100 city markets/Portland, OR
Covered market #28

Businesses for sale in Portland, OR

31,942 business establishments operate in Portland, and 14,114 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 4,798 firms.

Local market

What the Portland business base looks like

Business establishments31,942

Every physical location with paid employees in Portland ZIP codes.

Employing 5 to 99 people14,114

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 base44%

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

Largest industries in Portland

  • Professional & technical services4,798
  • Healthcare & social assistance4,457
  • Restaurants & accommodation3,479
  • Retail3,278
  • Personal & repair services2,805

These five account for 59% of establishments in Portland. 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 Portland, 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 Portland.

The five largest categories split 18,817 businesses between them fairly evenly, with professional and technical services only 1.1× the size of healthcare and social assistance. Demand is spread rather than concentrated.

Buy in Portland

14,114 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 Portland

With no dominant industry in Portland, 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 Portland often cannot buy it in one piece. 4,798 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.