Where to Buy a Business in Washington, D.C.
The Opportunity
Buyable Businesses
2,578
0.2% of the U.S. total
Per 100k Residents
367.1
#50 of 51 states by buyable count
SBA Acquisition Loans
70
$63.3M since FY2020, 17 of them in FY2025
Median SBA Loan
$575k
FY2020 through FY2025
Washington, D.C. holds 2,578 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 Washington, D.C. #50 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 Washington, D.C.
Nobody searches Washington, D.C.. 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, District of Columbia deepest among them.
| District of Columbia | 2,578 | 100% |
What Trades Run Deepest in Washington, D.C.
- Full-Service Restaurants751 buyable
- Limited-Service Restaurants588 buyable
- Child Care Services202 buyable
- Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars196 buyable
- Offices of Dentists156 buyable
- Pharmacies and Drug Retailers91 buyable
Each trade's pricing, licensing, and diligence live in its Industry Buy Guide. The financing side is in Washington, D.C.'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 Washington, D.C.
The purchaser in a bulk sale notifies the Mayor by registered or certified mail at least fifteen days before taking possession or paying, whether or not the seller has said that any tax is owed. Without that notice the consideration carries a first priority right and lien for the seller's taxes and may not be paid over, and what the purchaser can lose is capped at the fair market value of the assets transferred. Washington, D.C. publishes this under D.C. Code section 47-4461, and what releases the buyer is the Mayor's answer to the notice of bulk sale, reporting that no claim for tax exists.
Read at source on code.dccouncil.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 Washington, D.C. rather than as the answer. What every state requires is one table.
Next Door to Washington, D.C.
Nobody buys a state. These are the states Washington, D.C. touches, with the buyable businesses each holds in the same 36 trades.
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.