Buying a car wash in South Florida

• A site drivers pass every day, with easy turns in and out and room for cars to line up without backing into the road.
• A large, steady membership, with monthly sign-ups and cancellations you can see in the software.
• Equipment with service records, parts you can still get, and nothing major about to wear out.
• A working water reclaim system, which cuts water and sewer bills.
• A manager who handles staffing, chemicals and daily maintenance without the owner on site.
• Few damage claims, and a written process for handling them.
• Room to grow on the site: a longer tunnel, more vacuum stations, a lane for members.

Start with month-by-month data from the wash's point-of-sale system for at least two years: cars washed, active members, sign-ups, cancellations and declined cards. A wash that looks steady in total can be losing members and replacing them with discounts.

Have an equipment technician inspect the tunnel or bay, controllers, dryers and reclaim system, and price the next big replacements. Pull water and sewer bills and any utility notices. Review every damage claim from recent years and what insurance paid.

Look past the property line too. Check the county's permit and site plan records for new washes planned nearby, since a new tunnel down the road can pull members away. If the wash sits on an old gas station site or stores chemicals in bulk, ask for an environmental report. And ask how the building, signs and power held up in past storms, and whether there's a generator.

• How many members do you have now, and how has that changed this past year?
• What's the oldest big piece of equipment, and when do you expect to replace it?
• How do you handle damage claims, and how many did you pay last year?
• How do you charge sales tax on wax and coating packages and on memberships?
• Who runs the place day to day when you're not there, and would they stay?
• What do water and sewer cost you, and has the utility ever cited you?
• What happened here during the last hurricane, and how long were you closed?

South Florida covers Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties: Miami, Hialeah, Doral, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pompano Beach, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Jupiter, and the Florida Keys down to Key West. It's the state's largest metro area and its most international. PortMiami, Port Everglades and Miami International Airport tie the region to Latin America and the Caribbean, which supports a deep base of wholesalers, freight forwarders and logistics firms, many of them near the airport. Tourism and cruises, finance and wealth management, health care, real estate and construction carry much of the rest. Palm Beach County adds wealthy seasonal residents and, out west near Lake Okeechobee, sugarcane and vegetable farms. In the Keys, nearly everything turns on visitors, fishing and boating.

Companies that serve homes, condo buildings and other businesses do well here: the building trades, property services, insurance agencies, medical and dental practices, and professional firms.

Costs run high: commercial rent, wages and, above all, property and windstorm insurance. Price the insurance before you make an offer, not after. Miami-Dade and Broward make up the Florida Building Code's High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, with stricter rules for roofs, windows and structures. That raises building costs, and it also gives steady work to the contractors who know those rules well.

Much of the workforce and many customers speak Spanish as well as English, and a company that works well in both languages has an edge. The winter season matters more in Palm Beach County and the Keys than in Miami. In the Keys, the cost of housing makes hiring and keeping staff one of the hardest parts of running a company. Ask any seller there how they find workers and where those workers live.