Independent estimate of annual pre-tax manager-run owner earnings for a current-format Merry Maids Qualified Franchise. An active owner-operator benefit may be approximately $124,500–$194,900 if the owner replaces one paid supervisor; that higher range includes labor value, not passive profit. The 2026 Item 19 disclosure reports Gross Sales, not owner earnings or profit.
This range is an independent analytical scenario, not an Item 19 financial performance representation by Merry Maids SPE LLC. It combines 2025 Gross Sales facts from the 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document with a U.S. Census Bureau Janitorial Services operating-expense benchmark and an explicit margin sensitivity. Actual results can differ materially because of location, territory quality, customer retention, labor productivity, wage rates, occupancy, recurring fees, financing, owner involvement, and execution. The owner-operator range assumes one owner can replace one paid supervisor without retaining an equivalent manager cost.
Legal franchisor: Merry Maids SPE LLC
FDD: Issued May 21, 2026
Item 19 status: Gross Sales only; no unit profit or owner-compensation disclosure
Applicable population: 414 Qualified Franchises active for all 12 months of 2025
External benchmark: U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Service Annual Survey, NAICS 56172 Janitorial Services
Owner-role benchmark: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025 national wage data
Public brand reference: official Merry Maids U.S. franchise territory page
Date checked: July 21, 2026
Why confidence is limited: the same-brand source reports revenue but no operating-expense or owner-compensation measure, so the earnings calculation depends materially on an external industry benchmark.
Base sales anchor multiplied by the central all-in industry residual ratio; before financing principal and personal taxes.
Base manager-run residual plus one $53,320 supervisor-wage allowance; includes compensation for owner labor.
2025 Item 19 median for the current offered unit format. Revenue is not earnings.
Active throughout 2025, with the same owner and 12 months of reported Gross Sales.
Derived from 2022 Janitorial Services employer-firm revenue and operating expenses.
May 2025 mean annual wage for first-line supervisors of housekeeping and janitorial workers.
What does the 2026 Merry Maids Item 19 actually measure?
It measures Gross Sales, not business profit or owner take-home pay. The official Covered Period is January 1 through December 31, 2025. Gross Sales means billings, whether collected or not, for cleaning and maintenance services, excluding sales and use taxes. Item 19 explicitly states that costs of sales, operating expenses, and other expenses must be deducted to reach net income or profit.
The most relevant population is the Qualified Franchise: an Active Franchise with at least 40,000 Qualified Households and an office within its assigned Territory. That is the format offered under the 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document. Legacy Franchises are no longer offered and are not used as the primary revenue anchor here.
| Item 19 observation | Qualified Franchises | Median Gross Sales | Use in this analysis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bottom quartile | 104 | $130,052 | Distribution context only |
| Third quartile | 103 | $266,539 | Conservative sales anchor |
| All Qualified Franchises | 414 | $339,352 | Base sales anchor |
| Second quartile | 103 | $432,899 | Upside sales anchor |
| Top quartile | 104 | $808,013 | Distribution context only |
Source: 2026 FDD, Item 19, pp. 63–67. Quartile observations are historical groupings, not probabilities or forecasts.
Two interpretation boundaries matter before converting the table into cash flow. First, the disclosed sales measure is based on billings rather than collections. A business with slower receivables or write-offs can therefore have less cash than the reported revenue figure suggests. Second, the table describes licensed territories, not a standardized number of cleaning teams, employees, vehicles, or customers. Two territories with similar annual billings can produce different residual cash because route density, visit frequency, team utilization, travel time, and rework differ.
The ownership-group tables are also unsuitable for a simple per-owner answer. They combine single- and multi-territory portfolios and include both the currently offered format and older arrangements. Shared office overhead or management can create scale benefits, while additional territories can also require more supervisors and administrative staff. For that reason, the analysis starts with per-territory observations from the current-format cohort and does not multiply a one-unit result into a portfolio projection.
Item 19 excludes businesses that were not active for the full year, transferred during 2025, did not report all 12 months, or ceased operating. It also excludes 230 active Legacy Franchises from the Qualified Franchise table. The disclosure notes 103 Franchised Businesses ceased operating during the Covered Period. These exclusions make the sales distribution useful for mature survivors, but less representative of start-up, transfer, and closure risk.
How is the annual owner-earnings range calculated?
The manager-run estimate applies a 26.7%–32.7% operating-residual sensitivity to three official 2025 sales anchors. The central 29.7% ratio is derived from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2022 Service Annual Survey for NAICS 56172 Janitorial Services: $72.795 billion of employer-firm revenue less $51.168 billion of reported operating expenses, divided by revenue. Because the government benchmark is an all-in employer-firm measure that includes payroll expense, the resulting residual is used as the manager-run owner-earnings proxy. The Conservative and Upside margins are three percentage points below and above that central ratio.
- Conservative: third-quartile median Gross Sales of $266,539 × 26.7% = approximately $71,200.
- Base: overall Qualified Franchise median Gross Sales of $339,352 × 29.7% = approximately $100,800.
- Upside: second-quartile median Gross Sales of $432,899 × 32.7% = approximately $141,600.
Official 2025 Gross Sales anchors combined with an external Janitorial Services operating-residual sensitivity.
Interpretation: Sales volume and the expense ratio compound each other; the range is not a probability distribution and the midpoint is not a guaranteed or “expected” result.
Sources: 2026 FDD, Item 19, pp. 63–67; U.S. Census Bureau 2022 Service Annual Survey tables; 2022 NAICS definition for Janitorial Services. Calculations are independent and rounded to the nearest $100.
What is included and excluded from the estimate?
For these annual scenarios, the headline is estimated pre-tax manager-run owner earnings, not after-tax take-home pay. It is intended to represent cash-generating capacity after normal operating expenses, including the payroll profile embedded in the broad employer-firm benchmark, but before personal income taxes and financing principal payments.
- Recurring franchise fees: The Census operating-expense measure is all-in and may contain royalties, advertising, software, and similar expenses. The model therefore does not subtract Item 6 fees a second time. The mismatch between sector-average expenses and Merry Maids-specific obligations is disclosed separately.
- Interest and debt service: Financing interest and principal are excluded from the headline. A financed buyer must deduct actual loan payments separately.
- Depreciation and capital expenditure: Depreciation follows the government source's operating-expense treatment; replacement vehicles, equipment purchases, and other capital outlays are not modeled as a separate annual cash schedule.
- Owner compensation: Treatment varies by legal and tax form in broad employer-firm data. The manager-run result is therefore an operating-residual proxy, while the owner-operator result separately adds a disclosed labor-value sensitivity.
- Personal taxes: No after-tax estimate is published because entity choice, jurisdiction, deductions, payroll treatment, and owner circumstances differ.
How does owner involvement change the result?
Active supervision can add about $53,320 of labor value to the modeled residual when the owner genuinely replaces a paid supervisor, but that increment is not passive profit. This is an estimated owner-role sensitivity. Item 15 recommends personal supervision but does not universally require it. If the owner does not personally supervise, and when the franchisee is an entity, the FDD requires a trained manager responsible for direct, on-premises supervision.
The May 2025 national mean annual wage for First-Line Supervisors of Housekeeping and Janitorial Workers was $53,320. The chart uses the Census operating residual as the manager-run endpoint because the all-in industry expense measure already includes payroll, then adds the wage allowance to show an owner-operator benefit. This is not an automatic forecast: a particular operation may use a different management structure, wage level, owner-manager arrangement, or tax treatment.
Time commitment matters as much as job title. An active owner may handle recruiting, scheduling, quality control, customer recovery, billing oversight, and local marketing without drawing a market salary. That can raise cash available to the owner while simultaneously increasing hours worked. A fair comparison should therefore record both residual cash and the owner's weekly labor. A larger cash figure is not necessarily a larger return on capital when it requires a full-time operating role.
Illustrative effect of adding one $53,320 supervisor-wage allowance to the manager-run operating residual; values remain before debt service and personal taxes.
Interpretation: The manager-run endpoint is the all-in industry operating-residual proxy. The owner-operated endpoint adds the market value of supervisory work performed by the owner; that increment compensates labor and is not passive business profit.
Sources: 2026 FDD, Item 15, pp. 57–58; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2025 national occupational wage table.
A buyer should not treat the difference between the two endpoints as “free profit.” It represents labor and management responsibility. Confirm whether the proposed ownership entity, staffing plan, and Item 15 requirements permit the owner to perform the relevant manager duties without a separate equivalent payroll cost. If a trained manager remains on payroll, the owner-operator increment should not be added.
How much pressure do the disclosed recurring fees place on earnings?
At the three sales anchors, the readily quantifiable royalty, current advertising, and technology obligations total about 10.3%–11.2% of Gross Sales. These obligations are official Item 6 facts. They are shown as a diagnostic rather than subtracted again from the scenario, because the external Census residual already reflects total operating expenses and does not provide a clean non-franchise baseline.
| Recurring obligation | Current disclosed amount | Model treatment |
|---|---|---|
| Royalty incentive schedule | 7% through $400,000; 6% on the next $100,000; 5% above $500,000 | Quantified separately; incentive may change or end |
| Advertising Fund | Currently 1.3% of Gross Sales; may increase to 2% | Included in known fee-load diagnostic |
| Local marketing | Currently 0.7% of Gross Sales | Combined current advertising burden modeled at 2.0% |
| Technology fee | $499 per month, or $5,988 per year | Included in known fee-load diagnostic |
| Market Hub fee | $150 per month if applicable; disclosed maximum $200 | Excluded because applicability varies |
| Annual conference registration | Up to $1,500 per person; one representative required | Excluded from core scenario; buyer should budget separately |
Source: 2026 FDD, Item 6, pp. 25–33.
| Scenario sales | Royalty | Current advertising | Technology | Known fee load |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative — $266,539 | $18,658 | $5,331 | $5,988 | $29,977 (11.2%) |
| Base — $339,352 | $23,755 | $6,787 | $5,988 | $36,530 (10.8%) |
| Upside — $432,899 | $29,974 | $8,658 | $5,988 | $44,620 (10.3%) |
Derived from the Item 6 current royalty incentive schedule, 2.0% current combined advertising requirement, and $499 monthly Technology Fee. Rounded to the nearest dollar.
What could move actual owner earnings outside this range?
The largest unresolved uncertainty is the absence of same-brand operating-expense or profit data. Item 19 provides a strong sales distribution for mature Qualified Franchises, but it does not disclose labor cost, cleaning-supply cost, vehicle expense, occupancy, manager pay, bad debt, insurance, or owner compensation. The Census ratio is a national Janitorial Services employer-firm average, not a Merry Maids franchise margin.
Factors that can reduce earnings
Lower route density, weak customer retention, overtime, high local wages, recruiting churn, excess drive time, office rent, vehicle replacement, uncollected billings, higher advertising requirements, financing costs, and a separate manager layer can compress owner cash flow.
Factors that can increase owner benefit
Higher recurring-customer density, efficient team scheduling, lower travel time, strong labor productivity, disciplined pricing, low receivables loss, and the owner performing genuine supervisory work can improve the result. These are operating drivers, not guarantees.
Item 20 reports 684 franchised outlets at the end of 2025, down from 764 at the start of the year, with no company-owned outlets available as a same-brand operating proxy. The decline does not prove that a specific unit is unprofitable, but it increases the importance of reviewing closure reasons, transferred-unit economics, and former-franchisee interviews.
What should a buyer verify before relying on the range?
Request evidence that converts the official sales disclosure into a location-specific expense model. The Federal Trade Commission explains that Item 19 claims must have a reasonable basis and that prospective buyers may request written substantiation. It also recommends speaking with current and former franchisees listed in Item 20.
- Request the written substantiation for the 2026 Item 19 Gross Sales tables and confirm the treatment of out-of-territory revenue, billings, transfers, closures, and non-reporting units.
- Ask several Qualified Franchise owners for 2024 and 2025 income statements showing labor, payroll taxes, manager compensation, supplies, vehicles, office occupancy, insurance, advertising, technology, and bad debt.
- Separate owner salary, distributions, retained earnings, and unpaid owner labor. Ask how many hours the owner works and which manager duties the owner personally performs.
- Compare the proposed Territory's Qualified Households, drive-time radius, customer density, wage market, office cost, and realistic sales ramp with the Item 19 cohort.
- Ask owners who closed, transferred, or downsized why they did so and whether sales, staffing, fees, territory design, or personal circumstances drove the decision.
- Build debt service from the buyer's actual financed amount, interest rate, term, and fees. Keep principal payments and personal taxes outside operating earnings.
What is the strongest defensible earnings read?
The strongest defensible manager-run owner-earnings range is approximately $71,000–$142,000 annually, with a base scenario near $100,800. It is a Mode C independent scenario, not an official Merry Maids profit disclosure. If the owner genuinely replaces one paid supervisor, estimated owner-operator benefit rises to approximately $124,500–$194,900, with a base scenario near $154,100; the $53,320 increment is labor value, not passive profit.
The most important earnings driver is the combination of Gross Sales and labor productivity. The largest unresolved uncertainty is the absence of same-brand operating expenses and owner-compensation data. Before making a decision, verify Item 19 substantiation, actual Qualified Franchise income statements, manager and owner labor treatment, and the experiences of current and former franchisees.
All figures are annual U.S. dollar amounts. Estimates are before personal income taxes and financing principal payments. No result is guaranteed.