Where to Buy a Business in Illinois
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
42,174
3.6% of the U.S. total
Per 100k Residents
331.8
#6 of 51 states by buyable count
SBA Acquisition Loans
1,321
$1.54B since FY2020, 311 of them in FY2025
Median SBA Loan
$692k
FY2020 through FY2025
Illinois holds 42,174 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 3.6% of the country's buyable market and ranks Illinois #6 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 Illinois
Nobody searches Illinois. 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, Cook deepest among them. Chicago is scanned in Metro Target Scans, which ranks the strongest industries in each region by loans approved, median loan size, and seasoned charge-off.
| Cook | 16,065 | 38.1% |
| DuPage | 3,894 | 9.2% |
| Lake | 2,446 | 5.8% |
| Will | 2,314 | 5.5% |
| Kane | 1,698 | 4% |
| McHenry | 1,069 | 2.5% |
| Madison | 939 | 2.2% |
| Winnebago | 881 | 2.1% |
| St. Clair | 752 | 1.8% |
| Sangamon | 724 | 1.7% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Illinois
- Limited-Service Restaurants7,628 buyable
- Full-Service Restaurants6,878 buyable
- Offices of Dentists3,181 buyable
- Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores2,215 buyable
- Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars1,927 buyable
- Child Care Services1,870 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in Illinois'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 Illinois
The purchaser files notice of the sale with the Department of Revenue at least ten business days before it, and a purchaser who does not becomes personally liable for the seller's tax up to the value of what was bought. Illinois publishes this under 35 ILCS 120/5j, and what releases the buyer is the Form CBS-1, answered by a bulk sales release.
Read at source on tax.illinois.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 Illinois rather than as the answer. What every state requires is one table.
Next Door to Illinois
Nobody buys a state. These are the states Illinois touches, with the buyable businesses each holds in the same 36 trades.
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.