Starting a small business is hard, but, apparently, you don’t have to. You can buy an existing one, a growing trend that, per Forbes, began with the publication of Walker Deibel’s Buy Then Build in 2018.
The benefits are obvious. Instead of doing everything from scratch — coming up with a business plan, finding and renovating a location, building a customer base, etc. — you just hop right in.
Where do you find one?
There are online marketplaces that list businesses for sale, of which BizBuySell is the largest.
- It saw 9.5k transactions in 2024 and earned $2.7B in revenue from listing fees.
- In Q1 2025, it saw 2.3k+ sales, per a BizBuySell report, that represented $2B in value — a YoY 9% increase — despite economic uncertainty around tariffs.
What can you buy?
TBH, we were mostly attracted to Forbes’ headline about buying a haunted forest. That refers to a 20-acre New Jersey Halloween attraction available for $2.85m, but there’s a huge range of businesses, many under $100k.
Some are ordinary — restaurants, retailers, spas, vending machines — and others, like the haunt, are quirkier. BizBuySell marketing director Adam DeBussy told Forbes that the site has even listed “ghost towns, islands, and an independent league baseball team.”
While niche businesses can be harder to both sell and buy — and buyers should of course do their due diligence — experts say acquisitions often go through, assuming the cash flow is there.
Who’s buying and who’s selling?
Many sellers are boomers, who, as of 2024, owned ~51% of privately held US business, per The Guardian. They’re looking to retire, BizBuySell reported that 35% of its buyers, often millennials, want to leave corporate America to run their own small business.
The New York Times highlighted several people who bought niche businesses and noted that often, boring is best — something with solid revenue, room for growth, and in an industry that sustains small operators.
Among them: A manufacturer of machines that clean other machines, a garage and gate door controller business, and an indoor plant maintenance company.
Small Business
