Your cash injection sets your ceiling, not your salary. The buying power calculator turns the money you have into the price it supports before you waste a month on listings you cannot finance.
Filter by industry, location, price and earnings. Every listing shows earnings, asking price and the verification status of the seller behind it.
Sellers release financials after an NDA. Sign it in the browser and the full package opens: tax returns, profit and loss, customer concentration, the lease.
The deal room turns diligence into a list of document requests. Each item is checked off automatically when the seller uploads the file that satisfies it, so nothing sits half-done.
A letter of intent, then the purchase agreement, both signed in the room. Funds move through escrow, and the final step releases them only when both sides have confirmed the close.
Identity checked before a listing goes live. You are not the first person to find out the business does not exist.
Document requests, uploads and sign-offs in one thread instead of forty emails and a shared drive nobody updates.
Funds sit with a third party until both sides confirm. No wiring six figures on a handshake.
Add your attorney, accountant or lender to the deal room with the access level you choose.
For an SBA-financed acquisition, plan on at least 10% of the purchase price in cash, plus working capital on top. A $500,000 business needs roughly $50,000 of equity injection at the minimum, and lenders often want more when the business is riskier. The mistake buyers make is spending the entire injection on the price itself and closing with nothing left to run the business through its first slow month.
Boring, profitable, and not dependent on the current owner. In that order. First-time buyers do best with businesses that have been around several years, have recurring or repeat revenue, and are already run by staff rather than the owner personally. A business that collapses the day the owner walks out is a business you are buying a job at, not an asset.
Match the seller's numbers to their tax returns, then match the tax returns to the bank statements. Sellers present seller's discretionary earnings, which includes add-backs for their own salary and personal expenses. Every add-back needs a document behind it. The three checks worth doing before anything else:
Four to nine months from first contact to funded, and financing is usually the long pole. Diligence takes three to six weeks if the seller is organised. SBA underwriting takes sixty to ninety days on top and starts later than most buyers expect. Beginning the lender conversation while you are still in diligence is the single biggest thing you can do to shorten it.
A lien search, a lease review, and a conversation with the landlord. Buyers concentrate on the earnings and get caught by the things attached to the business rather than produced by it. Undisclosed liens against the assets, a lease that does not transfer, or a landlord who will not assign it can each end a deal after you have spent money on it.
The documents to request, in the order to request them, plus the five findings that should make you walk away. One email, no course.
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Almost never with an SBA loan, because the equity injection is a program requirement. Fully seller-financed deals exist, but they are rare, they usually carry a higher price, and the terms tend to favour the seller heavily.
The SBA does not require it. Individual lenders often do, and a buyer with no relevant background is a common reason for an otherwise clean file to be declined. Keeping the existing manager in place is the usual way around it.
In an asset sale you buy the assets and generally leave the liabilities behind, which is why buyers prefer it. In a stock sale you buy the company itself, including its history. The tax treatment differs for both sides, which is why the structure gets negotiated rather than assumed.
Most small businesses trade between 2 and 4 times seller's discretionary earnings. Where a specific business sits in that range depends on how much of the earnings survive the owner leaving, how concentrated the customers are, and how clean the books are.
Buying costs more up front and much less in risk. You are paying for revenue that already exists, staff who already know the work, and customers who already pay. Most new businesses never reach the revenue an established one hands you on day one.