Where to Buy a Business in Ohio
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
29,881
3.5% of the U.S. total
Rank by Targets
#7
Of the 10 deepest states
SBA Acquisition Loans
1,290
$1.36B since FY2020
Median SBA Deal
$597k
FY2020 through FY2025
Ohio holds 29,881 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 3.5% of the country's buyable market and ranks Ohio #7 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 Ohio
Nobody searches Ohio. 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, Franklin deepest among them.
| Franklin | 3,702 | 12.4% |
| Cuyahoga | 3,449 | 11.5% |
| Hamilton | 2,514 | 8.4% |
| Summit | 1,470 | 4.9% |
| Montgomery | 1,404 | 4.7% |
| Lucas | 1,244 | 4.2% |
| Stark | 1,017 | 3.4% |
| Butler | 910 | 3% |
| Delaware | 680 | 2.3% |
| Lorain | 656 | 2.2% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Ohio
- Limited-Service Restaurants8,234 buyable
- Full-Service Restaurants6,032 buyable
- Offices of Dentists2,757 buyable
- Child Day Care Services1,941 buyable
- Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars1,439 buyable
- Plumbing, Heating, and Air-Conditioning Contractors1,350 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side of Ohio 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.