Garage Door Repair
The shortcut: Skip the residential lead-buying race and build your book around three commercial property managers who need quarterly preventive maintenance — they pay on terms, never haggle on a $300 spring, and refer their other buildings.
Industry: Home Services
Investment level: Small — $5,000-$15,000
Time to launch: 3-6 weeks from truck-ready to first paid call
Best for: Anyone with mechanical comfort, a working pickup or van, and the nerve to handle torsion springs (or train under someone who does). What you'll likely make: $2-4K/month by month 3, $5-8K/month by month 6, $8-12K/month by month 12 once a couple of property-management accounts are signed. Math is in Section 4.
Market Opportunity
Homeowners think a broken garage door is a DIY job because the parts are obvious — until they read the DASMA "Torsion Spring Terrorism" advisory and realize a single 7-foot spring stores enough wound energy to send the winding bar through a forearm. That's the whole pricing argument right there. People who've been hurt once, or who watched a YouTube video where someone got hurt, will pay $300 to never touch one again.
The math behind the demand is steady. Garage Door Replacement has ranked #1 on the Remodeling Cost vs. Value Report for years running, including 2025 per DASMA. A torsion spring is rated for roughly 10,000 cycles, which is 7-10 years for a typical household. Every door in the U.S. is on a clock. Your job is being the technician who picks up.
Two segments matter. Residential is your bread and butter — single-truck calls, $150-$450 ticket, paid on the spot. Commercial is the layer most solo techs ignore: HOAs, self-storage facilities, auto shops, fire stations, and apartment complexes that run rolling steel doors and need a real maintenance schedule. That's where the recurring money lives.
Start with this idea — free signup, no card required.
