100 city markets/Los Angeles, CA
Covered market #2

Businesses for sale in Los Angeles, CA

77,828 business establishments operate in Los Angeles, and 25,311 of them employ between 5 and 99 people — the range most often bought and sold by individual owners. Professional and technical services leads the local mix with 12,326 firms.

Local market

What the Los Angeles business base looks like

Business establishments77,828

Every physical location with paid employees in Los Angeles ZIP codes.

Employing 5 to 99 people25,311

Large enough to run without the owner on site, small enough for an individual buyer. This is where most transactions happen.

Share of the local base33%

The rest are mostly owner-only businesses, which rarely change hands as going concerns.

Largest industries in Los Angeles

  • Professional & technical services12,326
  • Healthcare & social assistance8,116
  • Arts, entertainment & recreation8,112
  • Retail7,314
  • Wholesale distribution6,466

These five account for 54% of establishments in Los Angeles. A buyer's odds are best where the local base is deepest, and a seller competes with everyone else in the same column.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ZIP Business Patterns 2023. Figures cover the ZIP codes the Postal Service assigns to Los Angeles, which approximates but does not exactly match the city limits. Establishment counts are locations with paid employees; sole proprietors without employees are not included. Latest available year: 2023.

Buying, selling, combining

No single industry carries Los Angeles.

The five largest categories split 42,334 businesses between them fairly evenly, with professional and technical services only 1.5× the size of healthcare and social assistance. Demand is spread rather than concentrated.

Buy in Los Angeles

25,311 businesses here employ 5 to 99 people, so the constraint is filtering, not finding. Set a buy box on industry, price and cash flow and let it do the narrowing.

Search this market

Sell in Los Angeles

With no dominant industry in Los Angeles, buyers arrive with broader criteria and fewer direct comparisons. A clearly presented business stands out sooner than it would in a concentrated market.

Start an owner listing

Combine several into one

Acquirers looking for scale in Los Angeles often cannot buy it in one piece. 12,326 professional and technical services firms is the kind of depth that lets several be combined into one company big enough for a buyer that would not look at any of them alone.

How combinations work

Nothing here is a listing or an offer. Confidential details stay behind NDA acceptance and the seller's own consent.