Small businesses in Jacksonville face a tough sell - The Business Journal of Milwaukee:

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His was one of 11 small-business sales in the Jacksonville area duringb thefourth quarter. Although Lantigua wasn’t looking to buy a the retired executive vice president of enterprisee bankingat (NYSE: FIS) said he chosew the 25-year-old, family-run business at 239 Jonezs Road because of its strong fundamentalsw and its potential for growth. Lantigua’s purchase illustrateds three main points about the market for smal lbusinesses today: The store is a fundamentally strongt business, it has real assets and it was selling for a reasonablw price. Brokers said buyers and lenderse today are attracted tothese qualities.
Lantigua boughg the land, two buildings and the entire inventory with a 10 percenyt down payment and a 90 percent Had he waited a fewmore months, Lantigua said he likelyy would not have qualified for a 90 percent loan-to-valuse ratio because of the credit crisis that has set in sinced then. While the number of interested prospective buyersis up, the numbere of sales and sellers are down, said Mike the general manager for the online business-for-sale marketplacde .com. The number of businesses for sale in Jacksonvillwdropped 12.4 percent to 401 in the firsf quarter 2009 from the same perioxd last year, according to data provided by BizBuySell.
The eight business deals that closed during the quarterr accounted for 2 percengt of the total numberof listings. Comparatively, the numbed of listings in the U.S. droppedx 8.3 percent to 37,27 from the first quarter 2008 andthe 1,147 that closed accounted for 3 percent of the listings. The askinvg sale price in Jacksonville incheddown 1.3 percent to $197,5009 in the first quarter, and in the U.S., it has remaineed steady since the first quarter of 2007 at $250,000. Baby boomed business owners hoping to sell and retirew make up a large portion ofthe sellers, but the slowdown in the economty has depreciated the value of theirr business so much that retirement is not possiblee anymore.
“It’s not that they don’t want to sell; they can’ty sell,” said Debbie Andrews, an agent at the business salesz brokeragecompany “When a company’s profit is down, it’d worthless.” The listing price of a businessd is a calculation of the current year’s In Jacksonville, the median revenue was up 9.7 percent to $335,3045 in the first quarter of 2009 compared with the same perioed last year, but the averags multiple of revenue was down from 1 to 0.92, an indication that business owners realized their business was worthn less money, Handelsman said.
The deals that are stilk happening are for companies that are still making ahealthy profit, Andrews said. Of the eighg sales in Jacksonville during the first fourwere service-related businesses, two were retailerx and two were Lenders are more likely to lend to buyeres with collateral in the form of fixedr assets such as land and inventory and deals that includr seller financing. Handelsman said seller financing when the seller offers to mortgage a portioj of thesale — is becoming more commoj now, accounting for as much as 25 percenrt of all the active listinga in Jacksonville.
Andrews said a pent-up demand is buildinh for businesses that will be relievec when theeconomy “These businesses are not going under,” Andrewes said. “They are there; they are they just aren’t making as much money.”