What SDE Multiple Do Funeral Home Businesses Sell For in 2026?

Funeral homes are trading at 3.0x to 5.5x SDE for owner-operated locations and 5.0x to 7.5x EBITDA for platforms with multiple locations, on-site crematories, and pre-need trust assets. A single-location funeral home doing 250 calls a year with $400K to $700K SDE typically lands between 3.5x and 4.5x; that same business with an attached crematory and a healthy pre-need book pushes 5.0x.

Funeral Home Multiples — 2026 Snapshot

  • Single-location SDE: 3.0x – 5.5x
  • Platform EBITDA (3+ locations): 5.0x – 7.5x
  • Sweet spot: 200+ annual calls, owned real estate, attached crematory
  • Active buyers: Service Corp International (SCI), Park Lawn, Carriage Services, Foundation Partners Group, Legacy Funeral Group, Foundation Family Funeral Care

What drives the multiple?

Three things move funeral home valuations more than anything else. First, call volume and trend — buyers underwrite five-year call counts, not just last year. A location at 280 calls trending up earns a different multiple than 280 calls trending down. Second, on-site crematory ownership: cremation rates are pushing past 60% nationally, and homes that own the crematory keep margin in-house instead of paying $250 to $400 per cremation to a third party. Third, the pre-need trust balance — a $2M pre-need book at a single location materially changes what a strategic will pay because it's locked-in future revenue.

Real estate ownership is the wild card. Strategics like SCI and Park Lawn often want the real estate; family offices and independent buyers sometimes prefer to leave it with the seller and pay rent. Both structures work, but they produce different headline multiples — make sure you're comparing apples to apples.

What buyers are paying right now?

I closed a single-location home in 2025 with $580K SDE, an on-site crematory, and a $1.4M pre-need trust at 4.6x SDE — the buyer was a regional independent rolling up homes across two states. A two-location group with $1.1M EBITDA, both locations owning their real estate, sold to Park Lawn at 6.2x EBITDA earlier the same year. Service Corporation International continues to be selective and pays for scale; if you're under 200 calls per location, you're more likely to attract a Carriage Services bolt-on bid or a regional roll-up than SCI directly.

Foundation Partners Group, Legacy Funeral Group, and a handful of independent searcher-funded acquirers round out the buyer pool below the public-company tier. NewBridge Resources and Argentum Group have been active in the lower middle market.

"Pre-need trust balance is the single most underappreciated valuation lever in funeral home M&A. A $2M trust at a single-location home isn't just $2M of future revenue — it's $2M of future revenue with no acquisition cost, and the buyer underwrites it accordingly. I've watched the same home get a 4.0x bid without the trust math properly presented and a 4.7x bid two months later when we re-cut the CIM with the pre-need actuarial detail."

— John M. Salony

For a deeper view of where the buyer pool sits this year, see my running breakdown on the funeral home industry hub, and the broader industry valuations library covers adjacent regulated service businesses.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What SDE multiple do single-location funeral homes sell for?
Single-location funeral homes are trading at 3.0x to 5.5x SDE in 2026. The mid-point — about 4.0x to 4.5x — applies to a typical 200-to-300-call home with $400K to $700K SDE, owned real estate, and a normal pre-need trust. To push above 5.0x you generally need an on-site crematory keeping cremation margin in-house, a pre-need trust balance of at least $1M to $2M, a five-year call trend that's flat to up, and clean financials. Below 3.5x is where you land with declining call volume, no crematory, third-party prep work, or sloppy books. The cremation rate matters because it's pushed past 60% nationally — homes that haven't adapted their service mix and pricing are the ones getting bottom-of-range offers.
Why do platform funeral home groups get higher multiples?
Platform groups with three or more locations trade at 5.0x to 7.5x EBITDA — meaningfully above single-location SDE multiples — for three reasons. First, scale: a group at $1M+ EBITDA can afford a real GM and back-office team, which means buyers underwrite the existing run-rate without modeling heavy management replacement. Second, geographic diversification reduces the single-funeral-director-key-person risk that's baked into one-location underwriting. Third, the buyer pool changes: SCI, Park Lawn, and Carriage Services pay for scale because each acquired location contributes to public-company EBITDA. A two-location group with both real estate parcels and $1.1M combined EBITDA can clear 6.0x to 6.5x to a strategic, while either location sold individually would land at 4.0x to 4.5x SDE.