BizBen: Legit For California Franchises And Businesses For Sale? (2024)

Introduction

Hey, Patrick Findaro here, co-founder at Vetted Biz. I’ve been getting a lot of commentary from the Vetted Biz community on different business-for-sale sites. Many people are thinking about buying an existing franchise and at Vetted Biz right now, we don’t have that much information on existing businesses for sale. It’s pretty limited just to the state of Florida.

So, in today’s video, we’re going to go through if BizBen is legit for California franchises and businesses for sale. We’re going to go through everything you need to know about the BizBen website and see if it could be a good resource for you if you’re looking to buy an existing franchise or buy a business for sale. So, BizBen’s been around now for 26 years, and it’s mostly focused on existing businesses for sale. About 10% of those listings are franchises. So last we checked there are about 326 franchises for sale listed on bizben.com.

Where are the franchises located?

Most of those franchises for sale are in the state of California as is the case with pretty much all 95% of the listings on BizBen being California base franchises, or more likely than not independent, non-franchise businesses. They currently have 3,812 businesses for sale. Of those, 3,700 are based in California. So 95%-plus of the opportunities that you’ll find on BizBen are California businesses.

BizBen’s History

So at Vetted Biz, again, we have business listings, franchise listings, our business for sale listings are more Florida-focused. So BizBen is a great complement if you’re looking to get a business on the West Coast. BizBen was founded by Peter Siegel in 1994. And it appears now it’s onto the second generation of the Siegel family, which is quite impressive as very few businesses last past 10 years. Nonetheless, being able to bring in the second generation, his son, into the business. And we’re going to go through a few of the content items that BizBen provides prospective business buyers, as well as business sellers.

So they do host a weekly webinar and podcast largely including some of the leading business brokers in California and other key advisors as guests. There are all different types of ways that you can advertise on the website for those business brokers, franchise brokers that are interested in potentially listing their businesses. They also offer custom banner advertising and featured info footers starting at $250.

Don’t worry, I’m not advertising. I don’t get any compensation from BizBen for the recording of this video. We just have been getting a lot of inquiries from the community at Vetted Biz as well as our clients and prospective clients at our sister company, Visa Franchise. They do offer a ProBuy Program for buyers, which is a six-month program designed for buyers who want to work with BizBen throughout the entire buying process.

How BizBen works

So they get initial coaching, prequalified business purchase financing, and referrals to other professionals that can help them along the way. And they even have a buy posting listing what you’re looking for. Essentially getting that team aligned, the transactional attorney, escrow, sales services, everything that you need to buy a business principally in the state of California, that’s their focus.

They’ve listed and have worked on hundreds of thousands of businesses. So I imagine that knowledge base is compound where they can deliver some good service to prospective buyers. And then for the sellers, they have a ProSell Program for sellers and intermediaries, which seems like a good Kickstarter campaign for those new brokers that maybe are just starting up or it’s their first couple of years that need more support as they grow their business brokerage practice.

Differences between states

Now, the big difference with the state of California compared to Florida is if you’re looking to buy an existing franchise. In Florida, there are thousands of opportunities, at any given time. There are 300, 400 franchises for sale, where you have buyer representation as well as seller representation. And they’ll generally split the commission. The real estate’s more like 6% of that split. So 3% for buying a small business that’s under $1 million. It’s usually like 10%, 12%.

So it shouldn’t cost you more working with buyer representation in the state of Florida.

However, if you do decide to have buyer representation in California, and you’re working with an actual business broker who wants a cut of the commission, it’s going to generally limit the opportunities.

This is because in California, most of the time, the businesses are just represented by the seller, and it’s just the seller. Seller represented broker who’s receiving that commission.

Conclusion

So, and a lot of states like whether it’s California, Arizona, and Texas, we get a lot of inquiries in Sun Belt states. You’re going to have to talk to a lot of different business brokers and bizben.com is a good resource if you’re looking to buy a business in the state of California. However, beyond California, there’s really limited inventory in terms of businesses for sale.

And it’s better to maybe consult some of the other websites out there like BizBuySell, and BizQuest. And we’ll do some other reviews on some of the competitors at bizben.com like BizBuySell, Businesses For Sale, and bizquest.com. I hope you found this video informative. If you liked it, subscribe to us, and best of luck finding that franchise or business resale.