Where to Buy a Business in Texas
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
97,820
8.4% of the U.S. total
Per 100k Residents
312.6
#2 of 51 states by buyable count
SBA Acquisition Loans
2,815
$3.80B since FY2020, 666 of them in FY2025
Median SBA Loan
$890k
FY2020 through FY2025
Texas holds 97,820 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 8.4% of the country's buyable market and ranks Texas #2 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 Texas
Nobody searches Texas. 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, Harris deepest among them.
| Harris | 15,245 | 15.6% |
| Dallas | 9,357 | 9.6% |
| Tarrant | 7,459 | 7.6% |
| Bexar | 6,475 | 6.6% |
| Travis | 5,084 | 5.2% |
| Collin | 4,346 | 4.4% |
| Denton | 3,034 | 3.1% |
| El Paso | 2,651 | 2.7% |
| Fort Bend | 2,580 | 2.6% |
| Williamson | 2,363 | 2.4% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Texas
- Limited-Service Restaurants19,913 buyable
- Full-Service Restaurants14,535 buyable
- Offices of Dentists6,986 buyable
- Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores5,669 buyable
- Child Care Services4,673 buyable
- Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars4,536 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in Texas'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 Texas
The buyer withholds enough of the purchase price to cover the seller's unpaid taxes, penalty and interest until the seller produces a receipt or a Certificate of No Tax Due. Texas publishes this under Texas Tax Code section 111.020, and what releases the buyer is the Certificate of No Tax Due, requested jointly on Form 86-114.
Read at source on comptroller.texas.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 Texas rather than as the answer. What every state requires is one table.
Next Door to Texas
Nobody buys a state. These are the states Texas touches, with the buyable businesses each holds in the same 36 trades.
- Arkansas10,505 buyable
- Louisiana16,009 buyable
- New Mexico7,050 buyable
- Oklahoma14,213 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.