Where to Buy a Business in Arizona
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
23,735
2% of the U.S. total
Per 100k Residents
313
#17 of 51 states by buyable count
SBA Acquisition Loans
824
$989M since FY2020, 147 of them in FY2025
Median SBA Loan
$822k
FY2020 through FY2025
Arizona holds 23,735 businesses a searcher could realistically buy across the trades this site covers: establishments with 5 to 99 employees, big enough to have something to sell, small enough to finance. That is 2% of the country's buyable market and ranks Arizona #17 among the states. The number that decides a search, though, is not the state total but where inside the state those businesses sit.
The Deepest Counties in Arizona
Nobody searches Arizona. They search a metro they can drive across to meet an owner. These are the counties with the most buyable targets in the covered trades, Maricopa deepest among them.
| Maricopa | 15,414 | 64.9% |
| Pima | 3,443 | 14.5% |
| Yavapai | 898 | 3.8% |
| Pinal | 693 | 2.9% |
| Mohave | 661 | 2.8% |
| Coconino | 598 | 2.5% |
| Yuma | 511 | 2.2% |
| Cochise | 288 | 1.2% |
| Navajo | 263 | 1.1% |
| Gila | 107 | 0.5% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Arizona
- Limited-Service Restaurants4,765 buyable
- Full-Service Restaurants3,435 buyable
- Offices of Dentists1,677 buyable
- Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores1,291 buyable
- Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars1,278 buyable
- Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors1,009 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in Arizona's SBA acquisition-lending profile. The same counts industry by industry across every state are in Where the Businesses Are, and several of these trades restrict who can own at all: the Ownership & License Rules table names which.
Before You Close in Arizona
The successor withholds from the purchase money enough to cover the taxes, interest and penalties until the former owner produces a receipt from the department or a certificate that nothing is due. Arizona publishes this under A.R.S. section 42-1110, and what releases the buyer is the Tax Clearance Application, Form 10523, answered within fifteen days.
Read at source on azleg.gov. Most states run a version of this rule and the wording decides what a closing has to do, so treat it as the question to put to a lawyer in Arizona rather than as the answer. What every state requires is one table.
Next Door to Arizona
Nobody buys a state. These are the states Arizona touches, with the buyable businesses each holds in the same 36 trades.
- California137,681 buyable
- Colorado23,585 buyable
- New Mexico7,050 buyable
- Nevada11,315 buyable
- Utah11,876 buyable
Method & Source
Buyable counts are establishments with 5 to 99 employees in the 36 covered trades, summed from the Census County Business Patterns (2023). A county total is a lower bound: Census suppresses cells thin enough to identify a single business, and a trade we have not written a guide for is not counted. SBA figures are change-of-ownership 7(a) approvals (FY2020 through FY2025), approvals rather than closings.