Unlike the late night real estate infomercials where the alleged “gurus” will teach you their great strategies for 100% leverage and how “you too can buy fantastic real estate for no money down”, small business sales are not done that way.
While it can be a risk for a seller, the reality is that most often, seller financing is the only way to get the deal done. Furthermore, for an individual buyer, they want the seller to have “skin in the game” since that may be the only leverage the buyer has over what the seller has represented about the health of the business. After all, if the seller is not willing to back up their claims by absorbing some of the risk, it does not provide too much assurance or comfort to the buyer.
