Market Depth
Most of Them Cannot Be Bought
Every other number on this site is about a deal. This one is about the ground the deal has to be found on, and it starts by cutting the ground down to size. There are 10,911 coin-operated laundries and drycleaners in the country, and 2,523 of them have five or more employees. The rest run on the owner and almost nobody else, which is usually a job rather than a business: there is little to buy but the person already doing it. Above a hundred employees the price has left SBA range. The market a searcher can actually hunt in is the middle band, and it is a fraction of the number anyone quotes.
So every rate on this page is computed against the buyable count rather than the headline one. A rate whose denominator includes businesses nobody can buy is a rate about the wrong thing.
Industries Measured
252
With enough buyable businesses for a rate to mean anything.
Businesses Counted
5,794,863
Census establishments, 2022.
Of Those, Buyable
2,399,419
41% have 5 to 99 employees.
The Industries We Have Guides For
Coin-Operated Laundries and Drycleaners changes hands 21 times as often, per buyable business, as offices of dentists does. A year spent hunting in a market that does not trade is a year, whatever the multiples look like.
| Coin-Operated Laundries and Drycleaners | 10,911 | 2,52323% | 218 | 14.40 | $499k |
| Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated) | 16,394 | 5,29632% | 215 | 6.77 | $422k |
| Beer, Wine, and Liquor Stores | 36,173 | 13,91938% | 543 | 6.50 | $624k |
| Car Washes | 19,463 | 8,64444% | 280 | 5.40 | $1.23M |
| General Automotive Repair | 84,101 | 27,86733% | 797 | 4.77 | $592k |
| Offices of Certified Public Accountants | 55,642 | 18,65334% | 458 | 4.09 | $500k |
| Insurance Agencies and Brokerages | 135,100 | 35,19526% | 648 | 3.07 | $761k |
| Fitness and Recreational Sports Centers | 40,786 | 22,33555% | 408 | 3.04 | $304k |
| Landscaping Services | 117,109 | 33,30328% | 588 | 2.94 | $500k |
| Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors | 109,601 | 44,16240% | 707 | 2.67 | $735k |
| Janitorial Services | 67,295 | 24,57937% | 312 | 2.12 | $400k |
| Child Day Care Services | 80,120 | 50,12963% | 595 | 1.98 | $783k |
| Full-Service Restaurants | 257,282 | 184,66872% | 1,972 | 1.78 | $428k |
| Exterminating and Pest Control Services | 16,080 | 6,84943% | 72 | 1.75 | $403k |
| Services for the Elderly and Persons with Disabilities | 41,626 | 21,43852% | 174 | 1.35 | $501k |
| Limited-Service Restaurants | 265,179 | 196,61774% | 1,567 | 1.33 | $370k |
| Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars | 78,856 | 51,27565% | 387 | 1.26 | $350k |
| Offices of Dentists | 136,140 | 84,78062% | 345 | 0.68 | $741k |
Every Industry
Every industry with at least 200 buyable businesses, sorted by how often one of them is bought with SBA money. Sort by All Businesses to see the crowded markets, by Buyable to see the real ones, and by Per 1,000 to see which actually move.
| Lessors of Miniwarehouses and Self-Storage Units | 18,286 | 1,5098% | 238 | 26.29 | $1.11M |
| Private Mail Centers | 5,602 | 2,39643% | 214 | 14.89 | $376k |
| Coin-Operated Laundries and Drycleaners | 10,911 | 2,52323% | 218 | 14.40 | $499k |
| Baked Goods Stores | 2,807 | 1,27045% | 95 | 12.47 | $412k |
| All Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services | 22,903 | 3,97617% | 289 | 12.11 | $650k |
| Home and Garden Equipment Repair and Maintenance | 1,701 | 23314% | 15 | 10.73 | $545k |
| Other Computer Related Services | 11,989 | 2,41720% | 149 | 10.27 | $900k |
| All Other Miscellaneous Fabricated Metal Product Manufacturing | 3,408 | 1,76352% | 108 | 10.21 | $1.06M |
| Bed-and-Breakfast Inns | 2,463 | 67127% | 40 | 9.94 | $1.42M |
| All Other Miscellaneous Manufacturing | 3,079 | 1,29342% | 75 | 9.67 | $655k |
| All Other Automotive Repair and Maintenance | 5,091 | 1,05721% | 61 | 9.62 | $475k |
| All Other Personal Services | 22,597 | 3,78717% | 218 | 9.59 | $409k |
| RV (Recreational Vehicle) Parks and Campgrounds | 4,970 | 1,48330% | 83 | 9.33 | $763k |
| All Other Specialty Trade Contractors | 40,302 | 13,15733% | 716 | 9.07 | $655k |
| Other Waste Collection | 1,455 | 42529% | 23 | 9.02 | $473k |
| Other Personal and Household Goods Repair and Maintenance | 11,007 | 2,16420% | 105 | 8.09 | $368k |
| Sign Manufacturing | 5,909 | 2,63545% | 124 | 7.84 | $575k |
| Other Specialized Design Services | 3,406 | 44013% | 20 | 7.58 | $703k |
| Hotels (except Casino Hotels) and Motels | 56,920 | 36,94065% | 1,654 | 7.46 | $2.67M |
| All Other Miscellaneous Wood Product Manufacturing | 2,368 | 1,13248% | 48 | 7.07 | $768k |
| Window Treatment Stores | 2,163 | 50423% | 21 | 6.94 | $360k |
| Carpet and Upholstery Cleaning Services | 6,901 | 1,85227% | 77 | 6.93 | $339k |
| Drycleaning and Laundry Services (except Coin-Operated) | 16,394 | 5,29632% | 215 | 6.77 | $422k |
| Beer, Wine, and Liquor Stores | 36,173 | 13,91938% | 543 | 6.50 | $624k |
| Septic Tank and Related Services | 3,996 | 1,56639% | 61 | 6.49 | $444k |
What This Rate Is Not
It is not how often a business sells. SBA acquisition lending is one financing channel. Cash deals, seller-financed deals, and conventional bank loans are all absent from it, and there is no reason to think they are absent evenly: a dental practice is far more likely to be sold with practice-specific bank debt than a laundromat is, which is part of why dentistry looks thin here and is not.
So the rate is a floor, not a measurement, and it is worth reading between industries rather than as a level. That an industry trades three times as often as another, in the one channel we can actually count, is a real thing to know when you are choosing where to spend a year. What the number cannot tell you is what fraction of that industry is for sale.
Business counts: Census County Business Patterns (2022). Loan counts: the SBA's loan-level FOIA data (FY2020 through FY2025, annualized over 6 years). How often these loans go bad is a different question, answered in Default Rates by Industry, and where they happen is in What Sells Where.