Where to Buy a Business in Massachusetts
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
24,253
2.3% of the U.S. total
Per 100k Residents
339.9
#14 of 51 states by buyable count
SBA Acquisition Loans
708
$588M since FY2020, 151 of them in FY2025
Median SBA Deal
$431k
FY2020 through FY2025
Massachusetts holds 24,253 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 2.3% of the country's buyable market and ranks Massachusetts #14 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 Massachusetts
Nobody searches Massachusetts. 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, Middlesex deepest among them.
| Middlesex | 5,620 | 23.2% |
| Norfolk | 2,801 | 11.5% |
| Essex | 2,681 | 11.1% |
| Worcester | 2,643 | 10.9% |
| Suffolk | 2,633 | 10.9% |
| Plymouth | 1,911 | 7.9% |
| Bristol | 1,856 | 7.7% |
| Hampden | 1,286 | 5.3% |
| Barnstable | 1,091 | 4.5% |
| Berkshire | 493 | 2% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Massachusetts
- Full-Service Restaurants4,717 buyable
- Limited-Service Restaurants3,530 buyable
- Offices of Dentists2,130 buyable
- Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars1,961 buyable
- Child Day Care Services1,477 buyable
- Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors1,130 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in Massachusetts'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 Massachusetts
A corporation selling substantially all of its Massachusetts assets notifies the Commissioner in writing at least five days before the sale and pays what it owes to that date; if it does not, the Commonwealth takes a lien on the assets effective immediately before the transfer. Massachusetts publishes this under M.G.L. chapter 62C section 51, and what releases the buyer is the Waiver of the lien, or a certificate of good standing under section 52.
Read at source on malegislature.gov. Every state runs 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 Massachusetts rather than as the answer.
Next Door to Massachusetts
Nobody buys a state. These are the states Massachusetts touches, with the buyable businesses each holds in the same 29 trades.
- Connecticut12,282 buyable
- New Hampshire5,403 buyable
- New York58,538 buyable
- Rhode Island3,873 buyable
- Vermont2,421 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.