Florida pool routes are priced 44% higher per pool than in 2020. The billing behind each pool rose 16%.Florida poolroutes are priced44% higher perpool than in 2020.The billing behindeach pool rose16%.Florida pool routes arepriced 44% higher perpool than in 2020. Thebilling behind each poolrose 16%.

Method: one broker index, read line by line

National Pool Route Sales (poolroutesales.com) publishes a page per region with every listing it shows: listing number, number of pools, the cities served, a yearly income figure, a price and a status (for sale, pending, sold). Its robots.txt allows all crawlers. We read all seven regional pages on Oct 30, 2026 and every detail page we could reach for the active listings. The index names no sellers, and neither does this report.

Price per pool (price ÷ pools) is the main measure, because it needs no assumption about what the income figure means. Income multiple (price ÷ yearly income) is computed only where the income looks like billing: at least $70 per pool per month. On some larger offerings the yearly figure is clearly profit, not billing (as low as about $33 per pool a month), and dividing by it would inflate the multiple. Monthly multiple (price ÷ monthly service amount) comes from active detail pages, which state the monthly service billing separately from repairs.

Listing year. The index has no dates. Listing numbers rise over time, so we read the published date on the detail pages we fetched (562 usable dates), drew a line from listing number to date, and placed every other listing on it. Listings numbered below 8,500 predate a 2019 site move and carry its date, so they form one group, “before mid-2019”. The year is when a route was listed, not when it changed hands.

Florida areas. The index files sold Florida routes under one county heading, so we rebuilt the county from the first city each listing names, using the Census 2020 place files, and grouped counties into six market areas. To check whether a shift in where routes were listed drives the trend, we also compute the change at a fixed area mix: each area’s own change in median price per pool, weighted by that area’s share of the 2020 routes.

All figures are medians unless a range is shown; ranges are the 25th to 75th percentile (the middle half).

Sample and coverage

The seven regional pages listed 4,489 routes: 4,379 marked sold, 106 for sale and 4 pending. 4,098 have a pool count, an income and a price; 26 of those fail the plausibility filter, which leaves 4,072. Florida is the largest region, with 1,548 listings; 17 Florida listings name no place we could match to a county and stay out of the area figures.

What this is not. It is one broker’s public record, not a census of route sales. Private sales, sales through other brokers and routes that were withdrawn do not appear. The broker’s own pages say nothing about whether the price on a sold route is the final price, so we call it what it is: the last published price of a route marked sold.

A second check. We also read 7 archived route listings from businessbroker.net (snapshots from Mar 15, 2026 to May 14, 2026) that publish both a monthly billing and an asking price; 6 of them come from one Florida-based broker. Section 07 uses them.

Prices rose faster than the billing behind them

Florida routes marked sold, by estimated listing year. Both lines are medians indexed to 2020 = 100. Income per pool uses rows whose income looks like billing (≥ $70 per pool per month). 2019 covers June to December only; 2026 runs to Oct 30.

Source: National Pool Route Sales regional index, read Oct 30, 2026; Ruberio analysis.

Three checks. Area mix: the 2025 routes lean toward pricier areas (the Northeast went from 13% to 19% of the Florida routes, the Southwest from 20% to 8% and Orlando from 20% to 11%). At 2020’s area mix the rise is about 38% instead of 44%. Size: inside the 21–100 pool range the median went from $1,100 to $1,575 and the multiple from 0.78 to 0.93. Timing: the multiple climbed in every listing year from 2020 to 2025, and the 2026 routes marked sold so far hold the 2025 level. What the data cannot separate: buyers bidding more, and the broker’s own pricing settling at 12× monthly billing (section 08). Both look the same in last listed prices.

Florida’s multiple rose fastest of the large route markets

Median price ÷ yearly income × 12, routes marked sold, rows whose income looks like billing. Blank: fewer than 10 routes in that cell. Darker = higher multiple. Changes in the text: 2020 → 2025, regions with at least 10 routes in 2025; Arizona and Nevada have small yearly samples.

Source: National Pool Route Sales regional index, read Oct 30, 2026; Ruberio analysis.

Measured in months of stated income, route prices rose in every large region since 2020, but not by the same amount. Florida moved +2.0; Southern California +1.1, Arizona +0.9, Texas +0.7, Nevada +0.4, Northern California +0.4. Nevada stayed lowest in every year with enough sales.

Asking prices sit above those of recently sold routes in 5 of 7 regions

Dot = median, bar = middle half (25th to 75th percentile). These are last published prices, not confirmed sale prices.

Source: National Pool Route Sales regional index, read Oct 30, 2026.

“Sold” = marked sold, at its last listed price. “Active” includes pending listings. Arizona, Nevada, Northern California and other states have five or fewer active listings.

Florida’s 41 active listings ask a median $1,759 a pool, 9% above the $1,616 of the 172 Florida routes listed since 2025 and marked sold. Part of that gap is billing: in income terms the two are close (11.5 months asked, 11.3 months on sold routes).

In Florida, a pool in the Northeast is priced 42% higher than one in the Southwest

Medians. Not in the chart: Space Coast and Other Florida (see the text and table). Area from the first city a listing names (Census 2020 place files).

Source: National Pool Route Sales regional index, read Oct 30, 2026; U.S. Census Bureau 2020 place files.

The order follows billing more than anything else: areas where a pool bills more are also priced higher per pool, and the multiples sit close together (10.9 to 11.8 months). Every area in the chart rose between the 2019–2021 and 2024–2026 listings, by 28% to 43%. Space Coast (Brevard) has only 7 routes in each window, too few for a median we would rank; Other Florida (15 recent routes) collects every county outside the six areas, so it is not a market. Both are in the table but not in the chart or the comparison.

Small routes are priced higher per pool, not per dollar of billing; the terms barely vary

Size. Among routes listed 2024–2026 and marked sold, a pool on a route of 20 or fewer is priced 23% higher than one on a 61–100 pool route. Its stated income per pool is 23% higher too, so the multiple stays put: 10.9 to 11.0 months of income in every band up to 100 pools. Prices track billing, not size. Above 100 pools the income figure is often profit, not billing (median $102 a pool a month over all years, against $144 for 41–60 pool routes), so the multiple there (*) is not comparable.

Second broker. Seven archived listings from businessbroker.net state both numbers. Four ask exactly 12× monthly billing, all of them residential routes from one Florida-based broker. The other three ask 13.1× to 16.9×. The Clermont listing’s price includes vehicles and equipment it values at about $144,200; without them it asks about 11.6×. Six of the seven listings rule out bank loans and seller financing: cash only.

Terms from the 93 active National Pool Route Sales detail pages that publish them, read Oct 30, 2026; escrow, equipment and repairs from the broker’s FAQ (same date). Second broker: Internet Archive copies of businessbroker.net listing pages.

What “12 times monthly” means in dollars, and in months of profit

The broker’s FAQ says a route “typically costs between 10 to 12 times its monthly recurring service billing”, and up to 14× in high-demand markets. The active listings sit at the top of that range: median 12.0×. For contrast, PoolDial’s June 2026 analysis of the poolrates.fyi dataset puts Florida at a median 10.0× monthly revenue (1,725 records, $1,243 per account). By its own caveat that dataset mixes asking prices, sold listings and broker data, so it is not a measure of what buyers paid either. Turned into dollars at what a Florida pool actually bills on those listings:

Billing per pool = monthly service amount ÷ pools on the 41 active Florida listings with a detail page (25th percentile, median, 75th percentile).

Source: National Pool Route Sales active listings and FAQ, read Oct 30, 2026.

Payback is before your own pay, taxes and financing, and assumes every account stays. If you run the route yourself, the tech wage in the No. 05 model is your pay; the payback above is what is left after it.

Limitations

• Asking or transaction? The broker marks routes sold but never says whether the price shown is the accepted offer or the last asking price, and sold detail pages show no figures. Among routes listed since 2025, Florida routes marked sold carried 11.3 months of income against 11.5 months on active listings. Of 39 Florida listings that were for sale or pending in a March 2026 archived copy of the index and are now marked sold, 36 still show exactly the same price (2 rose, 1 fell; Ruberio Research No. 04 data, Oct 30, 2026). We therefore read every “sold” price as the last asking price of a route marked sold; the gap to the transaction price cannot be measured from public data. If buyers routinely pay less, every figure here is high by that discount; the trend would still hold unless the discount itself grew. The trend may also partly be the broker’s listing convention moving toward 12× monthly billing rather than a change in what buyers will pay.
• The seller’s fee. The broker says its fee is “over and above the amount you are guaranteed”. That does not settle whether the fee sits inside the price shown or is added to it, so we make no adjustment for it.
• Area mix. The 2025 routes lean toward pricier Florida areas. At 2020’s area mix the rise in price per pool is about 38%, not 44%. Some area cells hold as few as 2 routes in a year, so read the adjusted figure as a check on direction and size, not a precise number.
• Survivors only. Withdrawn listings disappear from the index, so the figures describe routes that found a buyer, possibly below the price shown. Recent years are also cut off: of Florida routes listed in 2026, 64 are marked sold and 40 are still for sale, so the 2026 level reflects routes that sold quickly. Unsold 2025 listings that were withdrawn are missing (1 is still for sale).
• One broker, not the market. Private sales and sales through other brokers are not in the data. A wider listing set from report No. 04 (five brokers, 4,375 de-duplicated listings with a listing year, largely overlapping this index, so not an independent check) shows the same direction: Florida’s median price per account went from $1,114 (2020) to $1,646 (2025), +48%.
• Estimated years. The listing year comes from 562 calibration dates, but they are thin in the middle years (59 in 2023, 42 in 2024, 45 in 2025, against 131 in 2026). A listing near a year boundary can land in the wrong year; the year is the listing year, not the sale date. The 2019 group covers June to December.
• What “income” means. The index labels it “Income/yr” without a definition. On active listings, service billing is 92% of it; the rest is likely repairs. On large offerings it is often profit. That is why price per pool is the main measure and the multiple uses only billing-like rows.
• Areas are rebuilt from the first city a listing names; 17 Florida listings could not be placed.
• Payback uses a model (report No. 05) with low-confidence route inputs. Your own profit per account decides your real payback.

What an owner can do with this

• Ask the seller for the monthly service billing alone, without repairs or filter cleans, and divide the price by it. Above 12× you are paying more than most current asks; below 10× ask why.
• Get the service addresses before you sign and work out the average miles between stops, and how far the route is from yours. Report No. 05: each extra mile costs about $6.51 per account per month.
• Price the route per pool against recent routes in your area (section 06), knowing those are last published prices.
• Read the guarantee: replacement or refund for accounts lost in the first 90 days, with part of the price in escrow until then. After day 90, every lost account is yours to absorb.
• Budget the truck, equipment, insurance and the cash separately: six of the seven listings in the second sample refused bank loans and seller financing.
• Check the 5-year non-compete covers the area the route is in.

Sources

1. National Pool Route Sales, regional listing pages (Florida, Southern California, Northern California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, other states), 4,489 listings. poolroutesales.com/regions/. Accessed Oct 30, 2026.
2. National Pool Route Sales, listing detail pages (767 fetched; monthly service amount, guarantee, training, covenant, published date). poolroutesales.com/listing/. Accessed Oct 30, 2026.
3. Ruberio Research No. 04 data (Oct 30, 2026): comparison of National Pool Route Sales Florida listings in a March 2026 Internet Archive copy with the Oct 30, 2026 index, and listing statistics by year from five route brokers. Used read-only.
4. National Pool Route Sales, Frequently Asked Questions (multiples, escrow, guarantee, non-compete, equipment). poolroutesales.com/faqs/. Accessed Oct 30, 2026.
5. National Pool Route Sales, Why sell with us (fee “over and above the amount you are guaranteed”). poolroutesales.com/why-sell-with-us/. Accessed Oct 30, 2026.
6. businessbroker.net, pool service route listings, Internet Archive snapshots dated Mar 15, 2026 to May 14, 2026 (web.archive.org). The live site blocks automated access. Accessed Oct 30, 2026.
7. PoolDial, “Pool Route Sale Prices 2026: 2,893 Transactions Analyzed” (Jun 19, 2026), and the poolrates.fyi dataset, which by its own caveat mixes asking prices, sold listings and broker data. pooldial.com/resources/articles/business/pool-route-sale-prices-2026. Accessed Oct 30, 2026. Cited as a contrast in section 08.
8. U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 place name files for Florida (st12_fl_place2020.txt). www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/codes2020/place/. Accessed Oct 30, 2026.
9. Ruberio Research No. 05, Pool Route Profitability Gap (October 2026), for the profit per account and the cost of a mile.

About this research