State of the deal database

Most market commentary on small-business acquisitions leans on syndicated aggregator data or survey responses collected months apart. We have something more direct: our own database, refreshed continuously, of what is actually listed for sale right now. This is a snapshot of that database at the moment of writing, not a projection.

As of this pull, we're tracking 21,659 live listings across the country. The median asking price sits at $320,000, and the overall median deal, across every industry, currently clears a 2.87x multiple on $150,000 of median SDE. Forty percent of listings are priced under $250,000, the segment a solo self-funded searcher or a first-time buyer with SBA financing can realistically pursue without a large equity check. Seventy-four percent sit under $1 million, which is most of the market: the popular image of business acquisition as an eight-figure private-equity sport describes a small minority of what's actually for sale.

Industry concentration is uneven and worth knowing before you build a search thesis around it. Food & Beverage is the deepest vertical by a wide margin: 4,440 listings, more than double the next category. Retail follows at 2,085, Construction at 1,824, Professional Services at 1,483, and Healthcare at 1,241. If you're searching in F&B, you have far more inventory to sift through, and far more competition doing the same sifting.

Here is the part that surprises people who assume the deepest category is also the most attractively priced: it isn't. Food & Beverage's median multiple currently sits at 2.56x, below the overall market median of 2.87x. Retail runs 2.71x, close to F&B. The categories actually commanding a premium are Construction at 2.92x, Professional Services at 2.91x, and Healthcare, also at 2.91x. Volume and pricing power are pulling in opposite directions in this market: the vertical with the most listings to choose from is also the one where sellers are accepting the thinnest multiples, most likely a function of labor-intensive, lower-margin operating models and a large supply of aging owner-operators looking to retire out.

Food & Beverage has the most listings by a wide margin, but it doesn't command the highest multiples. Construction does.

Geography tells a similarly lopsided story. California and Florida together account for 38.3% of every live listing on the platform, 4,288 and 4,004 respectively, well ahead of Texas at 1,189 and New York at 721. That concentration cuts two ways depending on what you're optimizing for. If proprietary deal flow away from the crowd is the goal, the math says look outside the two states everyone else is already searching in. If density of options within a single, well-understood regulatory and demographic environment matters more, California and Florida are where the volume actually is.

None of this is static. Listings enter and exit continuously, multiples drift with financing conditions, and a snapshot taken a quarter from now will look different. That is exactly why we're building this as a recurring piece rather than a one-off: the value is in watching how these numbers move, not in any single reading.