The Great Recession made it hard to sell a small business. Retail sales slowed, making mom-and-pop shops less attractive to potential buyers. At the same time, banks tightened lending standards, limiting the pool of buyers able to finance an acquisition. Entrepreneurs who planned to retire someplace sunny resigned themselves to working for a couple of more years.
The time may finally be right to start shopping for Bermuda shorts. Quarterly data from BizBuySell, an online marketplace, show that the market for business sales has largely recovered. More than 5,700 businesses changed hands in the first nine months of 2014, the most since BizBuySell started publishing data in 2007. Sellers are also paying closer to asking price.
That doesn’t necessarily make this a seller’s market. More deals are getting done at higher prices, but revenue is also up. With respect to revenue, it’s cheaper to buy a Main Street business today than it was in 2010. In other words, business owners probably shouldn’t be rushing to sell for the sake of making a sweet profit. What the BizBuySell data show is that there are enough buyers on the market so small business owners can get a good price—and, by extension, that the economy is finally strong enough for mom and pop to retire.
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