19 sectors
Acquisitions by sector
Every NAICS sector in which at least 25 businesses were bought with SBA 7(a) acquisition financing since FY2019. The columns that matter to a seller are the median loan, which tells you the size of business changing hands, and the cancelled share, which tells you how often a deal in that sector falls apart after the bank has already said yes.
All sectors
| Sector | Acquisitions | Capital | Median loan | Median rate | Median term | Cancelled |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 44-45 Retail Trade | 7,590 | $8.2bn | $688,250 | 7.50% | 10 years | 9.7% |
| 72 Accommodation and Food Services | 7,112 | $9.0bn | $637,250 | 7.75% | 10 years | 8.9% |
| 81 Other Services (except Public Administration) | 4,326 | $4.0bn | $571,250 | 7.75% | 10 years | 9.0% |
| 23 Construction | 3,577 | $4.4bn | $750,000 | 8.25% | 10 years | 7.7% |
| 62 Health Care and Social Assistance | 3,476 | $3.7bn | $683,250 | 7.50% | 10 years | 9.4% |
| 54 Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services | 2,911 | $3.1bn | $666,100 | 8.00% | 10 years | 8.5% |
| 31-33 Manufacturing | 2,792 | $3.7bn | $789,000 | 7.60% | 10 years | 8.8% |
| 56 Administrative and Support and Waste Management and Remediation Services | 2,372 | $2.0bn | $478,250 | 8.00% | 10 years | 8.1% |
| 42 Wholesale Trade | 1,392 | $2.0bn | $989,000 | 7.75% | 10 years | 8.2% |
| 48-49 Transportation and Warehousing | 1,170 | $1.3bn | $808,000 | 7.75% | 10 years | 11.0% |
| 52 Finance and Insurance | 988 | $1.1bn | $732,000 | 7.25% | 10 years | 8.3% |
| 71 Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation | 891 | $756M | $408,600 | 8.00% | 10 years | 10.4% |
| 53 Real Estate and Rental and Leasing | 850 | $1.0bn | $872,500 | 7.50% | 10 years | 7.1% |
| 61 Educational Services | 410 | $347M | $464,700 | 7.97% | 10 years | 7.9% |
| 11 Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting | 390 | $494M | $999,000 | 6.70% | 15 years | 7.8% |
| 51 Information | 242 | $310M | $718,100 | 7.50% | 10 years | 7.6% |
| 21 Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction | 42 | $66.8M | $1,318,650 | 7.25% | 10 years | 14.3% |
| 22 Utilities | 38 | $47.8M | $689,500 | 6.65% | 10 years | 7.3% |
| 55 Management of Companies and Enterprises | 37 | $76.5M | $1,719,500 | 8.00% | 10 years | 0.0% |
Source: SBA 7(a) FOIA loan-level extract, change-of-ownership approvals, FY2019 onward. Data as of 30 June 2026. n = 40,606 financed acquisitions. 40,612 acquisitions in total; the difference is rows whose NAICS code is missing or too short to classify.
Sectors without a page
These sectors appear in the file but fall below the 25-deal floor, so a median computed from them would be noise. They are named here rather than dropped:
- Public Administration (92): 6 financed acquisitions
Going finer
A sector is a blunt instrument. "Retail Trade" contains both a liquor store selling for $300,000 and a car dealership selling for twenty times that. The 147 industry groups break the same rows down to the four-digit NAICS level, which is usually close enough to a real business to be worth reading.