Year 1–3 Home Care Franchise Revenue: Half-Speed at Best

Most home care franchises sell you on the average. The average is misleading.

The real story Year 1–3: even the best-performing brand's second-year cohort earns roughly half of what its mature franchisees earn. For most brands, it's far less than half. The early-year ramp is slower than the sales pitch — and that gap is entirely visible in the brands' own Franchise Disclosure Documents (FDDs) if you read Item 19.

We pulled the median revenue numbers straight from each brand's most recent FDD. Here's what new franchisees actually earn before they hit the Year 3 inflection.

A note on what "Year 1" actually means in an FDD

One critical methodology point before the numbers. Five of the six brands in this analysis exclude the first 12 months of operations from their reported revenue. Senior Helpers reports a months 12–23 cohort. Right at Home, Comfort Keepers, and ComForCare report months 13–24. FirstLight reports months 12–24. All of them effectively start the clock at month 12 or 13.

The one brand that doesn't is Homewatch CareGivers. Their cohort label "1–2 Years" most naturally reads as months 0–24, which means brand-new territories (a few months in, with very few clients) sit in the same bucket as territories nearly two years old.

That single methodology difference makes Homewatch's reported "Year 1–2" median ($77,736) roughly an order of magnitude lower than the other brands. It's not that Homewatch territories perform 8× worse. It's that Homewatch is the only brand actually disclosing what brand-new territory revenue looks like. The other franchisors quietly redact months 0–12 from their disclosures.

For the main comparison below we use the five "month-12+" brands so we're comparing apples to apples. We bring Homewatch back at the end as a separate data point — the most honest published look at what a truly brand-new territory does in its first 12 months.

Months 12–24 median revenue, by brand

A few things jump out.

The second-year cohort caps at half-speed, even at the strongest brand. The best months-12–24 median is Senior Helpers at $605K. Senior Helpers' mature (60+ month) median is $1.31M. So even the best-performing brand's second-year franchisee earns about 46% of mature revenue — not a bad ramp, but still half-speed. At Comfort Keepers ($206K, very small N), it's 23% of mature. The pattern is universal: even after surviving the first year, you're operating at a fraction of mature speed for at least another year.

The "average" doesn't help you. Across nearly every brand, only 22–53% of franchisees hit or exceed their cohort's average. If you plan around the average, you're planning around a number most people don't reach.

The pattern holds at every brand and every tenure cohort: less than half of the franchisees ever reach the average. The skew is real. A handful of multi-territory operators with 5+ years of tenure pull the average up; everyone else lives below it.

Nurse Next Door's number is interesting for what it doesn't say. Their FDD reports the highest first-year performer at $771,306. They don't report the median or distribution. When a brand publishes only the high-water mark, it's almost always because the median wouldn't sell.

The half-speed gap, brand by brand

Compare each brand's months-12–24 cohort to its own mature (5+ year) cohort and you can see the half-speed cap directly:

Even at the strongest brand, you're capping at 46% of mature revenue in your second year. At ComForCare or Comfort Keepers it's 23% — closer to quarter-speed than half-speed. No brand in the published data shows a second-year cohort earning more than half of what its mature operators earn.

What about Year 2 → Year 3?

Year 2–3 is where the curve starts to bend. Across the brands with enough data:

The big jump is real. But it's also unevenly distributed. Even at brands posting the strongest Year 2→3 medians, the % of franchisees who hit the cohort average is still only 29–53%. Half the cohort gets there. The other half doesn't.

What this means for your plan

If you're modeling a home care franchise on a spreadsheet, two changes will save you a lot of pain:

• Plan Year 1 around the median, not the average. Pick a brand, find its Year 1–2 median in the table above, and assume that's your number. If you can't survive that, revisit the plan.
• Budget enough cash to get to Month 24 without revenue helping you. Most brands don't show real cash flow until Year 2–3. The franchisees who fail mostly fail because they ran out of runway, not because they ran a bad agency.

The mechanism behind the franchise ramp is mostly cheaper customer acquisition — see the year-one growth gap between franchise and independent agencies for the lead-cost math.

What month 0–24 actually looks like (Homewatch as the rare honest disclosure)

Homewatch CareGivers is the only brand in this dataset that includes brand-new territories in its early-tenure cohort. Here's what they published, across 9 territories from 7 franchisees:

That's the most honest picture of what a brand-new home care territory produces in its first 24 months. It's lower than what any other franchise will show you because the other franchises don't disclose this stretch at all — their reporting cohorts start at month 12 or 13.

A brand-new territory at month 6 might be doing $25K. The same territory at month 18 might be doing $400K. Lumping them together pulls the median down. That's why Homewatch's number looks so different — they're the only brand letting you see the messy first stretch instead of cropping it out.

For your own planning, here's how to read it:

• If you sign a Senior Helpers franchise, the FDD will tell you the months-12–24 median is $605K. That's accurate — for territories that survived past month 12. It tells you nothing about what month 0–12 looks like.
• If you sign a Homewatch franchise, the FDD will tell you the months-0–24 median is $78K. That includes brand-new territories. Apples and oranges with the other brands' numbers.
• For any brand, plan around roughly $30K–$340K total revenue in your first 12 months as the realistic range. Even at a strong brand. The franchisors that don't show this just don't show it.

A few caveats — read these before you cite the numbers

• These are franchise numbers only. Independent (non-franchised) agencies don't appear in any FDD. Independents typically ramp slower because they lack national brand recognition and a pre-built playbook.
• Survivorship bias is baked in. FDDs only report on franchisees still operating at the time of filing. The ones who closed in Year 1 aren't in the data. So the bleak Year 1 medians actually understate how hard it is.
• Small samples in early cohorts. Some Year 1 buckets have N = 2 (Comfort Keepers) or N = 7 (Homewatch). Treat anything under N = 10 as directional.
• Right-skewed by big operators. A handful of multi-territory franchisees pull the average way up. That's why the median matters more here than in most data.
• Tenure ≠ years since the franchisee bought. It usually means months since each territory opened, so a franchisee with 3 territories opened over 5 years contributes data to 3 different buckets.

Sources: Senior Helpers FDD 2025 (Item 19, table by territory tenure); Right at Home FDD 2024 (Item 19, revenue by tenure); FirstLight Home Care FDD 2026 (Item 19, revenue by tenure); Comfort Keepers FDD 2025 (Item 19, revenue by tenure); ComForCare FDD 2026 (Item 19, revenue by tenure); Homewatch CareGivers FDD 2025 (Item 19, Table 1-A); Nurse Next Door FDD 2025 (Item 19, first-year performance). Data pulled from Carezano's franchise database.