Owning a Home Instead: what actually happens
Year one of a new territory is a cash burn: you rent a small office, get licensed (state home care licensing can take months before you can bill), hire a care coordinator, and recruit caregivers before you have clients to give them hours. Revenue is hours of care sold, so it builds one client at a time through referral sources such as hospital discharge planners, rehab facilities and elder-law offices. Most new home care offices run at a loss for 9-18 months and lean on the owner as salesperson, scheduler and on-call backup. The $2.6M average in Item 19 is what mature offices do; a first-year office does a small fraction of that. Buying an existing office skips the ramp but costs a multiple of its cash flow.
Illustrative split for a typical unit (industry estimate). The green slice is store cash flow before your loan payment and before paying yourself a salary — not profit.
Home care agencies are one of the more liquid franchise resales: revenue is recurring client hours, strategic buyers and private-equity-backed multi-territory owners are active, and established agencies commonly sell for a multiple of earnings in the 3-5x range (industry estimate, not from the FDD). Home Instead's own transfer volume shows offices do trade. The buyer must be approved, a transfer fee applies (about $25,000 per one FDD summary), and the short 5-year term means a buyer will look hard at how much term and renewal is left.
Well-capitalized owners with management or healthcare-adjacent experience who will run it full time through the ramp, or who buy an existing office with real cash flow.
Anyone expecting the $2.6M average in the first few years, or who cannot fund 12-18 months of losses and a round-the-clock staffing problem.
The disclosure it's built on
The verdict above is our read of the numbers Home Instead files with regulators — here they are, cited.
The franchise agreement runs only 5 years, with one further 5-year renewal on the same terms (a $9,000 renewal fee per FDD summaries), so the guaranteed horizon on a business that takes 2-3 years to mature is short. On top of the 5% royalty and 2% marketing fee you pay fixed monthly technology and care-platform charges to the franchisor, which since 2021 has been owned by Honor Technology. One FDD summary puts those fixed charges at roughly $709 to $3,918 a month, which bites hardest on a small or ramping office. The system is mature: far more territories change hands by transfer each year than open new, so the realistic way in is often buying an existing office at a resale price well above the Item 7 range.
Seriously considering Home Instead?
Pressure-test the affordability, then read the full FDD and validate Item 19 (or its absence) with existing franchisees. When we add vetted franchise-consultant and financing partners, they'll be clearly disclosed here and never change our analysis.
Run a rough affordability check →