Franchise for Sale on BizBuySell
Discover the ins and outs of finding franchise resale values using BizBuySell and other resources. Learn how to evaluate franchise investments and spot red flags, ensuring you make smart, data-driven decisions for your business future.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Are you looking for franchises for sale? Perhaps you’re looking to maybe start a new franchise and you want to see what the resale value is for the franchise. At Vetted Biz, we look through all different types of sources to see what the franchise resale value is, one of those resources. BizBuySell, I’m going to go through how you can find directly the data to look at what a reasonable franchise resale is, or even if you just want to find a franchise resale and you don’t want to start your business from scratch.
BizBuySell: The Franchises for Sale Consultant
At, Vetted Biz, we look at a lot of different resources to assess what the valuation is, of a franchise, and you can find that information on our Vetted Biz listing, where we have payback period, average unit volume. And we’re rolling out resale value for 1,000s of franchises. But one of the metrics that we look at is seeing what franchises are for sale on BizBuySell and what the value is of those franchises.
First, the asking price of a business for sale on BizBuySell, usually closes at like a 10% discount. If someone’s selling, say a Burger King for $1,000,000, they’re listing it for $1,000,000 but by the time the buyer puts the offer, does the due diligence, maybe adjust the final purchase price, it’s going to be transacted at, $900,000 on average. Now there’s a bidding process. A lot of times the price gets drawn up, especially if you’re selling five, 10 franchise locations, as well as if it’s a very well-known brand with amazing EBITDA, et
Franchises for Sale
The price can definitely go up. But this is in general where the value you see online, whether it’s on BizBuySell, Franchise Flipper, other different websites that have resales for franchises, usually there’s going to be a discount of 10%.
Now, going back to the original attention of today’s episodes, how to find franchise resales on BizBuySell, because it’s not super intuitive, it took me a good 10 minutes to figure out and how to search for franchise resales.
And what I do first is go to, bizbuysell.com, click on the Buy a Business drop-down and then search for business. And it’s gonna bring you to whatever state you’re in. You’re going to want to hit X. On my screen, I hit X on the state of Florida and take out Florida. I see locations across the United States, then I go to More Filters. And in the More Filters tab is where I’m going to type in the franchise. Let’s just go on Subway.
The Subway Franchise Case
Subway has 1,000s of locations in the United States, and I can see that there are 226 results for Subway. Now, maybe 80% of these are actually Subway restaurants. Others are stores or businesses that are for sale that are right next to a Subway. And the business wants to highlight that a Subway is right next to to it. But you can see Subways for sale at 135,000 for one in, in Illinois, there is a Subway for sale for 69,000 in Marin County, California, a cash flow of 72,000.
For me, that looks like the owner is working day-to-day in the business as essentially, doesn’t make sense that the business is for sale for the same amount that they make every year. If there’s a day-to-day manager that’d be 100% yield on your investment year over year. And then you even have one in Montana where a Subway, a single unit occupied building where it’s just a Subway is for sale including the land. And that’s at like $800,000 in Montana. What I mostly see for Subways are less than $200,000, 100K, 150K for a Subway franchise.
A Big Red Flag on The Franchises for Sale
If you look at how much it costs to open a Subway franchise, it’s a bit disappointing, because it generally does not cost 100K, 150K to open a Subway, but that’s regularly what they’re sold at.
If you’re going to open a Subway according to their latest FDD from 2022, you’re looking at investing 183,000 to $507,000. The resale value, what I’m seeing here on BizBuySale, with 100s of Subways for sale is, it’s usually a 100K, 150K to buy an existing Subway. With Subway, it has to really make a lot of sense to open a new Subway location, if you’re able to buy a resale at 100,000, 150,000.
And that’s a red flag that we like to look at at Vetted Biz, where, if you’re reviewing websites like BizBuySell, or directly the aggregate information and the data that we have on vettedbiz.com, and you see the resale value, midpoint is higher than the investment midpoint, that’s a red flag, because ideally you build a business, you open it from scratch, you should have sweat equity built into that and someone’s paying you a premium to buy your existing running business.
Conclusion
BizBuySell, there’s a few others like, businessesforsale.com and other business or franchises for sale websites, dealstream.com, that you can search for franchise resales. And if you’re looking to open up a franchise from zero, you’ve gotta know what the franchise resale value is. This is an easy way that in five minutes, you should be able to pull it up, especially for bigger brand concepts, leveraging sites like BizBuySell.
But as you go through the due diligence, try to talk to some former franchisees that have recently sold their business, and over the prior three years for franchises across the United States, roughly 15% of them have traded hands, if not more. There should be a lot of people to contact, especially if the brand’s been around a while. I hope you found this article informational. If there are other ways and resources you think that we should evaluate for franchise resales, we’d love to hear from you.