Buying a business? Prices are down
Published 2:28 pm Friday, January 22, 2010
I wrote in a post a few days ago that business aren’t selling very well. Courtesy of the business listing site BizBuySell.com, here are some Seattle-region numbers that show more about what’s happening locally.
A spokeswoman for the Web site told me that credit is making it harder to close larger deals, so small businesses have a bit of an advantage.
- In Seattle, the median asking price of businesses for sale is $225,000.
- At the end of 2008, the median asking price for businesses in Seattle was $250,000.
- In the fourth-quarter of 2009, listed businesses in the Seattle area had a median revenue of $434,411, down from $456,249 at the same time last year.
- The median cash flow (money that comes out of the business over the course of a year) is $100,000, compared to a median cash flow of $103,224 last year.
Wondering what’s happening nationally? In 2009, closed business-for-sale transactions were down 28 percent.
Know a small business you think we should write about? Contact Herald writer Amy Rolph at arolph@heraldnet.com.
