The pitch: 20 Bay Area listings that appear to have been posted within the last week, plus a little context so this isn’t just a scrolling exercise.

This batch is basically: “things you can run,” “things you can staff,” and “things you can’t easily recreate.”

On the low end, you’ve got turnkey-ish asset sales and small owner-operator plays. On the high end, you’ve got regulated services (home care), professional practices (CPA), and “this is really a software platform” bets.

Food and beverage

Local services you can operationalize

Retail and “specialty real estate without buying real estate”

Professional services (where you’re buying relationships)

Online/software and “the business is the system”

Specialty real estate without buying real estate

Deal math of the week

Turnkey home staging business (Petaluma): $300,000 asking on $93,667 cash flow. That’s about a 3.2x multiple (and a roughly 3.2-year pre-debt payback).

What that multiple is really saying: the seller is claiming you’re not just buying furniture and décor inventory; you’re buying a repeatable referral engine (agents, builders, property managers), a scheduling system, and a crew workflow that doesn’t live in one person’s head.

Three diligence questions I’d ask before getting excited

  • How concentrated are referrals (top five agents or designers as a percent of revenue)?

  • What’s truly owned vs. leased (inventory list, replacement cost, condition)?

  • What’s the labor model (W-2 vs. contractor, and who actually does installs on the hard days)?

One useful lens for this week’s mix

A lot of these listings are quietly “lease deals.” Restaurants, retail, even some service businesses: the lease terms (assignment, options, rent steps, landlord consent) can be more determinative than the equipment list. That’s especially true for anything being sold as an asset sale, where the actual continuity you’re buying is the ability to keep operating in that specific spot.

Five broker questions you can copy-paste this week

  • What is the trailing 12-month revenue, SDE/cash flow, and what exactly is included in that number?

  • What are the top three reasons the business wins today (not “great location,” the real ones)?

  • What breaks if the manager/key employee leaves the day after close?

  • What contracts/permits/licenses must be transferred, and what’s the timeline risk?

  • What does the lease look like (base rent, NNN, remaining term, options, assignment clause)?

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