Business Sale with or without a Real Estate Sale and Licensing Requirements

It is tough to navigate a business sale.

When business brokering, we are responsible for understanding some laws.

Most lawyers, if you ask them, actually do not know the licensure requirements when it comes to brokering of businesses.

It is generally a gray area for many lawyers, and state to state is not always easy to grasp. Many lawyers know their state laws and their specialty and anything outside of their area of expertise and/or state, they may not be able to help you.

The key to understand is there are a few parts to a business sale.

First, is the business itself including the goodwill, assets, etc.

Second, is the real estate.

The business sale may be separate from the real estate.

The brokering of a business comes down to whether the state views it as a sale of a business, IP, assets, etc and what their requirements are. The sale of land / lease assignment if it is associated with it is a separate transaction / earmarked from the business sale which has to be formally transacted that way.

Some states require a business license. Other states don’t.

Any business brokered in the state of Florida, for instance, would require a listing agreement and broker supervision…Even if it’s online. If this is outside of the state, then a broker from that state would need to be involved to facilitate the transaction. If a business is incorporated outside the state, a Florida broker couldn’t be the broker of record.

If you are selling a Florida business, then you need to understand the laws of that state, where you’ll need some sort of brokerage arrangement in that state.

All 50 states require a real estate license. What that means is that if there is any real estate transaction such as a real estate sale or lease assignment as a result of the sale, that needs to be taken care of by a realtor.

We work with realtors all across the country to be part of deals.

As a licensed agent in a state, you can receive referral fees from a realtor only.  You can only sell the business so long as it goes through the proper brokerage firm.

This is how we are able to participate in deals. If you are unsure of how a transaction should go down, you should reach out to us.

You keep it all. If you are a broker, Imagine selling a huge business and not being able to receive commissions? This is one of the cool things of working with us. We can help you architect a deal properly.

You want to get these things checked off before the buyer is in line (LOI/due diligence/etc.) so you don’t scramble at closing where you may need a proper broker at that time.

A real quick sanity check for a FL realtor for instance is to call the Florida FREC resource. 407-438-1409

These are FREE lawyers on salary with NAR for our questions.

You may want to run some situations by them.

If you would like to hop on a call with us to go over things related to acquisitions and general business overview, please schedule a time here. We do a one hour deep dive where we go over your needs as it relates to acquisitions & business expansion, and then we go on the hunt for you to line up a business that fits.

Please reach out to us if you have any questions relating to acquisitions:

Email – acquisitions@jarbly.com

Phone – (800) 773-1523

Simply engage us below to get started whether it comes to bringing you qualified buyers where we list your business for maximal value or engaging us to bring qualified and vetted businesses that match your exact target criteria such as industry and EBITDA multiple if you are buying a business:

Buyer-Side Engagement – Retain Us to Provide you with Qualified and Vetted Businesses that Match Your Target Criteria

Seller-Side Engagement – Retain Us to List Your Business and Bring Legitimate Buyers to the Table

• business broker license
• business sale
• business state license
• licensing requirements
• need a brokers license
• need a real estate license to sell businesses
• state by state license

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