Searcher OS scrapes the public listing pages of roughly 200 US business brokerage sources every day. Over the trailing 90 days that pipeline produced 42,878 attributable US small-business listings from 2,473 distinct broker firms, with a combined asking price of $54.7B. About 769 fresh listings hit the market every day.
I pulled that dataset apart last week to answer a question I get from searchers all the time: where should I actually be looking? The answer is more interesting than I expected. The market is shaped very differently than the textbook deal-sourcing advice suggests, and a small number of decisions about which firms to track will swing your pipeline more than any tool or workflow ever will.
This post is the data view. Every number below comes from the same 90-day snapshot, with the internal demo data and non-US listings excluded. The same dataset feeds the public business broker directory if you want to filter and sort it yourself.
The Market Is Closer to 10/80 Than 80/20
The standard mental model for any marketplace is the Pareto curve. 20% of the suppliers produce 80% of the inventory. The US business broker market is much more concentrated than that.
Here's what the cumulative coverage looks like:
- 1 firm (Flippa) lists 15.6% of all US small-business inventory
- The top 5 firms list 34.7%
- The top 10 firms list 43.2%
- The top 17 firms list 50% (that's 0.7% of the directory)
- The top 254 firms list 80% (that's 10.3% of the directory)
Said another way: ten percent of the brokerages produce eighty percent of the inventory. The other 90% of firms (2,219 of them) split the remaining 20% of listings between them. Roughly a third of the directory (796 firms) lists exactly one deal per quarter.
For a buyer, the practical implication is sharp. If you build relationships with the top 50 firms in your geography and target industries, you've probably covered 60% of the national pipeline. If you cover the top 250, you've covered 80%. Past that, the marginal return on adding another broker contact starts to fall off a cliff.
The 12 Firms That Account for 46% of the Market
Twelve firms individually list 500+ deals over a 90-day window. Together they account for 45.7% of the entire US sellside pipeline. The full list, with merged numbers where the same firm shows up under both a direct feed and an aggregator surface:
- Flippa: 6,678 listings (15.6%)
- Transworld Business Advisors: ~4,829 listings combined (~11.3%)
- BBMS: 1,610
- Sunbelt Business Advisors: 1,323
- We Sell Restaurants: ~1,501 combined
- BusinessMart: 882
- First Choice Business Brokers: 705
- Pronova Partners: 668
- Murphy Business: 617
- Hedgestone: 543
- BusinessUSA: 532
- BizBen: 445
A few notes worth flagging. Flippa is mostly digital businesses and small e-commerce stores, and its median asking price is dramatically lower than the Main Street firms below it. So while it tops the list by listing count, it's a different deal universe from a Sunbelt or a Murphy. If your buy box is brick-and-mortar SMBs in the $500K to $3M range, the next 11 firms on this list cover most of what you care about.
Filter the broker market by state, firm size, and listing volume
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Open the broker directory →Geography: Four States Are Almost Half the Market
Florida, California, Texas, and New York combined account for 40.9% of all US small-business listings. Florida alone is 15.2%. That concentration is partly population, partly business climate, and partly broker density. All three reinforce each other.
The top 15 states by listing volume:
- FL: 5,730 listings (15.2%), 499 active firms, $395K median ask
- CA: 4,269 (11.4%), 456 firms, $350K median
- TX: 2,795 (7.4%), 466 firms, $486K median
- NY: 2,591 (6.9%), 257 firms, $550K median
- NJ: 1,381 (3.7%), 219 firms, $575K median
- GA: 1,116 (3.0%), 196 firms, $395K median
- NC: 965 (2.6%), 230 firms, $379K median
- PA: 952 (2.5%), 242 firms, $365K median
- AZ: 895 (2.4%), 154 firms, $411K median
- MO: 840 (2.2%), 135 firms, $399K median
State-Level Concentration Varies Wildly
Listing counts only tell part of the story. The structure of the broker market inside a state matters too. We can measure that with the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), the same tool the DOJ uses to assess market concentration. An HHI under 1,500 is "unconcentrated"; 1,500 to 2,500 is moderately concentrated; over 2,500 is highly concentrated.
Some state markets are effectively two-firm shows. Indiana has an HHI of 1,991 across 660 listings. Maryland is at 1,853. Florida is at 1,026 (moderately concentrated despite having 499 firms in the tail, because the top end runs hot).
Other states are cottage industries. North Carolina has an HHI of 333 across 230 firms. Texas comes in at 348. Arizona at 376. Georgia at 381. In these states there is no dominant broker. Inventory is spread across hundreds of small shops, and a buyer who only builds relationships with the top 5 or 10 firms is missing most of the deal flow.
The lesson: your sourcing strategy should flex by state. In a concentrated state, two or three relationships will get you most of the way. In a competitive state, you need a much wider net or you'll miss two-thirds of what's posted.
The Four Truly National Firms
66% of broker firms in the directory operate in just one state. They are local specialists, typically a two-or-three-person shop that knows their county and works deals there. Another 28% operate across 2 to 25 states.
Only four firms operate in all 50 states: Sunbelt Business Advisors, Murphy Business, Transworld, and First Choice Business Brokers. Combined, those four firms carry 24% of the entire US sellside pipeline. If you want geographic flexibility in your search, there are exactly four nationwide relationships worth building. For everything else, the market is local.
Industry Mix: Where the Inventory Actually Lives
Food & Beverage and Retail/E-commerce together account for 36% of all listings, more than any other sector by a wide margin. These are the "front of house" SMBs that most people picture when they think Main Street: restaurants, cafes, convenience stores, retail shops.
The top industry segments by listing count:
- Food & Beverage: 8,582 listings (21.0%), $350K median ask
- Retail & E-commerce: 6,072 (14.9%), $199K median
- Healthcare & Wellness: 3,185 (7.8%), $490K median
- Construction & Trades: 2,708 (6.6%), $780K median
- Home Services: 2,411 (5.9%), $550K median
- Technology & Software: 2,400 (5.9%), $30K median
- Personal Services: 2,267 (5.6%), $277K median
- Professional Services: 1,850 (4.5%), $500K median
- Automotive Services: 1,774 (4.3%), $600K median
- Manufacturing & Production: 1,485 (3.6%), $1,200K median
Look at the median asking prices and you'll see the spread. Tech & Software comes in at a $30K median because most of those listings are micro-website portfolios on Flippa, Empire Flippers, and Acquire (sub-$50K deals at scale). Manufacturing & Production sits at a $1.2M median because nearly every deal involves equipment, real estate, and recurring B2B contracts. That's a 40x spread within the same "small business" label.
For a self-funded searcher running SBA financing, the takeaway is that "industry choice" and "deal volume" are coupled in ways that aren't obvious from a Bizbuysell scroll. If you want to look at 200 deals a month, Food & Beverage and Retail will get you there. If your thesis is in Manufacturing or Construction, you'll need to widen your geography or your deal-size band to keep volume up.
Price Distribution: The SBA-Eligible Universe Is the Whole Universe
The asking-price distribution across the dataset is heavily skewed toward Main Street. The percentiles:
- p10: $15K
- p25: $140K
- Median: $396K
- p75: $1.0M
- p90: $2.7M
- p95: $4.8M
- p99: $14.5M
The cumulative price-band shares matter even more:
- Under $100K: 20.3% of listings
- Under $500K: 56.3%
- Under $1M: 74.9%
- Under $5M (the SBA 7(a) ceiling): 95.3%
- Over $10M: 1.8%
Three things stand out. First, three quarters of the listed market is under $1M. That's the deep end of Main Street, mostly owner-operator businesses. Second, 95% of the listed market falls inside the $5M SBA 7(a) loan ceiling, which means the SBA-eligible buyer universe is essentially the same as the entire listed universe. And third, the 1.8% of listings priced over $10M is where the lower middle market lives. A small share of total listings, but a meaningfully different buyer pool, advisor type, and process.
Worth noting: these are asking prices, not closed prices. True clearing prices in this segment typically come in 10 to 30% below ask. So the practical SBA-financeable universe is even larger than the 95% number implies.
Productivity Per Agent: One Word Hides Two Business Models
The word "broker" covers two business models that look almost nothing alike. You can see it clearly in listings-per-agent productivity at the firm level:
- Hedgestone: 543 listings across 7 agents = 77.6 per agent
- BusinessUSA: 532 listings across 18 agents = 29.6
- We Sell Restaurants: 1,204 across 54 = 22.3
- Pronova Partners: 668 across 39 = 17.1
- Transworld (direct feed): 4,048 across 680 = 6.0
- Sunbelt: 1,323 across 226 = 5.9
- Murphy Business: 617 across 141 = 4.4
- First Choice: 705 across 167 = 4.2
- Transworld (franchisee feed via aggregators): 781 across 316 = 2.5
Hedgestone is running 77 listings per agent. Transworld's franchise network is running 2.5. Both are called "business brokers" and both show up in the same Google searches. They are completely different operations.
High-velocity firms (Hedgestone, BusinessUSA, We Sell Restaurants, Pronova) operate more like pipeline shops, with a small bench of senior brokers running structured processes at scale. The franchise networks (Transworld, Sunbelt, Murphy, First Choice) are franchisor-of-independent-operators models, where each "agent" is effectively their own small business attached to a national brand. Same brand, very different person on the other end of the call.
For a buyer, this matters because cold outreach to a high-velocity firm tends to put you in a structured queue with relatively quick callbacks. Cold outreach to a franchise network is essentially outreach to one independent owner-operator who happens to share the brand of 200 others. Treating them the same is a category error that will cost you time.
What This Means for How You Source Deals
A few practical takeaways from the data, in rough order of impact:
- The top 50 firms cover 62% of the market. Most buyers underweight how much pipeline is concentrated in a small number of firms. Building real relationships with 30 to 50 specific brokers will outperform "subscribing to BizBuySell alerts" by a wide margin.
- The market is local except in 4 firms. If your search is geographically flexible, Sunbelt, Murphy, Transworld, and First Choice are the four firms whose national footprint you should be plugged into. Everything else, build by state.
- Flex your strategy by state HHI. In Indiana or Maryland, two or three firms will get you almost everything. In North Carolina or Texas, you need a wide net or you'll miss most of the deal flow.
- Industry choice changes deal volume. Food & Beverage gets you 8,500 deals a quarter to look at. Manufacturing gets you 1,500. Both are valid theses, but they require different sourcing cadences and different patience levels.
- SBA-eligible covers essentially the whole market. 95% of listings sit under the $5M SBA 7(a) ceiling. If you're financing with SBA, your constraint is whether you're screening fast enough to find the good ones, not whether there are enough deals out there.
- Treat franchise-network firms as independent brokers. Each agent is effectively their own small business. Build the relationship one person at a time, not as if you're contacting a centralized pipeline shop.
For a more practical view of how to actually run those relationships once you have them, see working with business brokers for the etiquette and outreach playbook, and deal sourcing strategies for the broader funnel and pipeline math. If you want to start by seeing the market firm-by-firm, the Searcher OS broker directory is the fastest way to filter and rank by 90-day activity.
A Note on Methodology
These numbers come from a 90-day rolling window of the Searcher OS listings table, snapshotted on April 20, 2026, with internal test sources and non-US listings excluded. Firm attribution mirrors the logic used by the public broker directory (direct scrapes first, then canonicalized firm rollups from aggregator surfaces) with the same firm-blocklist applied. Where a single firm (like Transworld or We Sell Restaurants) appears under both a direct feed and an aggregator surface, I've combined the rows for the public-facing numbers above.
The underlying dataset moves about a percent or two week-over-week as listings roll in and roll out. The top 10 firms are stable. The middle of the long tail churns. If you want the live, current ranking, the broker directory page refreshes daily.