How Much Does a Caring Transitions Franchise Owner Make?

Officially, Item 19 measures 2025 Gross Receipts and Gross Profit percentage—not annual owner income. For the 223 full-year reporting owners, the cumulative median was $272,709.74 in Gross Receipts and 65% in Gross Profit percentage.

Item 19 defines Gross Receipts as income arising from operation of the franchised business, excluding client refunds and discounts and separately stated sales or excise taxes remitted to a taxing authority. It defines Gross Profit as Gross Receipts minus direct costs. That leaves a crucial gap: the table does not standardize or disclose the overhead remaining after direct costs, such as management labor, business-development labor, vehicles, payroll burden, office costs, insurance, bookkeeping, technology, required marketing, or other operating expenses.

Official source: 2026 Caring Transitions FDD, Item 19, pp. 31–34. Quartiles are observed performance groups, not probabilities or forecasts.

Item 20 reported no company-owned outlets in 2023, 2024, or 2025, so the 2025 Item 19 evidence is not a silent blend of franchised and company-operated economics.

The sample also needs careful interpretation. The system had 423 franchise territories owned by 296 owners at December 31, 2025. Item 19 included only the 223 owners operating for the entire year. The owner table is therefore more relevant than a per-territory table for an owner-income question, but it blends owners with different territory counts. Item 19 does not disclose the number of territories behind each owner’s result.

The defensible approach is to start with observed owner-level Item 19 revenue and Gross Profit points, then subtract disclosed recurring franchise obligations and transparent operating assumptions. The resulting figures are estimates, not franchisor-reported profit.

Which revenue points anchor the three scenarios?

The conservative scenario uses the third-quartile owner median, the base scenario uses the cumulative owner median, and the upside scenario uses the second-quartile owner median. The upside case deliberately stops below the first-quartile median, reducing reliance on the system’s highest-performing owner group.

Which expenses are included in the model?

The model deducts the direct costs already embedded in each Item 19 Gross Profit percentage, then applies the FDD’s 6% royalty, 2% national branding fee, and 4% ongoing local-marketing requirement. It also includes disclosed technology, call-center, web-hosting, EstateSales.org, certification, association, meeting, insurance, and office-cost assumptions.

Business-development representative

$25 per hour × 15 hours per week × 52 weeks, plus 10% payroll burden = $21,450 annually. Item 7 requires a primarily dedicated salesperson within 90 days and at least 15 hours per week; the wage and burden are editorial assumptions.

Non-direct operating overhead

12% of revenue in the conservative scenario, 10% in the base scenario, and 8% in the upside scenario for vehicle use, non-direct payroll, bookkeeping, phone, supplies, professional fees, licensing, and miscellaneous expenses not identified as direct costs.

Manager compensation

$60,000 annual fully loaded manager-cost sensitivity in every manager-run case. This is a planning sensitivity, not a franchisor or BLS wage estimate. Buyers should replace it with local quotes using the BLS categories General and Operations Managers and Personal Service Managers, All Other.

Fixed FDD-linked costs

$28,519 conservative, $20,719 base, and $18,369 upside. The range uses disclosed fee and cost bounds; call-center expense rises with volume while office, insurance, and certification choices vary by scenario.

The 12% revenue-based fee assumption applies after the first year. During the first 12 months, local marketing is at least $399 per month, and royalty and branding minimums may bind at low revenue. No advertising cooperative existed at the FDD issuance date; a future cooperative could add up to 3% of Gross Receipts unless members approve more.

Owner involvement can change annual owner economics by the cost of a qualified manager, but it does not create extra business profit. Item 15 permits absentee ownership in structure, yet requires direct on-premises supervision by an approved, trained manager and recommends that the owner personally supervise.

In a manager-run structure, the model treats manager compensation as a normal operating expense and calls the remainder manager-run residual. In an owner-operated structure, the owner is assumed to replace that manager, so the model adds back $60,000 and calls the result owner-operator benefit. That benefit combines residual business economics with the market value of the owner’s management labor.

The assumption is demanding. The business still requires a dedicated business-development representative, and each additional territory requires its own full-time manager. A multi-territory owner therefore cannot simply multiply one-territory economics without accounting for territory-specific managers, shared overhead, maturity, and development timing.

Manager-run residual

Cash generated after modeled operating expenses and the $60,000 manager-cost assumption, before financing and owner taxes.

Owner-operator benefit

Manager-run residual plus the assumed value of management labor performed by the owner. It is not passive income.

Owner salary or draw

A payment mechanism, not automatically an additional economic return. Salary, draws, and distributions can draw from the same underlying business cash.

After-tax take-home pay

Not estimated. It depends on entity structure, jurisdiction, payroll treatment, deductions, other income, and the owner’s tax circumstances.

Local replacement cost matters more than the national placeholder. A buyer should use the BLS May 2025 occupation profiles to identify relevant manager categories, then obtain local wage, payroll-tax, benefits, recruiting, and training estimates. If a capable manager costs $75,000 rather than $60,000, every manager-run result falls by $15,000; if the owner only performs part of the role, only the replaced portion should be added back.

Confidence is Limited because current same-brand Item 19 data provide strong revenue and Gross Profit anchors but stop before the operating-expense lines needed to calculate owner earnings. The largest unresolved issue is what each franchisee classifies as a direct cost versus overhead.

The revenue evidence itself is useful: the owner table covers 223 full-year operators and reports quartiles, averages, medians, ranges, and attainment percentages. The profit conversion is less certain because Gross Profit percentage ranged from 4% to 100% across the included owner population, and Item 19 does not publish a standardized expense bridge beneath Gross Profit.

Owner-level results also mix portfolio sizes. The 423 territories were owned by 296 owners, but Item 19 does not identify how many territories sit behind the median, second-quartile, or third-quartile owner. A buyer evaluating one territory should not assume that every owner-level revenue point represents one mature territory.

Which variables move the estimate most?

Sales volume and the classification of direct costs have the largest mathematical effect because they determine Gross Profit dollars. The next major variables are manager compensation, non-direct labor, vehicle and project logistics, required local marketing, insurance, and whether a home-based owner keeps office expense near the low end. The official Caring Transitions business-model page confirms the service mix and home-based positioning, but promotional statements are not used as earnings evidence.

Financing can materially reduce cash available to the owner, but it is excluded here because the FDD does not provide uniform borrower terms. Interest and principal should be modeled separately using the buyer’s actual financed amount, rate, term, fees, and collateral requirements. Depreciation and capital expenditures are also excluded rather than treated as interchangeable cash costs.

A buyer should treat $32,800–$151,600 of owner-operator benefit and –$27,200 to $91,600 of manager-run residual as a diligence range, not a forecast. The next step is to replace every editorial assumption with territory-specific records and franchisee evidence.

• Request Item 19 written substantiation. Ask how Gross Receipts and direct costs were collected, reviewed, and assigned to owner quartiles. The FTC Franchise Rule guidance on Item 19 emphasizes reasonable basis and disclosure of material differences in subset data.
• Ask reporting owners what “direct costs” contain. Determine whether project labor, hauling, commissions, disposal, auction expenses, merchant fees, client distributions, and vehicle expense sit above or below Gross Profit.
• Separate single-territory and multi-territory owners. Ask how many territories produced each owner’s revenue, how long each territory had operated, and what shared overhead or managers were required.
• Price the owner role locally. Obtain manager compensation, payroll burden, recruiting cost, expected hours, and owner time requirements. Confirm which management duties an owner can realistically replace.
• Rebuild recurring fees from Item 6. Verify royalty and advertising minimums, technology and call-center charges, required subscriptions, certification, insurance, meetings, local licensing, and any cooperative advertising obligation.
• Interview current and former franchisees. Compare at least several revenue levels and owner roles; ask for normalized profit-and-loss statements rather than salary or draw figures alone. Item 20 notes that some current and former franchisees have confidentiality restrictions.
• Model financing outside operating earnings. Add actual interest and principal schedules only after the operating model is complete, then keep personal taxes separate.

For a 2025 full-year reporting-owner profile, the strongest defensible independent range is approximately –$27,200 to $91,600 of manager-run residual, or $32,800 to $151,600 of owner-operator benefit when the owner fully replaces a $60,000 manager role.

This is a Mode C FDD-anchored scenario estimate with Limited confidence, not an official Caring Transitions owner-income disclosure. The most important earnings driver is Gross Profit dollars—revenue multiplied by the owner’s actual direct-cost margin. The largest unresolved uncertainty is the expense structure below Item 19 Gross Profit, compounded by the owner table’s mix of single- and multi-territory operators.

A buyer should therefore verify Item 19 substantiation, the exact direct-cost definition, territories per reporting owner, local manager and business-development labor, and normalized operating statements from current and former franchisees before treating any point in the range as applicable to a specific territory.

Primary documentary basis: 2026 Caring Transitions FDD, Items 6, 7, 15, 19, and 20. The FDD’s reported sales and Gross Profit figures are historical results; individual results may differ.