A podiatry practice in Australia is typically worth 1.5–3x adjusted annual owner earnings for a solo clinic, or 3–5x EBITDA for a multi-practitioner group — with the exact figure driven almost entirely by how much of your revenue would survive your departure intact. In podiatry specifically, that question is complicated by payer mix: a practice with a well-developed NDIS participant base, a DVA billing book, or formal aged care facility contracts is a fundamentally different asset from one built on private-pay walk-ins who specifically request you.
Podiatry is one of the more interesting allied health categories to value right now. Australia’s aging population is a real structural tailwind, the NDIS has created substantial recurring revenue for practices that built for it properly, and a growing cohort of corporate allied health aggregators is actively hunting for practices in the $500K–$2.5M sale range. If you’re thinking about exiting in the next three to five years, you’re entering the market at a reasonable time — provided your financials tell the right story.
What Podiatry Practices Are Actually Selling For
The honest range is wide — wider than most podiatrists expect when they start asking the question.
Solo owner-operated clinics (one podiatrist, one or two support staff) typically sell for 1.5–2.5x seller’s discretionary earnings (SDE). SDE is profit before the owner’s salary, superannuation, and personal expenses run through the practice. A sole-operator podiatrist generating $160,000 in SDE might realistically expect $240,000–$400,000 on the open market. That’s meaningful, but it’s also a number that reflects the structural reality: a solo practice where the owner treats the majority of patients isn’t really a business in the traditional sense — it’s a well-paid job with a lease and some equipment, and buyers price it accordingly.
Small group practices (two to four podiatrists, either employed or on associate arrangements) typically attract 2.5–4x EBITDA. A well-run suburban group clinic generating $300,000 in adjusted EBITDA can realistically fetch $750,000–$1.2 million, particularly where NDIS or aged care revenue provides a stable income base beneath the private-pay work.
Larger multi-site or specialist practices — biomechanics-focused sports clinics, wound care centres, high-volume aged care contractors, or practices serving multiple residential facilities under formal contracts — attract 4–5.5x EBITDA from corporate buyers. These are the assets that draw interest from the allied health consolidation groups that have been quietly active across Australia for the past several years.
Rule of thumb: if your practice generates $200,000 in adjusted owner earnings and you’re targeting a 3x multiple, you’re looking at $600,000 before lease, equipment, and payer-mix adjustments. Most independent podiatry practice sales in Australia fall somewhere between $200,000 and $1.8 million.
How Buyers Calculate the Number
The method is capitalised future maintainable earnings — the same framework applied across most professional services businesses in Australia. Three years of financial statements, adjusted to remove the owner’s salary, super, and personal items run through the business, then multiplied by a sector-appropriate factor.
For smaller solo practices, buyers typically use SDE — seller’s discretionary earnings — which adds back the full working owner’s salary, since the buyer effectively becomes the treating podiatrist. For group practices where a buyer will employ a replacement clinician at market rates, EBITDA is more appropriate: it already deducts a market-rate salary for the clinical role, so the multiple reflects what the business earns above and beyond normal staffing costs.
Common add-backs in a podiatry practice: the principal’s above-market salary, equipment depreciation for assets already fully written off, personal vehicle costs, continuing education spend that’s really annual travel dressed up as professional development, and wages paid to family members in roles that won’t survive a transition. Done properly, this produces a Sustainable EBITDA — what the practice earns as a business, rather than as a vehicle for the owner’s lifestyle and tax planning.
See EBITDA multiples by industry in Australia for context on how podiatry compares to other healthcare and allied health sectors.
The Owner-Dependency Problem
This is the thing that quietly deflates more podiatry sale prices than any other single factor — and most principals don’t see it clearly until the first indicative offer lands.
I spoke last year with a podiatrist in suburban Perth — six years into running the practice, three treatment rooms, a loyal patient base, and comfortable billings — who was genuinely puzzled when the first buyer came in at 1.7x. The practice was turning over $650,000. The number made no sense to him. When we worked through the financials, he was handling just over two-thirds of all patient appointments himself. His two part-time associates were covering the overflow and scheduling gaps. Every long-term patient knew his name and asked for him specifically at booking. What the buyer saw wasn’t a podiatry business — it was a podiatrist who happened to rent rooms. (Which is a fair read of the situation, even if it stings somewhat to hear it framed that way.)
The fix isn’t complicated, but it takes time. Reduce your own clinical hours deliberately. Build associate relationships where patients are loyal to the practice, not to you personally. Document your intake process, your clinical protocols, your recall and rebooking systems. Show — in the actual financials, over at least 18 months — that when you take two weeks of leave, the revenue doesn’t move. That demonstration is worth more to a buyer than any amount of revenue you could generate personally.
Key lever: reducing from 70% of patient load to 40%, evidenced over two years of financials, can shift a valuation from 1.8x to 2.8x on the same earnings base. That’s roughly $160,000 on a $160,000 SDE practice — for work you’re already capable of doing in the time you have.
The NDIS, DVA and Aged Care Factor
This is where podiatry genuinely differs from most other allied health categories — and where the most significant valuation upside sits for practices that have positioned themselves correctly.
DVA (Department of Veterans’ Affairs) is the oldest established government payer for podiatry in Australia. DVA-funded podiatry is high-volume, reliable billing, and particularly common in practices located near older demographic catchments — regional centres, coastal retirement areas, or established suburbs in Perth, Adelaide, and Brisbane. A practice where 25–35% of revenue comes from DVA is showing a buyer a payer that isn’t going anywhere and doesn’t shop around. That stability has real value, and buyers recognise it.
NDIS is the newer story, and for the right practice it’s significant. Podiatry is a registered NDIS support — participants with mobility impairments, diabetes-related foot complications, and developmental conditions often require regular podiatry as part of their funded plans. A practice that has built a clean NDIS participant base — with proper service agreements, compliant billing records, and no outstanding audit concerns — is an attractive asset to corporate allied health buyers, who understand NDIS as long-term recurring revenue that doesn’t depend on the principal’s personal reputation. The caveat is documentation. Sloppy records, inconsistent service agreements, or questionable claim coding are where buyers find risk and renegotiate. Get your compliance in order well before you go to market.
Aged care facility contracts are the third lever and, in my view, the most underappreciated. A practice with a formal contract to visit one or more residential aged care facilities — providing routine nail care, wound assessment, and foot health management to residents on a regular schedule — has built something a buyer can step into immediately. That revenue doesn’t depend on the principal’s reputation. It depends on a contract, and contracts transfer. A practice with $80,000–$120,000 of annual aged care facility revenue secured under multi-year agreements is a materially different asset from one without it.
What Actually Moves the Multiple Up
Beyond owner-dependence and payer mix, buyers weigh several factors when setting the specific multiple.
Lease security. A five-year lease with further options is a business asset. Month-to-month arrangements or leases coming up for renewal shortly after settlement are liabilities. Lock in your lease before starting a sale process — it costs nothing and strengthens your negotiating position measurably.
Equipment condition. Podiatry has higher equipment costs than some allied health disciplines. Digital pressure plate analysis systems, laser therapy units, in-house orthotic scanning equipment — these add value when they’re modern and maintained, and reduce it when a buyer is mentally calculating what they’ll need to replace in year two. A buyer factoring in $40,000–$60,000 of equipment refresh post-settlement is factoring that directly off your price.
Staff stability. Employed associates who have worked with the practice for three or more years, who maintain their own patient relationships, and who are on documented employment contracts are a genuine asset. Contractor-heavy rosters carry churn risk: when a contractor decides to set up independently (and they often do), their patient relationships frequently follow them out the door.
Clean three-year financials. Every year of irregular expenses or blurred personal-business costs makes the underlying earnings number harder for a buyer to accept at face value. Stop running personal items through the practice now. Run two to three clean years. Due diligence becomes significantly smoother for everyone, including your accountant and your lawyer.
Read more on how to increase the value of your practice before going to market.
When to Get a Proper Valuation Done
Most practice owners who contact us are either two to three years from wanting to sell (which is the ideal timing) or six months from wanting to sell (which is not). The longer window matters because it gives you time to act on what a proper analysis tells you.
A formal business valuation will quantify your adjusted earnings, benchmark your multiple against recent comparable transactions, and identify the specific value drivers — and detractors — in your practice. It’s not the same as an informal estimate from a business broker before listing. It’s a structured analysis of what the practice is actually worth and why, from someone with no financial incentive tied to a particular listing price.
If you’re in that 18–24 month window, the most useful starting point is understanding your EBITDA add-backs — what your financials look like after a buyer recasts them. That’s usually the most illuminating first exercise, because most owners have never looked at their own numbers the way a buyer does.
It’s also worth understanding the tax implications of selling a business in Australia before you get too far into the process. The small business CGT concessions can make a significant difference to what you actually keep — and the eligibility tests have timing elements that you can’t fix retrospectively.
For a comparable allied health valuation, see our guide on physiotherapy practice valuation in Australia — the methodology overlaps considerably, with some payer-mix differences.
Getting the Sale Right
Selling a podiatry practice is a different exercise from selling a trade business or a café. The buyer pool is specific, due diligence involves clinical registration and compliance checks that other sectors don’t, and a post-settlement handover is almost always part of the deal — because continuity of patient care matters to both parties, and buyers know they’re acquiring something patients are emotionally attached to.
If you want a rough sense of where your practice currently sits, our valuation calculator is a reasonable first step. If you’re thinking seriously about a sale in the next few years, contact us for a confidential conversation about what your practice might actually fetch and what you’d need to do between now and then to get there.