Russel Cohen

If you are a home-based business owner who is ready to sell, you may have many questions and concerns regarding selling your business. You may have started a business from scratch and had much success with it, but now you are looking toward retiring, or starting a new business, or taking a break.

The recently released 2003 Business Reference Guide provides a breakdown of the size of businesses in the U.S. Since exact data is almost impossible to obtain, some of the following are estimates or educated guesses. For reference purposes, they are divided into Levels – an arbitrary term.

In many cases, the buyer and seller reach a tentative agreement on the sale of the business, only to have it fall apart. There are reasons this happens, and, once nderstood, many of the worst deal-smashers can be avoided. Understanding is the key word. Both the buyer and the seller must develop an awareness of what the sale involves–and such an awareness should include facing potential problems before they swell into floodwaters and “sink” the sale.

A contingency in the sale of a business is a condition in the contract of sale or offer that must be resolved, satisfied or rectified by either a buyer or seller. If they are not satisfied then the sale will generally not go forward. Most offers on a business contain one or more contingencies. The sale may be subject to the buyer obtaining financing, or the seller repaving the parking lot. Experienced business brokers have seen just about every contingency thereis.

This question can only be answered by addressing other related questions, specifically: Who’s asking and for what purpose?