100 city markets/New York, NY
Covered market #1

Businesses for sale in New York, NY

93,928 business establishments operate in New York, and 36,521 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 15,786 firms.

Local market

What the New York business base looks like

Business establishments93,928

Every physical location with paid employees in New York ZIP codes.

Employing 5 to 99 people36,521

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 base39%

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

Largest industries in New York

  • Professional & technical services15,786
  • Personal & repair services10,372
  • Restaurants & accommodation10,145
  • Retail9,266
  • Real estate & leasing8,934

These five account for 58% of establishments in New York. 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 New York, 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 New York.

The five largest categories split 54,503 businesses between them fairly evenly, with professional and technical services only 1.5× the size of personal and repair services. Demand is spread rather than concentrated.

Buy in New York

36,521 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 New York

With no dominant industry in New York, 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 New York often cannot buy it in one piece. 15,786 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.