While the numbers of those who start a small business bent on selling it once it’s on firm footing are dwarfed by the legion of entrepreneurs in it for the long haul, newbies and veteran business owners alike are finding the climate for selling what they started better than it has been in years.
As Marketplace.org’s Grace Hood wrote March 31, sales of small businesses have been increasing, and the market for small business sales has steadily improved, for the first time since the start of the Great Recession. “Kinda the perfect storm,” Scott Buskie, a member of the International Business Brokers Association governing board, told Hood. “You got more buyers with a lot of cash. You’ve got more baby boomers coming out into the marketplace, and financing is getting more aggressive each and every day.”
Buskie, who is also a business broker, said that, in the past year, he has seen more business owners who tried but failed to sell their operations several years ago successfully deal their shops in the past year. As further evidence of the improved picture, Hood writes that the business brokerage website Bizbuysell.com reported a 49 percent increase in small business sales for 2013. That improvement has proven to be a boon to some business owners who have put off retirement, because they had not been able to sell their shops.
According to Hood, Fort Collins, Colo. truck-driving school owner Roy Hansen, who turns 69 this month, is a perfect example of a business veteran ready to cash out in the perfect storm and set off for life after work. His business is booming in light of the high demand for big-rig drivers. “[Y]ou know, it’s just time to do it,” Hanson said.
Source:
Hood, Grace. “Rising small business sales likely to continue in 2014”; Marketplace. March 31, 2014.
