get another year to compound instead of getting fixed
• The buyer pool and pricing environment may shift as private equity platforms mature, become more selective, and prioritize integration over expansion
• Owners move a year closer to a forced, urgency-driven sale rather than one they chose on their own terms, and forced sales are discounted sales

The Choice You’re Already Making

Owners rarely frame it this way, but choosing not to decide is still a decision, and the market is pricing it whether or not you’re paying attention. The firms that come out ahead over the next few years will not be the ones that waited for certainty. They will be the ones that understood their number today, what would move it, and acted while they still had the leverage to choose their own timeline.

If you are weighing whether now is the right moment, start with the question underneath all of this: are you actually ready to sell or waiting to find out? Our article, Are You Really Ready to Sell Your CPA Firm?, walks through exactly how to answer that honestly, and what to do next once you have. If you are ready to make a move, let’s talk.