The Best States to Buy a Business
Ranked by Buyable Targets
Establishments with 5 to 99 employees in the 29 covered trades: the businesses a searcher could actually buy. The per-100k column shows density.
| 1 | California | 123,188 | 312.4 | Los Angeles |
| 2 | Texas | 87,112 | 278.4 | Harris |
| 3 | Florida | 66,950 | 286.5 | Miami-Dade |
| 4 | New York | 58,538 | 294.6 | New York |
| 5 | Pennsylvania | 38,936 | 297.7 | Allegheny |
| 6 | Illinois | 37,406 | 294.3 | Cook |
| 7 | Ohio | 36,769 | 309.4 | Franklin |
| 8 | North Carolina | 35,566 | 322 | Wake |
| 9 | Georgia | 32,450 | 290.2 | Fulton |
| 10 | Michigan | 29,696 | 292.8 | Oakland |
| 11 | Virginia | 27,654 | 313.9 | Fairfax |
| 12 | New Jersey | 27,611 | 290.6 | Bergen |
| 13 | Washington | 25,069 | 315 | King |
| 14 | Massachusetts | 24,253 | 339.9 | Middlesex |
| 15 | Indiana | 21,398 | 309 | Marion |
| 16 | Tennessee | 21,354 | 295.4 | Davidson |
| 17 | Arizona | 21,015 | 277.2 | Maricopa |
| 18 | Colorado | 20,918 | 351.1 | Denver |
| 19 | Missouri | 19,806 | 317.1 | St. Louis |
| 20 | Wisconsin | 18,933 | 317.6 | Milwaukee |
| 21 | Maryland | 18,216 | 290.8 | Montgomery |
| 22 | Minnesota | 18,183 | 313.9 | Hennepin |
| 23 | South Carolina | 17,071 | 311.6 | Greenville |
| 24 | Oregon | 15,103 | 353.5 | Multnomah |
| 25 | Alabama | 14,697 | 285 | Jefferson |
Method & Source
Buyable counts are establishments with 5 to 99 employees in the 29 covered trades, from the Census County Business Patterns (2023). The per-100k column divides that by Census resident-population estimates. The financing figures on each state page are SBA change-of-ownership 7(a) approvals from the SBA 7(a) FOIA loan-level dataset (as of March 31, 2026), covering FY2020 through FY2025. The count is a lower bound on the market: cash and conventionally financed deals are not in the SBA file, and a trade we have not written a guide for is not in the total. Industry pricing and diligence live in the Guides.