If you are on the look out for a new business venture or planning to sell your business then read on. There are a few online commercial agents now where businesses for sale are listed. You have most likely heard of Rightmove, but did you know that they also have a very extensive area for business listings?
Commercial People
Commercial People lists commercial properties available across the UK. You can refine your search by location, category, price and size range. The website includes listings from some of the largest national agents including GVA, Lambert Smith Hampton and Countrywide.
The website has specific pages for Essex properties for rent and for sale.
RightBiz – Find The Right Business
RightBiz.co.uk makes it easy to find business by county. They have a page for Essex – www.rightbiz.co.uk/essex.html – which lists the latest listings at the top of the page for easy browsing. They also provide listings by town.
To search for a business they divide the businesses into categories which can then be filtered by location, although this feature does not seem to always be totally accurate.
Often the name of the business is not disclosed in the advert. The commercial property category if very useful if you are looking to expand your current business or even start a new business.
They also provide a Business Alerts service which will send emails when new businesses are listed with a specific location / category. As a test we set up an alert for pubs in Essex. If we start to receive more than this we shall update this review.
One negative about the website is that if a business is “sold or withdrawn from market” you only find out after opening the listing and scrolling to the bottom of the page. This can waste a lot of time and is rather frustrating.
RightMove Commerical
RightMove.co.uk has a commercial property section – www.rightmove.co.uk/commercial-property-for-sale.html – and you can search by location in a the same as you do for homes. Once you type in your target town you can refine your search by distance from the town, property type (offices, retail, leisure, industrial and land for development), price range, unit area and how recent it was added.
For example, searching for a business within 5 miles of Chelmsford that is less than £250,000 brings up a 3 bedroom pub available under leasehold – The Royal Steamer for £59,950.
A good feature of Rightmove is that it shows how many businesses are in each category on the left hand side, which can help you to make choices when navigating around their site. However, the best feature, if you are looking for local businesses for sale, is that you can view businesses on the Rightmove map. Hovering on the house icons will show a brief description of the business, and the price.
UK Business For Sale (.com)
Finally, UK Business For Sale also provides an easy way to find (and list) businesses for sale. You can quickly filter by age of listing, type and price. One feature that is missing on RightMove and RightBiz is that you can filter businesses by Net Profit and Turnover.
Currently on the UK Business site there are several sandwich bars, snack bars and sports pubs in Chelmsford up for sale. This site does appear to have more listings that the others.
Currently one interesting looking business is a village stores and post office in a village described as being between Chelmsford and Witham (possible Hatfield Peveral).
The Essex homepage is http://uk.businessesforsale.com/uk/search/Businesses-for-sale-in-Essex.
So, there are certainly a few quick and easy ways to start searching for business ventures in Essex. These 3 sites will by no means include all opportunities, local papers and agents will also have more businesses listed. However, they do provide a nice way for the armchair businessman to get an idea of what is on offer in Essex.
Please note that this is an independent review of the online services available at the moment.
Please if you are hoping to sell a business, do not be pressurised into SIGNING any paperwork based on what the sales rep says. Some Business Transfer Agents remove any “cooling off” rights and exonerate themselves from what the Sales Rep says. There are hundreds of complaints about RTA, Meridian, Ernest Wilson and Knightsbridge.