Where to Buy a Business in New York
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
64,697
5.5% of the U.S. total
Per 100k Residents
325.6
#4 of 51 states by buyable count
SBA Acquisition Loans
1,092
$1.12B since FY2020, 233 of them in FY2025
Median SBA Loan
$597k
FY2020 through FY2025
New York holds 64,697 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 5.5% of the country's buyable market and ranks New York #4 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 New York
Nobody searches New York. 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, New York deepest among them. New York City is scanned in Metro Target Scans, which ranks the strongest industries in each region by loans approved, median loan size, and seasoned charge-off.
| New York | 9,223 | 14.3% |
| Kings | 6,335 | 9.8% |
| Suffolk | 6,123 | 9.5% |
| Queens | 5,565 | 8.6% |
| Nassau | 5,498 | 8.5% |
| Westchester | 3,750 | 5.8% |
| Erie | 3,345 | 5.2% |
| Monroe | 2,609 | 4% |
| Bronx | 2,001 | 3.1% |
| Onondaga | 1,567 | 2.4% |
What Trades Run Deepest in New York
- Full-Service Restaurants12,468 buyable
- Limited-Service Restaurants9,477 buyable
- Offices of Dentists4,390 buyable
- Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars4,301 buyable
- Child Care Services3,109 buyable
- Pharmacies and Drug Retailers3,005 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in New York'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 New York
The buyer notifies the Tax Department at least ten days before paying for or taking possession of the assets, whichever comes first, and holds the price until the department answers. New York publishes this under New York bulk sale notification, and what releases the buyer is the Form AU-196.10, answered by the department's Form AU-196.2.
Read at source on tax.ny.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 New York rather than as the answer. What every state requires is one table.
Next Door to New York
Nobody buys a state. These are the states New York touches, with the buyable businesses each holds in the same 36 trades.
- Connecticut13,789 buyable
- Massachusetts27,394 buyable
- New Jersey31,865 buyable
- Pennsylvania44,963 buyable
- Vermont2,695 buyable
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.