Where to Buy a Business in Mississippi
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
9,700
0.8% of the U.S. total
Per 100k Residents
329.6
#35 of 51 states by buyable count
SBA Acquisition Loans
270
$253M since FY2020, 46 of them in FY2025
Median SBA Loan
$644k
FY2020 through FY2025
Mississippi holds 9,700 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 0.8% of the country's buyable market and ranks Mississippi #35 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 Mississippi
Nobody searches Mississippi. 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, Harrison deepest among them.
| Harrison | 730 | 7.5% |
| Hinds | 654 | 6.7% |
| DeSoto | 595 | 6.1% |
| Rankin | 590 | 6.1% |
| Madison | 493 | 5.1% |
| Jackson | 401 | 4.1% |
| Lee | 380 | 3.9% |
| Forrest | 271 | 2.8% |
| Lamar | 223 | 2.3% |
| Lauderdale | 219 | 2.3% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Mississippi
- Limited-Service Restaurants2,056 buyable
- Full-Service Restaurants1,313 buyable
- Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores804 buyable
- Offices of Dentists594 buyable
- Child Care Services586 buyable
- Pharmacies and Drug Retailers421 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in Mississippi'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 Mississippi
Nobody buys a state. These are the states Mississippi 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.