Where to Buy a Business in Michigan
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
23,709
2.8% of the U.S. total
Rank by Targets
#10
Of the 10 deepest states
SBA Acquisition Loans
1,177
$1.22B since FY2020
Median SBA Deal
$635k
FY2020 through FY2025
Michigan holds 23,709 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 and small enough to finance. That is 2.8% of the country's buyable market and ranks Michigan #10 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 Michigan
Nobody searches Michigan. 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, Oakland deepest among them.
| Oakland | 3,873 | 16.3% |
| Wayne | 3,543 | 14.9% |
| Macomb | 1,972 | 8.3% |
| Kent | 1,854 | 7.8% |
| Washtenaw | 1,003 | 4.2% |
| Genesee | 856 | 3.6% |
| Ingham | 722 | 3% |
| Kalamazoo | 717 | 3% |
| Ottawa | 678 | 2.9% |
| Saginaw | 439 | 1.9% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Michigan
- Limited-Service Restaurants5,840 buyable
- Full-Service Restaurants5,265 buyable
- Offices of Dentists2,832 buyable
- Insurance Agencies and Brokerages1,229 buyable
- Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors1,152 buyable
- Child Day Care Services1,075 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side of Michigan is in its SBA acquisition-lending profile.
Method & Source
Buyable counts are establishments with 5 to 99 employees in the 21 covered trades, summed from the Census County Business Patterns (2022). 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. Free to cite with attribution.