HVAC / mechanical
$25,057
mix-weighted standard property / year
about $6,039 gross profit at 24.1%
$1.2B at 100% local stock capture
Scenario population: 49288 supported captured buildings.
Edit the assumptions →SC52+ South Carolina contractors in market
South Carolina contractor benchmarks and market size
Everything for a South Carolina contractor in one place: bill rates and margins versus the national median, how big the roofing, HVAC, and cleaning market is here, how crowded your revenue tier is, and what skilled labor costs locally.
Key Finding
South Carolina's modeled rate-card reference is $1/hr above the national reference
The median reference is $80/hr, while the top-decile reference is $126/hr versus $148/hr nationally. The median gap does not establish the same premium at the upper end. These modeled rate cards mix customer bill rates, loaded costs and wages; compare like-for-like definitions before using them to set a price.
Illustrative arithmetic: 10 technicians × 2,000 billed hours each × $1/hr = $20K higher gross billings. This assumes the same billed hours and comparable customer rates. It is not observed revenue, a forecast or a profit difference.
For your quote, use productive hours you can actually recover, separately from paid hours, travel and callbacks. Then deduct your local labor burden and operating costs. A higher market reference cannot rescue an estimate that leaves those costs out. Compare the three labor-hour denominators.
South Carolina Bill Rates
Median Bill Rate
$80/hr
National reference: $79/hr+$1/hr
75th Percentile
$102/hr
National reference: $116/hr-$14/hr
Top 10%
$126/hr
National reference: $148/hr-$22/hr
Editorial clarification: . Rate-card and public-data observation dates are unchanged. How we measure: state bill rates are modeled from Level's rate-card research across 1,770 contractors, blended across HVAC, mechanical, plumbing, and electrical, and skewed commercial. One caveat we surface openly: the underlying rate field is entered inconsistently, some firms record customer billing rates, others record loaded labor cost or base wages, so a state median blends both. Treat these as directional market estimates, not a precise per-state distribution. National operating metrics below are measured; see the contractor benchmark JSON for definitions and sample sizes.
South Carolina market size: how big is the pond?
About $2.5B in combined annual services demand across roughly 1,305 employer firms. Here is how the demand splits and how many competitors sit at each revenue tier.
Commercial Cleaning
$910.7M
work available per year
$0 residential / $910.7M commercial
603 employer firms
65 at $1-5M · 14 at $5-10M · 5 at $10-25M
HVAC
$390.0M
work available per year
$214.5M residential / $175.5M commercial
477 employer firms
151 at $1-5M · 33 at $5-10M · 10 at $10-25M
Roofing
$1.2B
work available per year
$680.5M residential / $492.8M commercial
225 employer firms
75 at $1-5M · 14 at $5-10M · 4 at $10-25M
State employer-firm counts and receipt-size tiers are modeled allocations of national Census SUSB-based references using retained state shares, not directly observed state-by-tier Census counts. HVAC additionally uses an analyst-estimated share of combined plumbing, heating and AC NAICS 238220. Employer and no-payroll business populations differ; these counts do not enumerate every competing business.
Commercial building stock in South Carolina
We count about 49,288 commercial buildings over 4,000 square feet. This building stock is relevant to HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, and fire protection.
Counts are by structure, not parcel, and are a coverage floor rather than a complete census. We do not attach one generic all-trade revenue total. The property calculator combines this stock with a separate method for each trade, labels project and partial scopes, and keeps every planning assumption editable.
Serviceable buildings
49,288
commercial structures over 4,000 sqft
Largest building segment
18,114
multifamily
Plumbing and HVAC context
29
buildings per NAICS 238220 location, not an all-trade rival count
| Building type | Buildings | Share of counted stock |
|---|---|---|
| Multifamily | 18,114 | 36.8% |
| Office | 7,328 | 14.9% |
| Education | 6,781 | 13.8% |
| Government | 4,738 | 9.6% |
| Worship | 4,635 | 9.4% |
| Warehouse / distribution | 3,707 | 7.5% |
| Healthcare | 2,365 | 4.8% |
| Hospitality | 1,444 | 2.9% |
| Industrial / manufacturingSmall retained count or share: verify local classification and coverage before inferring few actual customers. | 176 | 0.4% |
How this is countedSources, filters, and the scope of the competitor benchmark.
Buildings are counted per structure inside South Carolina, from FEMA/ORNL USA Structures, filtered to commercial occupancies over 4,000 square feet and excluding structures under 3.2 meters tall. Counts are a floor because coverage varies by place. USA Structures source catalog. A small-count flag is displayed below 25 retained structures or 0.5% of captured stock; it is a review cue, not an independent estimate of missing buildings.
Competitor counts and employment are Census County Business Patterns for NAICS 238220, plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning contractors. They are retained as a clearly labeled mechanical-market comparison, not presented as roofing, electrical, or fire-protection competition. Census CBP methodology. Source observations remain available in the full geographic dataset.
Property opportunity by trade
What one property, and the local building stock, can represent
A consistent planning view across 15 trades in South Carolina. Annual service scopes add across the measured local inventory. One-time projects stay per property unless a defensible event rate exists.
Electrical
Total annual account revenue
$19,045
mix-weighted standard property / year
about $4,856 gross profit at 25.5%
$938.7M at 100% local stock capture
Scenario population: 49288 supported captured buildings.
Edit the assumptions →Plumbing
Typical permitted plumbing upgrade, when it occurs
$13,902
mix-weighted standard property, when scope occurs
about $3,072 gross profit at 22.1%
Territory total withheld because project timing is not established.
Edit the assumptions →Roofing
Public-award scope reference
$19,855
mix-weighted standard property, when scope occurs
about $7,525 gross profit at 37.9%
Territory total withheld because project timing is not established.
Edit the assumptions →Elevator service
Per elevator, recurring service only
$10,223
mix-weighted standard property / year
about $3,098 gross profit at 30.3%
$45.2M at 100% local stock capture
Scenario population: 49288 supported captured buildings; about 4,421 modeled service locations and 11,841 modeled units.
Edit the assumptions →Commercial refrigeration
Per refrigeration unit, scheduled PM only
$1,437
mix-weighted standard property / year
about $545 gross profit at 37.9%
$24.7M at 100% local stock capture
Scenario population: 49288 supported captured buildings; about 17,178 modeled service locations and 87,519 modeled units.
Edit the assumptions →See the other 9 trade models
Fire protection
Sprinkler inspection floor only
$658
mix-weighted standard property / year
about $207 gross profit at 31.4%
$32.4M at 100% local stock capture
Scenario population: 49288 supported captured buildings.
Edit the assumptions →Cleaning / janitorial
Modeled annual cleaning revenue per standard property, calculated from cleanable square footage
$41,500
mix-weighted standard property / year
about $5,105 gross profit at 12.3%
$2B at 100% local stock capture
Scenario population: 49288 supported captured buildings.
Edit the assumptions →Landscaping / grounds
Per maintained landscape acre
$1,174
mix-weighted standard property / year
about $274 gross profit at 23.3%
$57.9M at 100% local stock capture
Scenario population: 49288 supported captured buildings.
Edit the assumptions →Pest control
Routine recurring general IPM comparison
$291
mix-weighted standard property / year
about $153 gross profit at 52.7%
$14.3M at 100% local stock capture
Scenario population: 49288 supported captured buildings.
Edit the assumptions →Solar service
Commercial solar installation project, when it occurs
$71,635
mix-weighted standard property, when scope occurs
about $27,436 gross profit at 38.3%
Territory total withheld because project timing is not established.
Edit the assumptions →Controls / building automation
Planned BAS labor only
$3,360
mix-weighted standard property / year
about $1,273 gross profit at 37.9%
$165.6M at 100% local stock capture
Scenario population: 49288 supported captured buildings.
Edit the assumptions →General contracting
Interior-renovation contract, when this scope exists
$2,303,000
mix-weighted standard property, when scope occurs
about $320,117 gross profit at 13.9%
Territory total withheld because project timing is not established.
Edit the assumptions →Restoration
Restoration project reference, when work occurs
$35,358
mix-weighted standard property, when scope occurs
about $11,951 gross profit at 33.8%
Territory total withheld because project timing is not established.
Edit the assumptions →Commercial doors / docks
Per covered door or gate, scheduled maintenance only
$1,130
mix-weighted standard property / year
about $428 gross profit at 37.9%
$55.7M at 100% local stock capture
Scenario population: 49288 supported captured buildings.
Edit the assumptions →These are transparent planning scenarios, not bids or forecasts. Full-stock capture totals assume the modeled scope applies across all supported counted structures, including multifamily where present. They are not market-demand estimates or an attainable territory book. If a market-demand estimate appears elsewhere on this page, do not add it to this scenario or treat the two as the same population. For territory sizing, inspect address coverage and realistic accessible customers, then edit the property and capture assumptions. No regional price multiplier is applied; the average per-property value can still vary with building-type mix. Every conditional total withheld here is null in the download, never zero.
The South Carolina housing base behind the demand
Residential roofing and HVAC demand tracks the single-family housing stock and its age. Here is the public Census picture for South Carolina, the base the market is sized on.
Single-family homes
1,662,876
2,531,310 total housing units
Median year built
1993
Newer stock, growth plus replacement
2024 building permits
47K
40,558 single-family (new-construction signal)
Owner-occupied
1,607,358
Homes with an owner who pays for the work
What drives demand here: South Carolina's Atlantic coast from Myrtle Beach to Charleston drives hurricane and wind-driven roof replacement, while one of the fastest population inflows in the nation fuels new single-family roofing and HVAC installs.
Housing figures: US Census ACS 2024 1-year (B25001 housing units, B25024 single-family, B25035 median year built) (Census). Permits: US Census Building Permits Survey 2024 (annual state file) (Census BPS). Permits are a new-construction signal; roofing and HVAC demand is mostly replacement-driven, so read them together with housing age.
National Benchmarks
These metrics are reported nationally. Where your South Carolina business falls depends on your specific operations. See the full national breakdown.
Collection Rate
85.1%
Top quartile: 92.7%
n=464 companies
SA Gross Margin
37.9%
Top quartile: 53%
n=259 companies
Billing Speed
1 day
Raw median (incl. progress billers); ~7 days for post-completion invoicers
n=733 companies
Billing Capture
97.1%
Hours invoiced divided by hours logged on jobs, not "utilization". Top quartile: 100%
n=963 companies
Quote Conversion
73.9%
Top quartile: 83.2%
n=794 companies
South Carolina Bill Rate
$80/hr
Top quartile: $102/hr
52+ South Carolina contractors estimated in market
South Carolina labor market and licensing
What you will pay for skilled labor and what it takes to operate legally in South Carolina, the two inputs that decide whether the demand above is worth chasing.
| Trade | Median wage (BLS) |
|---|---|
| Roofers | $22.05/hr |
| HVAC mechanics and installers | $26.57/hr |
| Janitors and building cleaners | $14.21/hr |
Specialty-trade establishments
7,681
NAICS 238 (all specialty trades), Census 2022
Licensing
Licensed through LLR. Roofing over $5,000 requires a Specialty Contractor license. HVAC/mechanical requires a Mechanical Contractors license, with exams and classifications.
Wages: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2024, state data, hourly median (Colorado roofer wage suppressed in the 2024 state file, so CO uses May 2023) (BLS OEWS SC; Roofers SOC 47-2181; HVAC mechanics/installers 49-9021; janitors and building cleaners 37-2011). Establishments: US Census County Business Patterns / SUSB 2022, NAICS 238 (specialty trade contractors) (Census SUSB). Licensing from state board and statute; verify current requirements before operating.
Top Trades in South Carolina
HVACElectricalRoofing
How this is estimatedSources, the estimation method, and how much confidence to place in a state-level figure.
National contractor-services revenue is anchored to definition-matched public figures: roofing ~$70B (US Census 2022 Economic Census, NAICS 238160 employer receipts), HVAC services ~$24B and commercial janitorial ~$60B (retained Level planning assumptions without definition-matched primary source captures). Each national total is allocated to states by that state's relative share of housing (residential) and commercial activity (commercial), then residential vs commercial is split by the national-average share for the trade. Competitor counts use national Census SUSB-based employer-firm and receipt-size references redistributed to states by retained state shares. The state receipt-size cells are modeled, not measured Census cells. This is directional market sizing; treat the numbers as estimates and read residential/commercial as an assumed split, not a measured one.
Directional market sizing, not an independent per-state survey. The model retains national scale assumptions; exact primary support for HVAC and janitorial anchors is unresolved; the state distribution is a modeled share and residential vs commercial is applied as a national-average split, not measured per state. Figures are estimates, ranges where noted.
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