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Where to Buy a Business in Louisiana

The Opportunity

Buyable Businesses

16,009

1.4% of the U.S. total

Per 100k Residents

348.2

#26 of 51 states by buyable count

SBA Acquisition Loans

321

$375M since FY2020, 71 of them in FY2025

Median SBA Loan

$813k

FY2020 through FY2025

Louisiana holds 16,009 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 1.4% of the country's buyable market and ranks Louisiana #26 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 Louisiana

Nobody searches Louisiana. 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, East Baton Rouge Parish deepest among them.

10 of 10
The counties with the most buyable businesses in the state
East Baton Rouge Parish1,83411.5%
Jefferson Parish1,71310.7%
Orleans Parish1,3518.4%
Lafayette Parish1,1417.1%
St. Tammany Parish1,0726.7%
Caddo Parish8455.3%
Calcasieu Parish6904.3%
Ouachita Parish5973.7%
Rapides Parish4492.8%
Tangipahoa Parish4002.5%

What Trades Run Deepest in Louisiana

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

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, and a purchaser who does not is personally liable. Louisiana publishes this under La. R.S. 47:308, and what releases the buyer is the Letter of Good Standing from the Department of Revenue.

Read at source on revenue.louisiana.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 Louisiana rather than as the answer. What every state requires is one table.

Next Door to Louisiana

Nobody buys a state. These are the states Louisiana 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.