Prices

What Bay Area business listings ask, and what deals actually close at.

BizBuySell Insight Report tables — Q2 2026 listings and FY2025 closed transactions, accessed 2026-08-15. This page is refreshed quarterly.

How to read it

Sellers list at about 3× advertised cash flow. Buyers close at about 2.3–2.4×. The ask/close gap is the market’s information problem in one ratio.
Closed prices land at 88–89% of ask.
Median time on market is about six months.
207 closes a year, against ~16,800 shops someone else could run and ~5,000 owners who say they intend to sell this decade. Supply of listings is not the constraint.

Worked example (hypothetical): a listing advertising $175k cash flow at the SF list multiple asks ≈ $544k. The same cash flow at the SF close multiple is ≈ $425k — a ≈ $120k gap the market already prints. This is arithmetic on medians, not a claim about any specific business.

Current listings — Q2 2026

Metro	Listings	Median ask	Median revenue	Ask / rev	Median cash flow	Ask / CF
SF–Oakland–Fremont	449	$425,000	$699,550	0.84×	$175,000	3.11×
San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara	204	$421,500	$751,807	0.81×	$176,477	2.86×

The live BizBuySell page shows ~1,273 Bay Area results; that is a wider, dirtier set (franchises, online brands, ATM portfolios, out-of-area add-ons). The rows above are the cleaner metro counts.

Closed deals — FY2025

Metro	Closed	Median sale	Median ask	Sale / ask	Median CF	CF multiple	Days on market
SF–Oakland–Fremont	131	$240,000	$277,000	0.88	$127,000	2.43×	182
San Jose–Sunnyvale–Santa Clara	76	$267,500	$289,900	0.89	$135,000	2.27×	194

National context — same source, Q2 2026

2,117 U.S. closed transactions, down ~10% year over year.
National median sale price $349,250, at 2.7× cash flow.
Brokers surveyed say demand exceeds quality supply, and that preparation, clean financials, and low owner-dependence are now “absolute prerequisites” for a close.

From the same report’s buyer/seller survey

Finding	Figure
Buyers who expect SBA financing	78%
Buyers who expect seller financing / owners who plan to offer it	90% / 29%
Buyers who are “corporate refugees”	46%
Owners with an “exit plan” / with a professional valuation / with no idea of value	52% / 14% / 35%

Bay Area firms themselves are healthier than the U.S. median: JPMorgan Institute (May 2026, Chase-account sample) puts SF-metro median small-business revenue at $163k with 24.1 cash-buffer days — the highest of 25 metros. These businesses die from succession and leases, not from empty cash registers.

Source and update policy

All tables on this page: BizBuySell Insight Report, Q2 2026 listings and FY2025 closes, accessed 2026-08-15. JPMorgan Institute, Small business snapshot: San Francisco, 28 May 2026. Refreshed each quarter when the new Insight tables publish; last update 2026-08-15.