The 2025 US small-business sale market in five numbers
BizBuySell's 2025 Year in Review reports the following totals for closed US small-business transactions on its platform in calendar year 2025:
Sellers received an average of 94% of asking price, and total enterprise value across reported transactions reached $7.95 billion, up 3% year over year.
Median sale price and cash-flow multiple by sector, 2025
Most small-business sales under $5M are priced on a multiple of cash flow (also called Seller's Discretionary Earnings, or SDE). The right multiple varies sharply by sector because it bakes in expected risk, growth, recurring revenue, transferability, and how much of the work is the owner. The table below shows BizBuySell's reported full-year 2025 medians for the sectors with the most closed transactions on the platform, so the numbers are stable and not driven by a handful of outliers.
| Sector | Closed sales | Median sale price | Avg. cash flow multiple | Median days on market |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurants | 1,774 | $225,000 | 2.26x | 189 |
| Routes (distribution / vending) | 496 | $115,000 | 1.51x | 105 |
| Other building & construction | 408 | $750,000 | 2.56x | 192 |
| Websites and ecommerce | 339 | $950,000 | 3.33x | 85 |
| Other service businesses | 307 | $415,000 | 2.63x | 189 |
| Coffee shops and cafes | 253 | $176,500 | 2.28x | 154 |
| Auto repair and service shops | 247 | $399,000 | 2.70x | 207 |
| Bars, pubs and taverns | 217 | $270,000 | 2.86x | 189 |
| Landscaping and yard service | 211 | $480,000 | 2.56x | 173 |
| Accounting and tax practices | 194 | $500,000 | 2.33x | 169 |
| Liquor stores | 189 | $420,000 | 3.41x | 169 |
| Hair salons and barber shops | 181 | $165,000 | 2.18x | 167 |
| Laundromats | 169 | $287,000 | 4.12x | 138 |
| Cleaning businesses | 154 | $325,000 | 2.30x | 153 |
| Dry cleaners | 141 | $275,000 | 2.20x | 189 |
| Medical practices | 139 | $537,000 | 2.58x | 191 |
| HVAC businesses | 123 | $800,000 | 2.80x | 181 |
| Clothing and accessory stores | 119 | $225,000 | 2.22x | 142 |
| Gas stations | 113 | $826,000 | 3.70x | 75 |
| Convenience stores | 100 | $228,000 | 2.82x | 165 |
| Home health care | 92 | $667,000 | 2.84x | 160 |
| Day care and child care centers | 78 | $390,000 | 3.40x | 178 |
| Plumbing businesses | 61 | $837,500 | 2.62x | 209 |
| Insurance agencies | 50 | $650,000 | 2.68x | 184 |
| Software and app companies | 49 | $820,000 | 3.41x | 180 |
| IT and software service | 44 | $775,000 | 2.99x | 168 |
Who is actually buying small businesses in 2025
The IBBA and M&A Source Q4 2025 Market Pulse Survey, completed by 350 business brokers and M&A advisors, reports the following buyer mix for calendar year 2025:
Small Business (deal value up to $2M)
- First-time individual buyers: 46% of acquisitions
- Serial entrepreneurs: 32% of acquisitions
Lower Middle Market (deal value $2M to $50M)
- Individual buyers (combined): 44% of acquisitions (26% first-time, 18% serial)
- Private equity: approximately one fifth of acquisitions
The Market Pulse Survey also reports that the top industries for transaction activity in 2025 were personal services (salons, spas, childcare, pet grooming, dry cleaning, gyms), restaurants, construction (number one in the Lower Middle Market and a leader in small business deals, with significant roll-up activity), business services, and manufacturing in the Lower Middle Market.
How deals are actually financed
The single most useful number for a buyer to anchor on is how much cash sellers walked away with at closing in Q4 2025. Per the IBBA Market Pulse, sellers averaged between 76% and 89% cash at close, where "cash at close" includes senior debt (such as an SBA 7(a) loan or conventional bank debt) plus the buyer's equity injection.
The implication for first-time buyers:
- On a typical Main Street deal, roughly 11% to 24% of the purchase price is bridged after closing, most commonly through a seller note, an earnout, or retained seller equity.
- The IBBA report explicitly notes that seller financing remains a common tool to bridge valuation gaps, while earnouts and retained equity were used sparingly. In practice, that means seller notes are the typical bridge, not earnouts.
- You should plan to ask for a seller note as a default. The data says you are not asking for something unusual.
Typical SBA 7(a) acquisition timeline
For a buyer using an SBA 7(a) loan to fund a small-business acquisition, practitioner sources consistently report the following timeline from signed Letter of Intent (LOI) to wired funds at closing:
Patterns brokers and buyers consistently flag
The patterns below are not survey statistics. They are the issues that broker write-ups, SBA underwriters, and experienced acquirers describe over and over as the most common reasons a deal gets re-priced, restructured, or killed during diligence. None of them is automatically a deal-breaker, but every one is a question you should be asking the seller before you submit an offer.
How we built this page
Every numeric claim on this page is taken directly from one of three public sources:
- BizBuySell 2025 Insight Report data tables. Aggregate market and sector-level transaction metrics for closed US small-business sales reported to BizBuySell in calendar year 2025. Full data tables here.
- BizBuySell 2025 Year in Review. The headline aggregate numbers and year-over-year comparisons. Read the recap here.
- IBBA and M&A Source Q4 2025 Market Pulse Survey. The 55th edition of the quarterly survey, completed by 350 business brokers and M&A advisors. Read the announcement here. The IBBA also publishes the full report each quarter via the IBBA resource center.
The "common red flags" section is not statistical. It is a qualitative summary of the issues that broker write-ups, SBA underwriters, and experienced acquirers consistently describe as deal-rethink moments during due diligence. If you would like a deeper look at the underlying SBA loan-level data, that is published on the SBA open data portal.
If you spot anything on this page that conflicts with the latest published source, please email support@bizworthly.com and we will correct it.
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