BizBuySell.com, an Internet business-for-sale marketplace, reports that while the number of Fresno County businesses listed on its site has remained stable for the past few years, the median asking price in the first quarter of 2014 was about 34% lower than it was a year ago.
Information released by the company last week shows that among 21 local businesses listed for sale on the website in the first three months of this year, the median asking price was $249,000. That compares to a median asking price of $377,000 in the first quarter of 2013, when 20 businesses were listed.
“It’s a good time to be a seller, but it’s a great time to be a buyer,” said Curtis Kroeker, a group manager for San Francisco-based BizBuySell.com and BizQuest.com.
Kroeker warned against reading too much into price fluctuations in the local market because of the relatively small sample size of businesses compared to BizBuySell’s nationwide statistics. “Nationally, we have a very robust sample,” Kroeker said. “But when you look at individual markets, then it becomes more challenging.” Generally, he said, a stable number of businesses listed for sale in the market represents good news.
BizBuySell’s statistics include only businesses that are listed for sale by owners or by participating brokers on its website; its report on closed sales includes only those transactions that business brokers report to BizBuySell.
In smaller markets such as Fresno, one or two big-ticket listings or reported sales can easily skew the averages or medians, Kroeker said. In the first quarter of this year, three businesses were listed for sale in the range of $300,000 to $500,000, compared to seven in early 2013.
But in Fresno County and throughout the nation, Kroeker said the level of activity in buying and selling businesses suggests that the wider economy is improving compared to the depths of the recession several years ago.
“There are still local and regional differences, but the economic recovery is more widespread,” he said. “Things are not necessarily improving by the same amounts from market to market, but they all tend to be moving in the same direction.”
Among the 21 businesses posted on BizBuySell in early 2014, four were restaurants, five were retailers and nine were service businesses. A year ago, retailers represented seven of the 20 listings, along with three restaurants, six service businesses and two manufacturing enterprises.
Nationally, the company has seen a dramatic increase in transactions since late 2012, after “bumping along the bottom for several years,” Kroeker said.
“Businesses are more attractive and financing is easier to get now because banks are lending again,” he said. “Also, in general, people’s home values and stock portfolios are more valuable, making it easier to get a down payment.”
More owners, in the meantime, are putting their businesses up for sale because of a better business environment.
“It looks like there are a lot of owners who got caught by the recession, who had been planning on selling and retiring, but it’s taken two to five years longer than they wanted,” Kroeker said.
“There’s a robust demand for businesses, but an even more robust supply.”
The reporter can be reached at (559) 441-6319, tsheehan@fresnobee.com or @TimSheehanNews on Twitter.