Where to Buy a Business in Georgia
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
36,421
3.1% of the U.S. total
Per 100k Residents
325.7
#9 of 51 states by buyable count
SBA Acquisition Loans
1,310
$1.90B since FY2020, 261 of them in FY2025
Median SBA Loan
$920k
FY2020 through FY2025
Georgia holds 36,421 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 3.1% of the country's buyable market and ranks Georgia #9 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 Georgia
Nobody searches Georgia. 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, Fulton deepest among them.
| Fulton | 4,479 | 12.3% |
| Gwinnett | 3,371 | 9.3% |
| Cobb | 2,971 | 8.2% |
| DeKalb | 2,287 | 6.3% |
| Chatham | 1,344 | 3.7% |
| Cherokee | 879 | 2.4% |
| Forsyth | 846 | 2.3% |
| Muscogee | 760 | 2.1% |
| Henry | 701 | 1.9% |
| Richmond | 682 | 1.9% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Georgia
- Limited-Service Restaurants7,288 buyable
- Full-Service Restaurants5,766 buyable
- Offices of Dentists2,422 buyable
- Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores1,950 buyable
- Child Care Services1,925 buyable
- Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars1,463 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in Georgia'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 Georgia
The successor withholds enough of the purchase money to cover the tax, interest and penalties until the former owner produces a receipt or a certificate that none are due, and a purchaser who does not is personally liable up to the purchase money. Georgia publishes this under O.C.G.A. section 48-8-46, and what releases the buyer is the Tax Clearance Certificate from the Department of Revenue.
Read at source on web.archive.org. 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 Georgia rather than as the answer. What every state requires is one table.
Next Door to Georgia
Nobody buys a state. These are the states Georgia touches, with the buyable businesses each holds in the same 36 trades.
- Alabama16,540 buyable
- Florida74,917 buyable
- North Carolina39,632 buyable
- South Carolina18,930 buyable
- Tennessee23,855 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.