Where to Buy a Business in Maine
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
5,147
0.5% of the U.S. total
Per 100k Residents
366.3
#41 of 51 states by buyable count
SBA Acquisition Loans
159
$89.7M since FY2020, 29 of them in FY2025
Median SBA Deal
$250k
FY2020 through FY2025
Maine holds 5,147 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 0.5% of the country's buyable market and ranks Maine #41 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 Maine
Nobody searches Maine. 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, Cumberland deepest among them.
| Cumberland | 1,465 | 28.5% |
| York | 698 | 13.6% |
| Penobscot | 523 | 10.2% |
| Kennebec | 395 | 7.7% |
| Androscoggin | 377 | 7.3% |
| Aroostook | 192 | 3.7% |
| Hancock | 177 | 3.4% |
| Knox | 129 | 2.5% |
| Oxford | 121 | 2.4% |
| Somerset | 101 | 2% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Maine
- Full-Service Restaurants945 buyable
- Limited-Service Restaurants653 buyable
- Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores500 buyable
- Offices of Dentists353 buyable
- Child Day Care Services342 buyable
- Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars298 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in Maine'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.
Next Door to Maine
Nobody buys a state. These are the states Maine touches, with the buyable businesses each holds in the same 29 trades.
- New Hampshire5,403 buyable
Method & Source
Buyable counts are establishments with 5 to 99 employees in the 29 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.