Home Services
Mr. Rooter Franchise
A residential and commercial plumbing franchise covering drain/pipe cleaning, water heater replacement, leak detection, sewer line repair, and related plumbing services, operated as a Neighborly-brand franchise (sold as either a start-up or a conversion of an existing plumbing business). The predecessor, Mr. Rooter LLC, was incorporated in Texas in 1993 and offered franchises under that name until a March 2021 securitization transaction created the current franchisor entity. Franchised unit count grew every year of the FDD's three-year window, adding a net 29 franchises across 2023-2025.
Disclosed in the FDD's litigation section (Item 3)
Item 3 discloses a 2019-filed franchisee countersuit (over an alleged broken promise of training/advertising support and territorial encroachment) that settled that November with the franchisee paying Mr. Rooter's predecessor $400,000 and agreeing to cease using Mr. Rooter trademarks; a separate 2015-filed trademark suit by an unrelated Seattle plumbing company settled in 2017 for $125,000.
Every franchisor has to file a document called an FDD before they can legally sell you a franchise. Buried in it are the two things a sales rep won't volunteer: what you'll actually spend to open, and whether existing locations are opening or closing. That's what's below, pulled straight from Mr. Rooter's own filing.
What it costs to open
From the filing's investment breakdown -- not a "starting at" number a sales rep quoted you.
Franchise fee
$42,500
Total to open
$152,900–$298,675
Ongoing royalty
6% of gross sales
What you'd actually spend, over time
The upfront cost is only part of it. Plug in what you expect a location to bring in, and see the real total once royalties over a few years are added on top.
Defaulted to a rough home services industry average, not a figure from Mr. Rooter's own FDD -- change it to your own estimate.
Total cost of ownership over 5 years
$332,900 – $478,675
Startup investment
$152,900–$298,675
Royalty per year (6%)
$36,000
Total royalty, 5yr
$180,000
When would you break even?
Revenue alone doesn't tell you this -- it depends on what's left after rent, labor, and everything else. Mr. Rooter's FDD doesn't disclose a reliable profit figure (most franchisors don't), so this starts from a typical home services profit margin (~15%) and applies it to the revenue you entered above -- adjust the percentage to your own realistic estimate.
Defaulted to a general home services industry benchmark, not a figure from Mr. Rooter's own filing -- this is a starting point to adjust, not a promise about what franchisees actually make.
At that profit, you'd break even in about
1.7–3.3 years
Weigh that payback period against what you already know: Mr. Rooter is opening more locations. A long payback period on a shrinking brand is a very different bet than the same payback period on a growing one.
Is Mr. Rooter actually growing?
Franchisors have to report, every year, how many locations opened, closed, or changed hands. Most franchise sites never show you this. Here it is:
Locations opened vs. closed, by year
GrowingFrom Item 20 of Mr. Rooter's FDD, the section franchisors use to disclose real openings and closings.
| Year | Franchised units, start | Franchised units, end | Net change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 209 | 215 | +6 |
| 2024 | 215 | 228 | +13 |
| 2025 | 228 | 238 | +10 |
Most recent year (2025): gained 10 franchised units, ending the year at 238 total.
What you're actually signing up for
The cost and growth numbers above are only part of the picture. These three FDD items are the ones a prospective franchisee tends to weigh most heavily once they're past the sticker price.
Training & ongoing support (Item 11)
Item 11: initial training, an Operations Manual, and ongoing marketing/technology support through the Neighborly platform; franchisees must also purchase branded vehicles meeting Mr. Rooter's specifications.
Territory protection (Item 12)
Item 12: a real protected territory (generally 100,000-300,000 population) within which Mr. Rooter won't grant another Mr. Rooter franchise, though the company reserves the right to solicit and service "Key Account" national/regional customers inside that same territory using any franchisee or third party.
Renewal & termination terms (Item 17)
Item 17: 10-year term, with one additional 10-year renewal term available by signing a then-current franchise agreement; a franchisee who continues operating after expiration without renewing pays an increased 10%-of-Gross-Sales License Fee during that interim period.
How Mr. Rooter compares to other Home Services franchises
Across the 8 home services franchises we've hand-verified so far, the typical range to open runs $170,524–$350,107, with royalties averaging around 7.5% of gross sales (based on the 6 of them that charge a flat %-of-revenue royalty).
$258,100–$480,500 · 7% royalty
1-800 Water Damage$142,903–$312,398 · 10% royalty
Pool Scouts$96,662–$133,787 · 8% royalty
PuroClean$108,503–$152,618 · non-%-of-revenue royalty
1-800-GOT-JUNK?$182,300–$303,500 · 8% royalty
Re-Bath$275,875–$606,925 · non-%-of-revenue royalty
Two Men and a Truck$146,950–$512,450 · 6% royalty
Keep going
- Mr. Rooter and Two Men and a Truck are both home services franchises; Two Men and a Truck's total investment starts about $5,950 lower than Mr. Rooter's. Two Men and a Truck Franchise
- Mr. Rooter and 1-800 Water Damage are both home services franchises; 1-800 Water Damage's total investment starts about $9,997 lower than Mr. Rooter's. 1-800 Water Damage Franchise
Where this came from: Mr. Rooter only files a Net Worth/Experience Exemption notice with California DFPI, so this entry is sourced from Minnesota's CARDS registry instead: MN File No. 9750, Clean FDD issued April 2, 2026, filed 4/23/2026, effective 6/10/2026. hqLocation and foundedYear corrected from the automated parser (which found no HQ and a spurious 2012 founding date, likely from a corporate-restructuring date) -- Item 1 gives the real principal business address as 1010 North University Parks Drive, Waco, TX, and states the predecessor was incorporated in Texas in 1993. Item 5: $42,500 minimum initial franchise fee for a territory up to 100,000 population, plus $425 per additional 1,000 population (average fee actually paid in 2025 was $81,424). Item 6: the fee Mr. Rooter calls a "License Fee" -- functionally the royalty -- is 6% of Gross Sales, plus a MAP (marketing) Fee of 2% and Local Marketing Group contributions of up to 3% (the parser found no royalty figure at all, since the FDD never uses the word "royalty"). Item 7 Total: $152,900-$298,675 (excludes real estate purchase costs and any additional franchise fee for a larger territory) -- corrected from the parser's $157,150-$315,250, which doesn't match a manual sum of the table's own line items. Item 20 Table No. 1 confirmed. You can pull the same filing yourself from the California DFPI's public franchise search. Filed 2026-06-10. None of this is investment advice -- get the franchisor's current FDD and talk to a real attorney or accountant before you sign anything.
If you see a different unit count elsewhere: franchisors only have to refile their FDD annually, so the numbers here can run 6–18 months behind a franchisor's own real-time marketing claims -- which often aren't independently verified, and sometimes count signed-but-not-yet-open locations. A gap isn't necessarily an error on either side; it's two different snapshots in time from two different sources.