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Guides, calculators, regions, industries and glossary terms. Type a word — SDE, escrow, Brooklyn, liquor licence, DSCR — and results filter and re-rank as you type. Title matches come first, then summaries, then body text, which joins a moment later.

Cities & regions Buying a business in the Albany–Saratoga corridor
The corridor from Albany through Troy, Schenectady, Clifton Park, Malta, and Saratoga Springs combines state-government demand, universities and healthcare,…
Cities & regions Buying a business in the Bronx
The Bronx is the lowest-cost NYC borough for commercial space (with exceptions in gentrifying Mott Haven and Port Morris) and one of the most accessible entry…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous borough (Kings County) and the most neighborhood-anchored NYC market. No Commercial Rent Tax, lower commercial rents than…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Broome County, New York
Broome County holds 4,001 business establishments employing 68,190 people. It has the fewest establishments of the four smaller upstate markets covered here and…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is not simply a lower-cost version of downstate New York. It is a healthcare, manufacturing, trade, professional-service, neighborhood-retail, and…
Cities & regions Buying a business in the Capital Region
The Capital Region (Albany, Schenectady, Troy, Saratoga Springs and surrounding counties) is a smaller, more stable upstate market than downstate New York.…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Central New York
Central New York (the Syracuse metro and surrounding counties) is the smallest of the three major upstate metros — but it has a distinctive stable-employer base…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Dutchess County, New York
Dutchess County holds 7,677 business establishments employing 93,728 people. It is the smallest of the three mid-Hudson counties by establishment count but pays…
Cities & regions Buying a business in the Finger Lakes
The Finger Lakes region (Rochester metro and surrounding counties) is a stable upstate market with a healthcare and imaging legacy, a strong higher-education…
Cities & regions Buying a business in the Hudson Valley
The Hudson Valley is the most geographically diverse downstate market — seven counties spanning from Westchester (close to NYC, expensive) to Sullivan…
Cities & regions Buying a business on Long Island
Long Island (Nassau and Suffolk counties) is the most common first move for buyers who want the New York market without the NYC tax and permitting complexity.…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Manhattan
Manhattan is the most distinctive sub-market in New York City — and one of the most distinctive acquisition markets in the country. The NYC Commercial Rent Tax…
Cities & regions Buying a business in the Mohawk Valley
The Mohawk Valley is a six-county operating market centered on Utica and Rome, with smaller cities and rural service areas extending east, west, and south.…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Nassau County, New York
Nassau County holds 48,718 business establishments employing 562,420 people, and 89.9% of them have fewer than 20 employees. It is the densest, most…
Cities & regions Buying a business in New York City
NYC is not New York State-with-subways. The city has its own tax overlay, its own permitting bureaucracy, its own labor laws, and its own valuation dynamics.…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Niagara County, New York
Niagara County holds 4,475 business establishments employing 57,764 people, with 982 in the financeable 10 to 49 employee band. It sits beside Erie at a…
Cities & regions Buying a business in New York's North Country
The North Country covers seven counties, multiple small operating centers, the Canadian border, and highly seasonal visitor markets. A buyer has to prove…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Oneida County, New York
Oneida County holds 4,713 business establishments employing 85,570 people, and the deepest financeable band of the four smaller upstate markets covered here —…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Orange County, New York
Orange County holds 10,467 business establishments employing 129,093 people. It has fewer establishments than neighbouring Rockland but more businesses in every…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Queens
Queens is geographically the largest NYC borough and the most demographically diverse county in the U.S. — over 120 languages spoken, no single ethnic or…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Rochester, New York
Rochester's acquisition market combines a deep healthcare and education base with precision manufacturing, optics and imaging, suburban consumer demand, and a…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Rockland County, New York
Rockland County holds 11,094 business establishments employing 128,380 people at an average annual pay of $60,169. It is New York’s most micro-business-weighted…
Cities & regions Buying a business in the Southern Tier
The Southern Tier is two very different markets in one region: a Cornell-driven, progressive, high-income student economy in Ithaca, and a distressed industrial…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Staten Island
Staten Island (Richmond County) is the least populous NYC borough and the most suburban in character — car-dependent, single-family residential, strip-mall…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Suffolk County, New York
Suffolk County holds 50,748 business establishments employing 592,580 people — marginally more than Nassau, and with a deeper mid-size band: 4,719 establishments…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Syracuse, New York
Onondaga County holds 11,166 business establishments employing 223,537 people. Its distinguishing feature is structural: only 82.7% of establishments have fewer…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Ulster County, New York
Ulster County holds 5,065 business establishments employing 44,452 people — the largest count of the four smaller upstate markets covered here, and the smallest…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Westchester County, New York
Westchester holds 31,174 business establishments employing 389,560 people, and pays an average of $92,858 a year — the highest of any New York county outside…
Cities & regions Buying a business in Western New York
Western New York (the Buffalo-Niagara metro and surrounding counties) is the largest upstate market and a different deal environment than downstate. Lower cost…
Data Who issues your food service permit, by New York county
The Department publishes its district offices in one table and its county list in a clickable map, and never puts the two side by side. So the simplest question…
Data New York sales tax rates by jurisdiction
Data New York small business statistics, by county
How many New York businesses are small enough to buy — establishment counts and average pay for all 62 counties, from Census and BLS data.
Glossary Add-back
An expense the seller ran through the business that's added back to net profit to reflect the true cash flow available to a new owner.
Glossary Asset purchase
In an asset purchase you buy named assets — equipment, inventory, customer lists, goodwill — and the seller keeps their legal entity along with most of its…
Glossary Bulk-sale notice (NYS)
The NYS process that protects a business buyer from the seller's unpaid sales tax liability. Also called the successor-liability process.
Glossary Certificate of Authority (NYS sales tax)
A Certificate of Authority is the New York permit that lets a business collect sales tax and issue or accept exemption certificates. The point every buyer needs:…
Glossary Change of ownership
The SBA's term for a transaction in which ownership of a business changes hands. It matters because it triggers a distinct rule set: a 10% equity injection that,…
Glossary DSCR — Debt-Service Coverage Ratio
The ratio of business cash flow to annual debt service. For an initial acquisition, SBA requires at least 1.25:1 on the last fiscal year-end or a two-year…
Glossary Earnout
An earnout makes part of the purchase price depend on a defined result after closing. Used well, it bridges one specific, measurable uncertainty — a customer…
Glossary EBITDA — Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization
A normalized earnings measure used for larger, manager-run businesses — typically those above ~$1M in earnings.
Glossary Equity injection
The buyer's own money going into the transaction. On an SBA 7(a) Initial Acquisition it is 10% of total project cost, and SOP 50 10 8.1 states it cannot be…
Glossary Equity purchase
In an equity purchase you buy the ownership of the company itself — the shares or membership interests — rather than its assets. The entity continues unchanged,…
Glossary Escrow
Escrow is money held by a neutral third party until an agreed condition is met. A New York business acquisition typically uses it three ways: to hold the buyer’s…
Glossary Estoppel certificate
An estoppel certificate is a signed statement from the landlord confirming the current facts of a lease: the rent, the remaining term, the security deposit held,…
Glossary UI experience rating (and the NYS-100)
Your unemployment-insurance contribution rate is not a fresh-start number. When you acquire a New York business, the Department of Labor says that on a total…
Glossary FDD — Franchise Disclosure Document
The Franchise Disclosure Document is the pre-sale disclosure a franchisor must give you “at least 14 days before you are asked to sign any contract or pay any…
Glossary Goodwill
The intangible value of a business above the fair market value of its tangible assets — brand, customer base, trained workforce, location, reputation, systems.
Glossary Holdback
Purchase price you do not pay at closing, released later once agreed conditions are met. It is what turns an indemnity from a promise into something funded. Size…
Glossary Indemnity
A promise by the seller to make you whole if a defined thing goes wrong. It is worth exactly as much as the seller's ability and willingness to pay on the day…
Glossary LOI — Letter of Intent
A non-binding agreement that sets the purchase price, structure, and diligence timeline before the formal purchase agreement. Also called a term sheet or…
Glossary NDA — Non-Disclosure Agreement
A confidentiality agreement signed before a seller will release financials, customer lists, or business identity to a potential buyer. Also called a…
Glossary Project cost
The total cost of the acquisition — purchase price plus the other costs being financed. It matters because the SBA equity injection is calculated on project…
Glossary Purchase price allocation (Form 8594)
Purchase price allocation is how the total price of a business is divided across categories of assets for tax purposes. The IRS uses a residual method with seven…
Glossary QoE — Quality of Earnings
A CPA-led reconstruction of a business's real cash flow — separate from the tax return or broker-prepared P&L. The number a SBA lender will actually use to…
Glossary Representations and warranties
The seller's statements of fact in the purchase agreement — that the financials are accurate, the taxes are paid, the licences are valid, there is no undisclosed…
Glossary SDE — Seller's Discretionary Earnings
The total cash benefit to the owner of a small business. Used as the valuation basis for owner-operated businesses, typically those under ~$1M in earnings.
Glossary Seller note
Part of the purchase price the seller lends you rather than receiving at closing. Common, useful, and governed by terms that matter more than the amount: whether…
Glossary Standby agreement
The agreement that subordinates a seller's note to the SBA loan. On full standby, no payments of principal or interest are made for the term of the 7(a) loan —…
Glossary UCC-1 financing statement
A UCC-1 is a public filing that, in the New York Department of State’s words, gives “notice that a creditor has or may have an interest in the personal property…
Glossary Working capital
Current assets minus current liabilities. The cash a business needs to fund daily operations — and a real line item in the buyer's total cash needed at closing.
Industries Buying an accounting practice in New York
Accountancy is the exception among New York's licensed professions on the question buyers ask first. The Office of the Professions publishes a form expressly…
Industries Buying an auto repair shop in New York
Auto repair shops are a steady New York acquisition category — older housing stock, longer vehicle retention, and a suburban geography that rewards established…
Industries Buying a bar or tavern in New York
A bar acquisition is a licensing transaction with a business attached. The Temporary Retail (ST) Permit lets you trade for 180 days while your application is…
Industries Buying a car wash in New York
Car washes are a steady NYS acquisition category — weather-driven demand (winter road salt is the revenue engine), equipment-intensive, and financeable. This…
Industries Buying a childcare / daycare business in New York
Childcare is one of the most heavily regulated industries in New York — and one of the most resilient demand categories. This guide covers the valuation method…
Industries Buying a construction contractor in New York
A contractor's value lives in estimated costs, field leadership, bonding and customer trust—not in the headline backlog. The buyer must prove job-level margin,…
Industries Buying a convenience store or NYC bodega
Convenience stores and NYC bodegas are a high-volume, thin-margin acquisition category with a multi-license overlay most buyers underestimate. This guide covers…
Industries Buying a dental practice in New York
Three things decide a dental acquisition. The entity must be owned by licensed dentists, and the Office of the Professions review runs 8 to 10 weeks by post.…
Industries Buying a dry cleaner in New York
Dry cleaners are a steady NYS acquisition category with a meaningful environmental overlay most buyers underestimate. This guide covers the valuation method…
Industries Buying a gym or fitness studio in New York
A fitness acquisition combines recurring billing, consumer-contract law, a location-dependent membership base, instructor relationships, and equipment or…
Industries Buying a gas station in New York
Gas stations are real-estate-heavy acquisitions with thin fuel margins, strong environmental exposure, and a NYS regulatory overlay few buyers fully understand.…
Industries Buying a licensed home care agency in New York
A home-care agency is a regulated labor and scheduling system. The buyer must prove that the authority to operate, payer relationships, referral channels,…
Industries Buying a hotel or lodging business in New York
Hotels and lodging are a real-estate-heavy, capital-intensive acquisition category with a distinctive NYC overlay and post-COVID recovery dynamics. This guide…
Industries Buying an HVAC business in New York
HVAC is one of the most attractive New York home-services acquisitions — predictable recurring revenue from service contracts, two seasonal demand peaks (heating…
Industries Buying an insurance agency in New York
New York licenses the agency itself, and DFS requires that the entity have "at least one sublicensee who is an officer, director, partner, member or manager"…
Industries Buying a landscaping business in New York
Landscaping is a steady NYS acquisition category — strong homeowner demand, recurring maintenance contracts, and a seasonal revenue profile lenders understand.…
Industries Buying a laundromat in New York
Laundromats are a classic New York starter acquisition — predictable, recession-resistant, and financeable. They're also one of the easiest industries to overpay…
Industries Buying a liquor store in New York
Liquor stores are a common New York acquisition — and one of the few industries where a single regulatory item (the NYS SLA off-premise license transfer) is the…
Industries Buying a manufacturing business in New York
A manufacturer is not just an earnings stream. It is a connected system of customers, specifications, people, machines, inventory, permits, and working capital.…
Industries Buying a medical or urgent care practice in New York
Medical practices are one of the most heavily regulated acquisition categories in New York — bifurcated between NYS Department of Health (Article 28 facilities)…
Industries Buying a pest control business in New York
Pest control can produce attractive recurring service revenue, but only if customers, technicians, routes, pricing, and New York pesticide compliance survive the…
Industries Buying an independent pharmacy in New York
A pharmacy carries more licensing than any other retail acquisition on this site. New York licenses Pharmacists and Registered Pharmacy Technicians as…
Industries Buying a restaurant in New York
Restaurants are among the most commonly acquired small businesses in New York — and one of the easiest ways to overpay. This guide covers the valuation method,…
Industries Buying a salon or spa in New York
Two things decide a salon or spa acquisition, and neither is the revenue. First, licensing runs on two levels: the establishment needs an Appearance Enhancement…
Industries Buying a self-storage facility in New York
Self-storage has no state operating licence. What it has is Lien Law § 182 and a stack of occupancy agreements — and that one document decides two things at…
Industries Buying a trucking or logistics company in New York
The key asset is not a set of trucks or a registration number. It is a compliant operating system that can retain drivers and customers while covering insurance,…
Industries Buying a veterinary practice in New York
A veterinary practice is a professional practice first and a business second. The entity must be owned by licensed veterinarians — New York's Office of the…
Guides Asset purchase vs equity purchase in New York
Structure determines what the buyer owns on day one, which liabilities may follow, which contracts and licenses need action, how the purchase price is reported,…
Guides Buying a business with no money down
This question has a specific answer rather than a motivational one, because the rule that governs it is a published federal document you can read. Here is what…
Guides Buying a professional practice in New York
Veterinary, dental, accountancy, pharmacy, medical: these look like ordinary small businesses until you try to buy one. Two features of New York's regime change…
Guides How to buy a business from a retiring owner
“Retirement” explains why an owner may sell; it does not prove the earnings, price, or transition. The buyer must convert the owner's relationships, judgment,…
Guides How to buy an existing franchise in New York
A franchise resale is two acquisitions at once: the existing local operating business and a new or assumed contractual relationship with the franchisor. The…
Guides Buying the real estate with the business
A great many small-business sales come with the premises attached, and buyers tend to treat it as one transaction at a bigger number. It is two decisions,…
Guides How to transfer a commercial lease when buying a business in New York
When the address produces the revenue, the lease is not a closing attachment—it is part of the asset. A buyer must prove the right tenant can occupy the space…
Guides How much customer concentration is too much when buying a business?
A concentration percentage is a screening signal, not a verdict. The buyer's real question is whether the acquired cash flow survives the loss, repricing,…
Guides Due diligence checklist for buying a business
A printable, source-backed checklist organized by track — Financial/QoE, Legal, Operational, New York-specific, and Risk. Each item documents what to request,…
Guides How does an earnout work when buying a small business?
An earnout makes part of the purchase price depend on a defined result after closing. It can bridge a specific uncertainty—such as a customer renewal, retained…
Guides Environmental diligence and the Phase I in New York
Environmental diligence is the item most likely to be skipped on a small deal and most likely to be catastrophic when it is. The reason is structural:…
Guides Escrow, holdbacks and indemnities
Diligence finds things. What you do next is either reprice the deal or arrange for the risk to be carried by someone — and most of the time it should be both, in…
Guides How can you finance a business purchase without an SBA loan?
A non-SBA acquisition is not one alternative loan. It is a capital stack assembled from buyer cash, conventional credit, asset-backed debt, seller credit,…
Guides How to find businesses for sale in New York
The honest version: four sourcing channels, what each costs, what each is good for, and the red flags to watch for — including how to access Hedgestone's…
Guides The first 90 days after buying a business in New York
Most buyers plan the purchase in detail and the handover barely at all. The result is a predictable first month: obligations that were supposed to be automatic…
Guides Food service permits outside New York City
Our guide to the New York City food permit says plainly that it does not generalise beyond the five boroughs. This is the other 57 counties — where the structure…
Guides Home improvement licences when buying a New York business
Most buyers of a home-services business assume the licence is part of what they are buying. It generally is not, the definition of who needs one is much wider…
Guides How long does it take to buy a business in New York?
A buyer should plan two clocks: the time required to find a business worth buying, and the time required to prove, finance, document, and transfer that specific…
Guides How much business can I afford to buy?
Affordability is not one number. It's three numbers that have to line up — what you can put in, what the business's cash flow can service, and what an SBA 7(a)…
Guides How to buy a business in New York
The end-to-end buyer workflow — from deciding what to buy through closing and the first 90 days of transition — with the New York-specific steps most national…
Guides How to value a business in New York
Most valuation advice for small businesses is a table of industry multiples. Those tables are the most common reason buyers anchor on a wrong number — and…
Guides Letter of intent for buying a business in New York
A useful LOI is not a ceremonial offer letter. It is a decision map: what you think you are buying, how the economics work, what must be proved, who must…
Guides Non-competes when buying a business in New York
We have held this page back for a long time, because most of what is written about non-competes is either out of date or is about employees rather than…
Guides NYS bulk-sale & successor liability when you buy a business
The New York bulk-sale rule is the single most under-explained tax exposure in a business acquisition. If you buy a business’s assets and pay the seller without…
Guides How a liquor licence transfers when you buy a New York business
A liquor licence is issued to a licensee, not attached to the premises or sold with the business. Which of the two routes your deal takes — a new application…
Guides The NYC Commercial Rent Tax
The Commercial Rent Tax is the New York City tax most often mentioned and least often understood. It is usually described as applying to Manhattan tenants paying…
Guides NYC food service permits when the business changes hands
The permit does not transfer, which buyers expect. What they do not expect is that the seller’s uncorrected violations and unpaid fines can stop the Department…
Guides The personal guarantee on an SBA loan
Buyers spend months on the price and minutes on the guarantee, which is the wrong way round. The price decides what you pay for the business. The guarantee…
Guides Purchase price allocation and Form 8594
Two buyers can pay the same price for the same business and end up with materially different after-tax outcomes, entirely because of how one schedule in the…
Guides Quality of earnings for small-business buyers
A QoE answers a narrower, harder question than “what profit is on the P&L?” It asks how much of the target's reported cash flow is supported by records,…
Guides Retrading after due diligence
Every buyer worries about being the person who retrades. The worry is useful — it keeps you honest — but it also stops people raising adjustments they are…
Guides SBA 7(a) acquisition loan: what the SBA lender actually underwrites
SBA 7(a) is the workhorse federal financing program for buyers acquiring an existing small or lower-middle-market business in New York. It caps at $5 million,…
Guides SBA 7(a) vs 504: which one actually buys a business?
Two SBA programmes, and buyers are routinely pointed at the wrong one. The difference is not rate or size — it is what each may be spent on, and one of them…
Guides SBA equity injection rules for buying a business
Most guidance online says the SBA requires "10% down." That is the right number attached to the wrong questions. Ten per cent of what, contributed by whom, and…
Guides SDE vs EBITDA: how to read a business's earnings
Why small businesses use Seller's Discretionary Earnings, lower-middle-market businesses use EBITDA, which add-backs lenders and QoE analysts actually accept,…
Guides Seller financing in a business acquisition
A seller note can bridge a valuation gap, reduce the buyer's day-one cash need, and keep the seller economically invested in a clean transition. It can also…
Guides UI experience rating when buying a New York business
Buyers budget for wages and forget that the rate at which those wages are taxed for unemployment insurance is inherited, not reset. In New York it follows the…
Guides What happens to employees when you buy a business in New York?
Employees do not fit into one closing checklist line. The buyer must decide who employs each person, which obligations continue, what payroll and insurance must…
Guides Working capital in a business acquisition
A buyer can pay the negotiated price and still receive a business short of receivables, inventory, or operating cash support. A working-capital target defines…
Tools Purchase price allocation and NY tax modeller
In an asset purchase the same number does two jobs. Your Class V allocation — equipment, furniture, fixtures, vehicles — sets your federal depreciation, and it…
Tools Asking price sanity check
A price on its own tells you nothing. The same $900,000 is cheap for one business and absurd for another. This works backwards from the asking price to the…
Tools Break-even revenue calculator
Three break-even lines matter after an acquisition, not one. The revenue that covers fixed costs. The revenue that also covers your salary. And the revenue that…
Tools Cash-on-cash return calculator
The operator asks what the business pays them. The investor asks what the cash they put in earns, and how long until it comes back. On a leveraged acquisition…
Tools Cash to close calculator
The single most common way a funded deal still fails: the buyer budgets the down payment and arrives at closing with nothing left to operate on. Your equity…
Tools Earnout scenario calculator
An earnout is only as good as the scenarios nobody wants to discuss. This models the payout across a range of outcomes — the miss, the target, the…
Tools SBA equity injection planner
SOP 50 10 8.1 requires an equity injection of 10% of total project cost on a first acquisition, and states it cannot be reduced or eliminated. Standby debt is a…
Tools Total occupancy cost calculator
For a location-dependent business, occupancy is usually the second-largest cost after labour, and the lease quotes only part of it. Add operating charges, taxes,…
Tools Owner earnings calculator
SDE is what the business produces. It is not what you get. After debt service, tax and the capital the business needs back, what reaches you is a much smaller…
Tools SBA 7(a) affordability & DSCR calculator
Work out your real price ceiling: your equity, what the cash flow services at a lender-grade coverage ratio, and the SBA 7(a) cap. Free, no signup.
Tools SDE calculator
Reconstruct a target’s SDE two ways — the optimistic listing view and the conservative lender-accepted view. Free, no signup, nothing is sent anywhere.
Tools Seasonality stress test
A trailing-twelve-month cash flow figure averages the strong months with the dead ones. Your loan payment does not. This takes twelve months of actual revenue…
Tools Seller note calculator
A seller note is cheap money right up until the balloon. This works out the monthly payment, the total interest, the balance still outstanding when the term…
Tools Working capital target calculator
Net working capital is what the business needs on hand to trade on Monday — receivables and inventory less what it owes suppliers. Set a target for what the…
Site About this site and its editor
Who writes this, what it is, what it is not, and how the editorial standard is enforced.
Site Methodology & source registry
How every mutable number is sourced, reviewed and dated — and the formulas behind the calculators.
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