BusinessesForSale.com Announces 2010 Business Transfer Marketplace Survey Results

A generally positive but also fragile and uncertain economic future is the outcome of a survey of thousands of business buyers, sellers and business brokers from around the country by BusinessesForSale.com.

The findings

The survey points to many prospective business buyers wanting to capitalise on low credit rates and a perceived buyers’ market for business opportunities.

By far the most common reason given by the 82% who believe it’s the right time to buy a business is that continuing economic uncertainty promises low prices, with about half (49%) citing this reason.

There are also signs that the credit drought is easing, with more buyers finding it easy to obtain credit than difficult - 37 and 25% respectively, which are better than the world averages, as you would expect given Australia’s relatively weaker exposure to the worst of the credit crisis.

However this bounce may end as higher quality business owners evaluate their options, as one broker observed: “Extremely low interest rates deter business owners from selling their businesses as they can nowhere near replace the income they derive from their businesses when they come to investing the capital in the proceeds of sale.”

View the survey results here: http://australia.businessesforsale.com/australian/info/surveys/businessSalesReportAUS.aspx

Economic Indications

The businesses-for-sale market has always been a useful economic indicator. Previous research from BusinessesForSale.com has shown that an increase in both business values and the quality of businesses has often presaged an economic improvement a few months later and vice versa.

The market

While brokers generally believe there are more businesses on the market than before, a growing mismatch between buyer and seller expectations has developed, particularly regarding valuations.

Some business owners see economic green shoots as justification for charging a higher price, while buyers see continuing turbulence as a licence to drive prices lower. Australia has again fared better than most, with only 41% of brokers reporting an increase in buyers dropping out of the sales process – considerably lower than the worldwide figure of 55%.

58% of buyers in Australia believe that sellers’ asking prices are too high, while 41% feel they are about right, but the biggest surprise was that 80% of brokers said that buyers had been getting their asking prices in the last 12 months.

Popular Sectors

In terms of which sectors are performing strongly 62.5% of brokers reported a surge in sales of food businesses, the largest rise posted, in a ‘flight to safety’ to an industry widely considered relatively recession-proof. The second steepest sales rise, 31%, was reported in retail, usually one of the first sectors to rebound from a recession. Real estate and Technology businesses, which require more capital and tend to perform poorly following downturns, were the biggest fallers, 41.7% and 33% respectively, in Australia. There’s a clear correlation with demand here because these sectors are least in demand among buyers, with only around 10% of buyers interested in each of these sectors.

---NOTES TO EDITORS---
1. BusinessesForSale.com (http://australia.businessesforsale.com/) and FranchiseSales.com (www.FranchiseSales.com) is published by Dynamis Plc. (www.Dynamis.co.uk). Dynamis also publish www.BusinessWings.co.uk and www.BusinessOpportunities.com.
2. Dynamis is a privately owned company based in London, UK.
3. BusinessesForSale.com has over 300,000 registered business buyers. The site attracts over 1 million unique users per month. The website connects buyers and sellers of businesses from all over the globe and has a strong presence in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US, South Africa and Europe.
4. For more information about BusinessesForSale.com contact Jo Dalton on 020 7324 1948 or jcd@dynamis.co.uk

BusinessesForSale.com
Dynamis House
6-8 Sycmoare Street
London
N8 7NU
UK

This release was published on openPR.