Off-market deal sourcing guides

How to find businesses worth buying before they hit a broker's list, using free public data.

• Best Cities to Buy a Business: The 15 Deepest US Metros, Ranked by Real Data (2026). Original data on 66,310 SBA-backed small businesses: which US metros have the deepest buyable inventory, the largest operators and the cheapest entry.
• BizBuySell Alternatives for Off-Market Deal Sourcing (2026). Looking past BizBuySell for off-market deal sourcing? A searcher's honest guide to finding operators that were never listed, using public records.
• Owner Age & Succession: Why Off-Market SMB Deals Start Before the Listing (2026). Why most small-business sales are succession-driven and settled before any listing, and how buyers use public records to spot owners nearing that decision.
• Buying an Auto Repair Shop Off-Market: A Public-Records Sourcing Guide (2026). How buyers find off-market auto repair shops with public records: SBA loan maturity, registry longevity and local fragmentation, before the shop is listed.
• Buying a Funeral Home Off-Market: A Public-Records Sourcing Guide (2026). How buyers find off-market funeral homes with public records: SBA loan maturity, registry history and local fragmentation, before a consolidator calls.
• Buying a Landscaping Business Off-Market: Sourcing Beyond the Listings (2026). How to source off-market landscaping companies from public records: SBA loan timing, registry longevity and metro fragmentation, before a broker prices it.
• Sourcing Off-Market Manufacturing Businesses to Acquire (2026). A searcher's guide to finding off-market manufacturing companies using public records: SBA loan data, registry longevity, and fragmentation.
• Buying a Veterinary Practice Off-Market: Sourcing Beyond the Consolidators (2026). How buyers find off-market veterinary practices in public records: SBA loan timing, registry longevity and fragmentation, before a consolidator calls.
• Deal Sourcing Software for Self-Funded Searchers: An Honest Comparison (2026). Deal sourcing tools for self-funded searchers compared: BizBuySell, Grata, SourceScrub, Searchfunder, Serava, Inven, Kumo, Scouly. Real 2026 prices.
• Dental Practice Valuation: Revenue Multiples, EBITDA, and What SBA Lending Data Shows (2026). What dental practices sell for in 2026: percentage of collections, EBITDA multiples, DSO pricing, and SBA lending data from 13,932 dental borrowers.
• How to Estimate What a Private Business Is Worth From Public Records Alone (SBA Loan, PPP, Form 5500, Age). A working method to size a private company from PPP loans, Form 5500 filings, SBA loan records and registry age, with honest error bars at every step.
• Finding Off-Market Businesses to Buy in the UK with Companies House Data (2026). Source off-market UK businesses from Companies House: incorporation dates, director ages, PSC ownership and fragmentation, before an agent lists them.
• How to Find Off-Market Businesses to Buy (the Public-Records Method). A searcher's guide to finding off-market businesses to buy from public records: SBA loan files, registry longevity, PPP, Form 5500 and fragmentation.
• What Form 5500 Filings Tell You About a Company You Want to Buy. How to read public Form 5500 filings to size a target company's headcount before an acquisition conversation, and where the data stops.
• How Much Is a Funeral Home Worth? Valuation Multiples and What SBA Lending Data Shows (2026). What funeral homes sell for in 2026: EBITDA and SDE multiples from industry sources, plus SBA loan data on 2,580 funeral home borrowers.
• Grata Alternatives for Searchers and SMB Buyers (2026): Free and Paid Options. Grata publishes no prices. The 2026 off-market sourcing options for searchers and SMB buyers: SourceScrub, Inven, Kumo and free public records.
• How to Approach a Business Owner About Buying Their Business (Letters, Emails, and Scripts). Get a one-page owner letter, an email template, a three-touch cadence and the mistakes that get you ignored, written for buyers working off public records.
• How to Write an Acquisition Thesis (Industry, Geography, Size) With a Worked Example. What goes in a search fund acquisition thesis: industry, geography, size band and timing signals, plus a worked example built on real Georgia data.
• Letter of Intent to Buy a Small Business: Template and the Five Terms Owners Actually Negotiate. A plain-English LOI outline for a small business purchase and the five terms owners negotiate, from the seller note to the working capital peg.
• Reading Market Fragmentation to Find Roll-Up and Acquisition Opportunities. How searchers read market fragmentation from SBA, PPP, Form 5500 and registry records to find roll-up and acquisition targets before a listing exists.
• Buying a Dental Practice Off-Market: Sourcing Beyond the Brokers (2026). How buyers find off-market dental practices with public records: SBA loan maturity, registry age and fragmentation, before a broker takes over.
• Due Diligence Checklist for an Off-Market Small Business (What Public Records Already Told You, and What They Cannot). A due diligence checklist for buying an off-market small business, plus what SBA loans, PPP data, Form 5500 and state registries already told you.
• Finding Off-Market HVAC & Plumbing Companies to Acquire (2026). How searchers find off-market HVAC and plumbing companies with public records: SBA loan maturity, registry longevity, and market fragmentation.
• Reading PPP Loan Data to Estimate a Small Business's Payroll and Headcount. How to read public PPP loan data to estimate a small business's payroll and headcount before an acquisition conversation, plus the honest limits.
• We Built an Instrument to Prove Our Recommender Doesn't Learn. Five beliefs about our personalization engine survived unit tests and review, then died under end-to-end measurement. What broke and how we found it.
• Using an SBA 7(a) Loan to Buy a Business: 2026 Rules, Equity Injection, Seller Notes, and DSCR. 2026 rules for buying a business with an SBA 7(a) loan: $5M cap, 10% equity injection, seller notes on standby, DSCR floors, and the October 1 changes.
• Which States Have the Largest SBA-Financed Small Businesses? (2026 Data Study). Median SBA loan sizes by state across 66,310 small businesses. Colorado leads at $565k, Texas tops the $1M+ share. Original 2026 data from public records.
• Using SBA Loan Data as an Acquisition-Timing Signal. How to use public SBA 7(a) and 504 loan data to find off-market businesses and time outreach, with a step-by-step method you can run yourself.
• SBA Loan Maturities by State: 50 States and DC Ranked by Owner-Transition Loans Due 2026 to 2028. All 50 states and DC ranked by SBA 7(a) and 504 loans reaching maturity 2026 to 2028, from 66,307 loans. Counts, shares and median loan size per state.
• The SBA Maturity Wall: 66,307 Small-Business Loans and When They Come Due. Analysis of 66,307 SBA 7(a) and 504 loans with computable maturities: 2,639 come due in 2026 and 2,737 in 2027, cut by state, metro, and industry.
• What Banks Lend Against Main Street: SBA Loan Sizes Across 66,310 Small Businesses (2026 Data Study). Original data study: median peak SBA borrowing across 66,310 US small businesses in 7 verticals, from funeral homes at $697k to landscaping at $350k.
• Search Fund vs Self-Funded Search: Which Path, and What Each Needs From Deal Flow. Traditional search funds and self-funded search compared: economics, deal size, time horizons, and how each model actually sources its deals.
• State Business Registry Lookup: Where to Find Formation Dates and Owners in All 50 States. Verified business entity search links for all 50 states and DC, what a registry record shows, and why formation date is the strongest longevity signal.
• Veterinary Practice Valuation: Why Consolidators Pay More, and What SBA Data Shows (2026). What veterinary practices sell for in 2026: EBITDA multiples by size, the consolidator premium, and what 5,787 SBA loan records show about deal sizes.