Where to Buy a Business in Vermont
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
2,421
0.2% of the U.S. total
Per 100k Residents
373.3
#48 of 51 states by buyable count
SBA Acquisition Loans
70
$52.5M since FY2020, 16 of them in FY2025
Median SBA Deal
$269k
FY2020 through FY2025
Vermont holds 2,421 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 0.2% of the country's buyable market and ranks Vermont #48 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 Vermont
Nobody searches Vermont. 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, Chittenden deepest among them.
| Chittenden | 713 | 29.5% |
| Washington | 197 | 8.1% |
| Rutland | 193 | 8% |
| Windsor | 179 | 7.4% |
| Windham | 163 | 6.7% |
| Bennington | 122 | 5% |
| Franklin | 98 | 4% |
| Addison | 93 | 3.8% |
| Caledonia | 71 | 2.9% |
| Lamoille | 68 | 2.8% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Vermont
- Full-Service Restaurants448 buyable
- Limited-Service Restaurants294 buyable
- Gasoline Stations with Convenience Stores265 buyable
- Child Day Care Services175 buyable
- Offices of Dentists170 buyable
- Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars118 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in Vermont'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 Vermont
Nobody buys a state. These are the states Vermont touches, with the buyable businesses each holds in the same 29 trades.
- Massachusetts24,253 buyable
- New Hampshire5,403 buyable
- New York58,538 buyable
Method & Source
Buyable counts are establishments with 5 to 99 employees in the 29 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.