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Where to Buy a Business in Hawaii

The Opportunity

Buyable Businesses

4,831

0.4% of the U.S. total

Per 100k Residents

334.1

#43 of 51 states by buyable count

SBA Acquisition Loans

45

$41.1M since FY2020, 10 of them in FY2025

Median SBA Loan

$545k

FY2020 through FY2025

Hawaii holds 4,831 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 0.4% of the country's buyable market and ranks Hawaii #43 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 Hawaii

Nobody searches Hawaii. 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, Honolulu deepest among them.

4 of 4
The counties with the most buyable businesses in the state
Honolulu3,23366.9%
Hawaii59412.3%
Maui55811.6%
Kauai2845.9%

What Trades Run Deepest in Hawaii

Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in Hawaii'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 Hawaii

The purchaser in a bulk sale withholds payment of the purchase price until the department certifies that every tax, penalty and interest levied against the seller has been paid, and the sale is reported within ten days after possession, control or title passes. The purchaser is personally liable up to the purchase price where the report is not made or the tax is still unpaid twenty days after the sale. Hawaii publishes this under HRS section 237-43, and what releases the buyer is the department's bulk sale certificate, reported on Form G-8A, which the statute makes a complete defense to the liability.

Read at source on data.capitol.hawaii.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 Hawaii rather than as the answer. What every state requires is one table.

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.