Businesses listed for sale in Central Ohio at BizBuySell.com had average revenue of $516,813, up 14 percent from a year ago.

Evan Weese
Web coordinator- Business First

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The market for buying and selling small businesses in Columbus picked up during the second quarter, with the value of companies changing hands also increasing, says a new report from BizBuySell.com.

The median asking price for businesses on the selling block in Central Ohio during the second three months of the year was $244,000, an 8 percent increase from $225,000 in 2012, the online marketplace for buying and selling businesses said, citing listings for 148 companies. That’s up from 123 listings a year earlier.

On average, listed businesses had revenue of $516,813, up 14 percent from $452,706, and cash flow of $104,168, an increase of 20 percent from $86,752.

It’s still a buyers’ market, the group’s quarterly report says, although strength is shifting to sellers as the economy improves.

“I think it’s going to be a number of quarters before it fully swings the other way,” Curtis Kroeker, group general manager for BizBuySell, told me.

National data from California-based BizBuySell reflected Central Ohio’s trend during the quarter. There were 1,827 transactions reported in the second quarter, up 62 percent from 1,129 a year earlier, marking the largest year-over-year increase since small business sales bottomed out in mid-2008.

BizBuySell gauges closed transactions at the national level, but uses only listings for its local report because of the smaller sample size.

Nationally, the median sale price of businesses that changed hands during the quarter jumped nearly 17 percent to $175,000, up from $150,000 in the second quarter of 2012.

“Small-business owners are growing more confident in the sellability of their business as these financial numbers continue to improve and it’s showing in both their asking and final sale price,” Curtis Kroeker, group general manager of BizBuySell said in the report.

Evan Weese is web coordinator for Business First.