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Where to Buy a Business in North Carolina

The Opportunity

Buyable Businesses

28,477

3.4% of the U.S. total

Rank by Targets

#8

Of the 10 deepest states

SBA Acquisition Loans

1,171

$1.55B since FY2020

Median SBA Deal

$840k

FY2020 through FY2025

North Carolina holds 28,477 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 3.4% of the country's buyable market and ranks North Carolina #8 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 North Carolina

Nobody searches North Carolina. 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, Wake deepest among them.

The counties with the most buyable businesses in the state
Wake3,64012.8%
Mecklenburg3,55012.5%
Guilford1,6265.7%
Forsyth1,0553.7%
New Hanover9953.5%
Buncombe9583.4%
Durham9103.2%
Cumberland8152.9%
Cabarrus5952.1%
Union5511.9%

What Trades Run Deepest in North Carolina

Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side of North Carolina 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.