Family Ties Air, Plumbing & Drain has officially launched, uniting three of the Inland Empire's most established home service companies — AAVCO, MB Air & Plumbing, and First Choice Air & Plumbing — under a single brand serving homeowners across Riverside and the broader Southern California market. The combined company offers HVAC, plumbing, and drain services, and is positioned to grow while preserving the local teams its customers already know.
The leadership.
The new company is led by Jeremy Prevost, who joins as CEO and Partner. Prevost brings more than two decades of home services leadership, having built, scaled, and sold multiple industry-leading companies across the Mid-West and Western United States. A key feature of the transition is continuity: industry veterans Mark Ballard, Fred Ballard, and Steve Ballard remain with the organization in leadership roles overseeing field operations, technician development, quality assurance, and customer service. Familiar technicians and service professionals continue serving the community under the new banner.
The thesis.
The combination follows a now-familiar pattern in residential trades consolidation: bring together respected, founder- and family-led operators with durable customer relationships, retain the local leadership and culture that made each successful, and layer on greater operational resources — expanded training, advanced technology, and broader service capabilities. The result is a stronger organization that still delivers a hometown service experience. The company's service lines span air conditioning and heating repair and replacement, plumbing repair and repiping, drain cleaning and hydro jetting, water heater and tankless services, sewer line work, indoor air quality, preventative maintenance, and emergency service.
“Our goal is simple,” Prevost said. “Honor the legacy these companies have built, invest in our people, and become the most trusted home service provider in the Inland Empire.”
What it signals.
For owners of independent HVAC and plumbing businesses across Southern California, the Family Ties launch is another data point in a steadily consolidating market. Combining multiple local brands into a single platform — while keeping experienced leadership in place — continues to be a defining feature of how the better operators in the trades approach these transitions. It's the same logic running across residential service M&A nationwide: scale and resources at the platform level, continuity and trust at the customer level.
Combining local brands — or thinking about selling into a platform?
Whether you're uniting multiple operators under one banner or weighing what your business is worth to a strategic partner, the strategic questions are the same. We work with both sides of that conversation across the trades — no pitch, just an honest read on where you are.
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