Regular people buy businesses every day. Banks help them do it.
What you have saved sets the size of what you can buy. A bank lends the rest. Put your own number in and see the price it reaches, before you talk to anyone.
Free, no sign-up, and it runs in your browser. Already looking at a business? Check a deal over $1M in 60 seconds, read a one-page deal teardown (PDF), browse the Buyer's Toolkit, or scope the work in five questions. The call is free and takes 30 minutes, or leave a number and a person calls you back.
And the ceiling above you just went up. You can now borrow twice as much to buy a business: one loan buys the business, a second buys the building, and for deals that qualify they no longer share a ceiling. Both are SBA loans: lenders make them, and the U.S. Small Business Administration guarantees part of the risk.
Illustrative capacity under the July 2026 SBA program changes, up to $10M combined, generally $5.0M from each program, subject to program, project, and lender requirements. Not a loan offer. Source: the SBA announcement. Reviewed July 17, 2026.
Read the first two together: you bring at least a tenth of the total and the bank lends the rest. The $10M is the ceiling on one deal, not the price of getting in.
Four moments, and the same quiet fear in each one.
Buying a business is not one decision. It is four, and each one has a place people get stuck. Find yours.
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Thinking about it
You do not know whether this is even possible on what you have saved.
Turn your savings into a real price range.
Slide your savings → -
Found a listing
The listing was written to sell it. You cannot tell what is real.
Paste it in and read the plain English version.
Translate a listing → -
In it, spending money
Every dollar you spend makes it harder to walk away.
Sixty seconds, and a deal-breaker list you write before you are attached.
Run the 60-second check → -
About to sign
Everyone else at the table gets paid whether this works for you or not.
Free after our call: a short written verdict on your deal within two business days, deal-breakers named.
Talk through your deal →
Different seat, same three questions.
- You want out in a few years and have never had it valued.
- A buyer's bank will read your books before the buyer does.
- The best price comes from the buyer who can actually get funded.
Everyone else gets paid either way.
A business changes hands across a table of professionals. You are usually the only first-timer at it, making the biggest purchase of your life, often with your house behind the loan. We take the seat next to yours. Tap or hover any seat to see how it gets paid.
On the far side of the table: the seller who wants the highest price, the broker who works for the seller and earns a percentage of the price, the lawyer and the accountant who bill by the hour, and the bank that protects the bank. All five get paid whether you win or lose. On your side: you, the only first-timer, and ClarIQ, the seat that is paid by you alone.
Across from you
Your side
Five seats get paid whether you win or lose. One seat only does well if you do. ClarIQ is paid by you and only you: no commission on the price, no hourly meter, and no fees or referral payments from any lender.
Every dollar you spend makes it harder to walk away.
Deals do not collapse on day one. They collapse in week nine, after the lawyers and accountants have already invoiced. Below: an illustrative look at what a deal costs as the weeks pass, and the common deal-breakers mapped to the week they usually show up. We check the whole list on every deal.
Wrong loan order
Run the 504 before the 7(a) and the old $5M ceiling quietly rebuilds itself.
Seller note terms
Written on terms the bank will not accept. One missed clause reopens everything.
Vanishing profit
Claimed profits that fall apart when the bank's accountants check them, taking your price with them.
Down payment source
Where the money sits gets checked line by line. The wrong source sinks the approval.
License transfer
Permits, lease, or franchise approval that do not transfer with the sale.
The landlord
Nobody asked for consent. It arrives late, angry, or with a rent increase.
No working capital
Nobody modeled it, so the company starts life broke on day one.
And it keeps going
Chapter 8 of the book carries its own list: the seven deal-breaker flags that end a deal before you sign. On a live deal, the teardown checks every line.
See the teardown →Does your deal hold together?
Move the sliders to your numbers. The sheet updates live: how the two loans split, the cash you put down, the monthly payment, and whether the business earns enough to satisfy the bank.
Set your deal parameters
7(a) modeled at about 9.5% (prime 6.75% plus 2.75) over 10 years on 90% of the business. The 504 is two loans on the building: a bank first lien on 50% at about 7.5% over 25 years, and an SBA-backed debenture on 40% at 6.27% fixed (the August 2026 rate), with your 10% on top. For a first-time purchase the SBA's own minimum coverage rises from 1.15x to 1.25x for loans numbered from October 1, 2026; most banks already underwrote to 1.25x or better. Rates as of September 1, 2026, re-verified at least every 90 days (review log). Illustrative only, not a loan offer.
Buying, selling, or buying on repeat.
Whichever seat is yours, we sit beside you on the numbers, from the first look at a deal to the keys in your hand. Each seat gets its own read, its own file, and its own path through the bank.
Buying a business
SBA-funded, first deal or fifth.
- A free written read on any deal in two business days, deal-breakers named
- Both loans mapped and put in the right order
- A lender-ready file, organized to survive underwriting
Hypothetical scenario, not a client story. The figures show how the structure works, not a result we are promising.
Picture an HVAC services company at $6.8M, building included. A read like this one finds the $85K of claimed profit that will not survive inspection, and catches a building loan set to run ahead of the business loan. The work is to correct the price before the offer goes in, resequence so the business loan leads, and document the down payment cleanly. That is the difference between a deal that stalls in underwriting and one that funds in about nine weeks with operating cash still in the business.
Selling your business
Your buyer's bank has to say yes too.
- Your business scored the way a bank would score it
- A 90-day fix list, worked with your accountant
- Paperwork ready before the first buyer calls
Hypothetical scenario, not a client story. The figures show how the structure works, not a result we are promising.
Picture a distribution company heading to market with books that would quietly end the sale at the bank. An audit like this one scores it 54: profits claimed but not documented, statements that do not match the tax returns. Ninety days of fixes alongside the owner's accountant is what moves a score like that into the eighties, puts the paperwork in place before the first buyer calls, and keeps the buyer's SBA loan on schedule instead of dying in underwriting.
Buying on repeat
Franchise owners, rollups, repeat buyers.
- A standing deal file, always current
- A borrowing map across every company you own
- Closings that get faster with every deal
Hypothetical scenario, not a client story. The figures show how the structure works, not a result we are promising.
Picture a plumbing operator going into a third acquisition. Keeping the bank file current and the borrowing map ahead of the pipeline means that when the next target surfaces, the bank starts work the same week instead of starting over. That is how ninety-six days on a first deal becomes sixty-four on a second and forty-seven on a third: the file is already built when the opportunity arrives.
Start free. Step up when the deal gets real.
The staircase is the natural path of a buyer. Most start at step one and step up as the commitment grows. It costs nothing to find out what your deal looks like.
Learn the rules
Plain-English guides and the Stack Check calculator. See what the July 2026 caps make possible.
Get the playbook
The Guide Book and the Buyer's Toolkit: the whole path with worksheets, priced on their own pages.
Pressure-test it
Want the whole file, with no call first? The paid Deal Teardown works every number: the loan stack, the coverage, and a fix for each deal-breaker, in three business days (48-hour rush available), credited toward an engagement.
We structure it
The buy-side engagement, quoted on a free call: the stack, the sequence, and the file, handled with you.
What buyers and sellers ask first
Can you use a 7(a) and a 504 loan on the same acquisition?
What are the new SBA loan caps?
What DSCR do SBA lenders want to see?
How much cash do I need to buy a business with SBA financing?
Do you broker SBA loans?
30 minutes.
You leave knowing.
No retainer required to talk. hello@clariqadvisory.com. On your phone a lot? Install the ClarIQ app and the free deal tools ride along, even offline.
- Bring a live deal or a plan to sell. We read both.
- We tell you what breaks the deal before a bank does.
- You leave with a written answer, not a sales pitch.
- You pick the time on the next screen; the confirmation email carries the call details.