Executive search for home improvement platforms.
INC'D recruits senior leaders for PE-backed home improvement, remodeling and residential installation businesses.
The promise made in the home has to reach installation.
Home improvement brings together lead generation, call center conversion, in-home sales, financing, project scheduling, installers and customer care. Performance breaks when one part grows without the next.
We look for leaders who understand the complete funnel and can protect margin, customer experience and capacity across multiple markets.
Roles we recruit.
What matters in the brief.
- Lead and appointment economics
- In-home sales
- Financing
- Installer capacity
- Project-cycle control
- Cancellation and customer satisfaction
- Multi-market branch performance
The market today.
Figures checked September 2026. Each links to its source.
Homeowner spending on improvements and repairs is projected at about $519 billion through mid-2027, with growth slowing to around 0.5% a year.
Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2026 ↗Improvement and repair spending grew 25.3% across 2022 and 2023, reaching record levels before cooling.
Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2025 ↗Eight of the ten remodeling projects with the best return at resale in 2025 were exterior replacements.
Zonda, Cost vs. Value 2025 ↗
Where home improvement searches go wrong.
A CEO from a single trade
Single-trade leaders naturally optimize for technical depth. Home improvement rewards breadth and consistency across many kinds of job.
A CFO without franchise or lead economics experience
Franchise royalties and the cost of buying leads create a financial model that differs from direct-ownership services, and trade-sector CFOs often misread the unit economics.
Treating lead management as a marketing role
When a large share of work comes through lead aggregators, conversion, attribution and cost control decide gross margin. It is an operational leadership job.
Undervaluing standardization
The leverage in home improvement comes from consistent delivery across trades and territories, not from deep specialism in any one trade.
The roles, explained.
- CEO or President
- Grows through franchising or acquisitions while protecting the customer trust that drives repeat work, and balances small repairs against larger remodeling projects.
- Chief Financial Officer
- Owns project accounting, cost tracking across trades and franchise royalties, and values the business on lead conversion and customer lifetime value, not just trailing earnings.
- VP of Operations
- Accountable for crew productivity, completion times, coordination across trades and quality across territories, and for standard pricing and procedures that keep local craftsmanship intact.
- General Manager
- Owns a territory or regional P&L across dispatch, scheduling across trades, technician productivity and the mix of repair and remodeling work.
- VP of Customer Acquisition
- Runs the lead engine: digital marketing, local search, referral programs and turning inquiries into booked jobs. Lead-to-job conversion shapes the whole business.
- Director of Estimating
- Owns pricing accuracy across trades and the margin discipline on every job, from standard repair pricing to detailed remodeling estimates.
- VP of Franchise Development
- Recruits, onboards and supports franchisees and balances their independence with brand standards.
- Director of Multi-Trade Coordination
- Builds training across trades, manages licensing across jurisdictions and designs dispatch that sends the right technician to the right job.
What INC'D brings.
- We can tell a franchise leader who built a real operating system from one who runs a loose collection of franchisees.
- We know the multi-trade leaders from HVAC, plumbing and electrical groups, painting franchises and restoration networks who could credibly lead a home improvement business, and which have genuine franchise experience.
- We understand where franchise leadership and direct-ownership leadership diverge. The roles are not interchangeable.
- We know which single-trade leaders have made the move to running a generalist business, and which are likely to revert under pressure.
How INC'D searches this market.
We recruit home-improvement executives against the lead model, in-home sales process, financing mix, installer capacity and project cycle of the business. Candidates must connect growth with margin, fulfillment and customer experience. A typical shortlist contains three to five qualified leaders within two to four weeks of engagement.
How our executive search works →
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