Never done this before
Buying your first business.
Nobody buys their first business knowing how it works. The good news is that the sequence is short and the expensive mistakes are well known. Here is the order to do it in, what each step costs, and the four questions worth answering before you spend anything.
What to expect
Most people look for six to eighteen months.
Over that time a serious buyer will look closely at perhaps a dozen businesses and pursue two or three of them properly. That is normal, and it is not wasted time. What wastes time is looking without a range, because half of what you find will be outside it.
For scale, the average asking price across listings on Bsale was around $660,000 in December 2025. Most first purchases sit well below that. Lenders typically fund 50% to 70% of a business purchase, so a first buyer is usually contributing 30% to 50% themselves, plus working capital and costs on top.
In this order
The four questions, as they actually come up.
Each one has a cheaper answer than the one after it. Doing them out of order is what makes buying a business expensive before you have bought anything.
1. Can I actually afford to do this?
Work out your range before you look at a single business. It is bounded by two things: the deposit you hold, and what the sort of business you are looking at earns once you have paid yourself. Buyers who skip this spend months on businesses they were never going to be able to fund.
2. What should I be looking for?
Something in a sector you understand, at a size your range supports, that keeps earning when you take a holiday. The last one matters more than people expect: a business that only works while you are standing in it is a job you paid for, not an asset.
3. This one looks good. Is it?
You will have an advertisement or an information memorandum and nothing else. That is enough to work out what the asking price implies about the earnings, whether that is plausible, and what to ask next. It is not enough to commit to.
4. How do I know the numbers are real?
You do not, until somebody rebuilds them from source documents: revenue against BAS lodgements and bank deposits, wages against payroll and super, every add-back tested one at a time. That is due diligence, and it is the step that decides the price you should actually pay.
Learn these cheaply
Six mistakes that only catch people once.
None of these are exotic. They are the ordinary errors of a first purchase, and every one of them is cheaper to read about than to make.
| The mistake | What it costs you |
|---|---|
| Not paying yourself in the maths | Makes a business look roughly twice as profitable as it is. The most expensive error on this list, and the most common. |
| Treating the vendor's profit and loss as evidence | It is the opening argument in a negotiation. Owner-managed accounts are prepared to minimise tax, not to inform a buyer. |
| Spending the working capital on the purchase price | Wages, rent and tax do not wait for the business to settle in. Good businesses fail in month three this way. |
| Agreeing a seven-day due diligence window | Barely enough time to receive the documents, let alone test them. Ask for enough time in the contract before you sign it. |
| Finding the business before knowing the range | Months of looking at things you cannot fund, and a real risk of stretching to a price the numbers never supported. |
| Assuming the bank will lend against goodwill | For service businesses with no assets, some lenders will fund very little of the price. Find out early, not at application. |
Not paying yourself in the maths
- What it costs you
- Makes a business look roughly twice as profitable as it is. The most expensive error on this list, and the most common.
Treating the vendor's profit and loss as evidence
- What it costs you
- It is the opening argument in a negotiation. Owner-managed accounts are prepared to minimise tax, not to inform a buyer.
Spending the working capital on the purchase price
- What it costs you
- Wages, rent and tax do not wait for the business to settle in. Good businesses fail in month three this way.
Agreeing a seven-day due diligence window
- What it costs you
- Barely enough time to receive the documents, let alone test them. Ask for enough time in the contract before you sign it.
Finding the business before knowing the range
- What it costs you
- Months of looking at things you cannot fund, and a real risk of stretching to a price the numbers never supported.
Assuming the bank will lend against goodwill
- What it costs you
- For service businesses with no assets, some lenders will fund very little of the price. Find out early, not at application.
What each step costs
- Working out your range
- Free
- Reading the guides here
- Free
- The First Look, screening one business
- $295
- Financial due diligence
- From $2,500
All fees exclude GST. The $295 is credited in full against a due diligence engagement on the same business within 90 days.
Worth reading first
- Is buying a business worth it?
Sometimes. Buying an established business is worth it when the earnings are real, the price is built on tested numbers and the structure protects you. An honest look at both sides of the decision, with the arithmetic.
- How much does due diligence cost in Australia?
Straight numbers: financial due diligence on an Australian business acquisition runs from $2,500 to $22,000 fixed, priced by transaction value and depth. The full fee schedule, what moves the price, and what skipping it costs.
- How to get a loan to buy a business in Australia
What lenders actually assess, the documents that decide the outcome, why good deals get declined, and how to walk in with a case a credit team can approve.
The full buyer's guide walks through all six stages of a purchase, and the glossary explains every term a broker or a lender will use, with why it matters.
All three free calculatorsWant a straight read on your deal?
Book a free call with Nicholas. Bring the numbers you have, and we will tell you the right service level and the fixed fee. No obligation.
Common questions
Lenders typically fund 50% to 70% of a business purchase, so expect to contribute 30% to 50% yourself, plus working capital and costs on top. On a $600,000 business that is commonly $180,000 to $300,000 of your own money, plus 60 to 90 days of operating costs held back. The free affordability calculator works out your specific range from your deposit and the earnings of what you are looking at.
Buying is the shorter road if the numbers are real. An established business has customers, cash flow and systems from day one, where a start-up has none of those and needs funding through the period before it earns anything. The catch is that you are paying for all of it up front, which is why testing the earnings before you agree a price matters so much.
It helps more than seniority does. Lenders read relevant sector experience as risk reduction, and a business in a field you understand is one where you can tell a bad month from a bad trend. Where you lack sector experience, a longer vendor handover and a strong existing team do a lot of the work.
Working out your range and reading up costs nothing. Screening a specific business through The First Look is $295. Financial due diligence starts at $2,500 and is priced by transaction value. On top of that you will have legal fees for the contract and lease, and stamp duty where it applies. The sequence is deliberately cheapest first.
Most people look for six to eighteen months before signing anything, then three to six months from serious interest to settlement. The looking is the long part, and it is much shorter for buyers who worked out their range before they started.
A solicitor for the contract, the lease and the transfer, and an accountant for the structure you buy in and the tax position. We do the financial analysis: what the business actually earns and whether the numbers support the price and the debt. Those are three different jobs and none of us covers the other two.
No. We are not licensed as a business agent, we do not search for or negotiate acquisitions, and we do not sell businesses. Buyers agents and business brokers do that. We test the numbers behind whatever you find, which is a separate job and deliberately so.