HouseMaster Home Inspections Ranked #1 Home Inspection Franchisor By Entrepreneur Magazine's 2010 Annual Franchise 500 Ranking

BOUND BROOK, N.J. and SALT LAKE CITY, Jan. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- HouseMaster®, the first and one of the largest home inspection franchisors in North America, has been named the top rated franchisor in the home inspection category by Entrepreneur Magazine in its 31st Annual Franchise 500 Ranking. This marks HouseMaster's second consecutive year as the top rated home inspection franchise, the company ranked number one in the category in 2009 as well.

"Consecutive number one rankings, especially during a challenging real estate market and economy overall makes this recognition very significant for our franchise system," said Kathleen Kuhn, President of HouseMaster. "We value our relationships with our franchisees and credit our success to their hard work and dedication to customer service and on-going education."

Overall, HouseMaster ranked 130th in the Entrepreneur 500 list, jumping 24 spots from its 2009 ranking, once again claiming its place as the number one home inspection franchisor. HouseMaster has been named as the number one home inspection franchisor in the Entrepreneur ranking more times than any other company in the category.

Entrepreneur's ranking is based on extensive evaluations of franchise organizations covering a range of criterion to create the Franchise 500 list. Key factors included financial strength and stability, growth rate, and size of the system. Entrepreneur also considered the number of years in business and length of time franchising, startup costs, litigation, percentage of terminations, and financial data. Every company with verifiable data received a cumulative score, with the highest scoring franchises making up the Franchise 500.

"This ranking is a great honor and is highly reflective of our commitment to providing our franchisees with the most comprehensive training and support," said David Leoncavallo, President of Sopra Brands. "We celebrate this achievement with our franchisees and look forward to continued success throughout the year."

More information about franchise opportunities and HouseMaster can be found at www.housemaster.com.

About HouseMaster:

Headquartered in Bound Brook, N.J., HouseMaster is the oldest and one of the largest home inspection franchisors in North America. With more than 385 franchised areas throughout the U.S. and Canada, HouseMaster is the most respected name in home inspections. For 30 years, HouseMaster has built upon a foundation of solid leadership and innovation with a continued focus on delivering the highest quality service experience to their customers and providing HouseMaster franchisees the tools and support necessary to do so. Each HouseMaster franchise is an independently owned and operated business. HouseMaster is a registered trademark of DBR Franchising, LLC.

For more information please visit www.housemaster.com or call 800-526-3939.

About Sopra Brands

Sopra Brands, based in Salt Lake City, Utah provides capital and management services to companies in the franchise industry. Sopra works with profitable franchise companies which have a proven system and an operational platform to support extensive growth.

The Sopra Team brings over 40 years of franchise background to their companies and is experienced in managing and growing both small and large franchise companies. As company executives, they have built several franchise organizations adding thousands of units to these companies while consistently increasing franchisee revenues by over twenty-five percent and increasing franchisee approval ratings to over ninety percent. The team has also worked with over 300 franchise organizations to staff franchise systems with industry leaders.

SOURCE HouseMaster