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Timing the Sale: When to Take Your Center to Market

Timing the Sale: When to Take Your Center to Market

There's no universal 'right time' to sell — but there are conditions that favor sellers. Knowing how to read them can add meaningfully to your outcome.

Market conditions that favor sellers

Firm cap rates, deep buyer pools, and abundant capital favor sellers. Today's combination of scarce quality supply, institutional capital forming, and consolidation among operators has kept pricing firm for well-positioned assets.

When buyers are competing and quality is scarce, sellers of strong assets have leverage. It cuts both ways: when rates spiked, our Year-End 2024 report showed time-to-sale stretching to about 7.2 months — up from a three-month low in 2022 — proof that reading the cycle matters.

Asset conditions that favor sellers

Your center is most valuable when enrollment is strong, financials are clean, staffing is stable, and the lease has runway. Selling into operational strength — rather than waiting until challenges appear — protects value.

Counterintuitively, the best time to sell is often when you least need to.

Making the call

Timing blends market signals with your personal goals and your asset's condition. There's rarely a perfect moment, but there are clearly better and worse ones.

We help owners weigh these factors and choose a timing that maximizes value.

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