Buying a Small Business
Buying a Small Business in Australia
Know what you are buying before you pay for it
The short version
In Australia you can buy the business — its goodwill, equipment and lease — or the company that owns it, and the choice decides whose debts come with it. Buy the company and become its director, and thirty days later its unpaid tax can become your personal debt. This page is about what to check before you pay.
The seller said his Sydney café and bakery took A$30,000 a week. His own accounts showed $17,957. The buyer won, after a trial and more than four years. In Lane Cove the landlords’ consent to the lease did not come in time, and it cost a buyer his $402,500 deposit.
Australia does not publish what businesses sell for. So on 28 September 2026 I read every listing I could reach on one brokers’ board, 14,155 of them, and the book prints their asking prices by industry and for every state and territory — then shows you how to check the one in front of you.
What’s inside
- 0Australia's small-business market in one chapter
- 1What you are actually buying: the business or the company
- 2What sellers ask, and what that tells you
- 3Eighteen industries: what you are buying in each
- 4Finding a business, and who the broker works for
- 5The seller's numbers: takings, profit and the tax return
- 6The lease: the landlord's consent and the years left
- 7The staff come with the business
- 8Who else owns the equipment: the PPSR and the seller's debts
- 9Licences that do not come with the keys
- 10Tax on the deal: GST, going concern and stamp duty by state
- 11The seller down the road: restraints and vendor finance
- 12The contract and settlement
- 13Paying for it: what lenders and government will and won't do
- 14The first ninety days
- 15If you are not an Australian citizen or resident
- 16What we do not know
- Appendices
- AHow the numbers were counted
- BAsking prices by industry and by state
- CThe whole check in one list
- DWhere to check for yourself
- EWords in this book
From the book
Businesses listed for sale on one brokers’ board, read on 28 September 2026.
Of the 12,145 that named a price, the number asking $250,000 or less.
The median asking price of a café, across 1,699 listings. Asking, not sold.
Appendix A explains how each number was counted. Appendix B gives the asking prices by industry and by state.
What it covers
The eighteen kinds of business in this book make up 81.10% of Australia’s small businesses, those with fewer than twenty employees, leaving out property holding and investment entities (Australian Bureau of Statistics, businesses at 30 June 2025).
Editions
- EnglishBuying a Small Business in Australia
Know what you are buying before you pay for it
Buy here — EPUB + PDF
Price: $9.99, €9.99 or £8.99, taxes included. Nothing is added on top. Buying here, you also get:
- EPUB and PDF together. One for your e-reader, one for your computer or printer.
- The seller-questions checklist, as a separate file you can fill in. Every question the book tells you to ask the seller about a business in Australia, in order, with space for the answers: 9 pages, 143 boxes you fill in on screen or on paper. Amazon does not carry it.
- Every new edition of this book, free. When the book is corrected or brought up to date, I send you the new files.
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EnglishBuying a Small Business in Australia
Sold through Link, the seller of record, which takes the payment and the tax. The files download straight away; the checkout asks you to agree to that first. Your copy carries your email; no special reading app. Terms of sale · Privacy
Chapter 1, “What you are actually buying: the business or the company”, is free to read before you decide.
No email needed.
When something changes that touches this book — a court decision, a law, a figure — it goes into the letter for the countries you follow, at most once a month. Each item comes with its source and date.
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