How it works
A business changes
hands in six moves.
Most of what makes buying a business frightening is not the money. It is not knowing what happens next, or which of the things you have signed can still be undone. This is the whole sequence, in order, with the moment each side becomes committed marked plainly.
- Cost to browse
- Free
- Always
- Cost to list
- Free
- Until it sells
- On completion
- 2%
- Of the purchase price
- Jurisdiction
- Ontario
- Ontario law throughout
If you are buying
From browsing to a binding agreement
Look, without asking anybody's permission
Every live listing shows the asking price, the revenue, the earnings and the multiple those imply. No form stands between you and that. What is withheld is the identity of the business, because a seller whose staff and customers find out they are for sale has a different business by Friday.Verify yourself once
Before you can contact a seller you confirm who you are, and — if you intend to offer without a financing condition — that you have the funds. It is the platform's least popular step and the reason sellers answer at all: it is what separates you from the tyre-kickers they were fielding before.Sign a confidentiality agreement
Ontario convention, and a real contract. Signing it opens the confidential package: who the business is, what it actually earns, the lease, the staff, the customer concentration. You are bound by it from the moment you sign, and the record of what you signed is kept with your signature on it.Ask the questions that decide it
Everything from here happens in one conversation attached to the deal, so nothing lives in somebody's inbox. Ask about the addbacks. Ask why they are selling. Ask what breaks if the owner stops answering the phone.Make an offer that is a real offer
In Ontario the offer is the Agreement of Purchase and Sale — there is no separate contract afterwards. You set the price, the deposit, the conditions and an irrevocable period, and the platform generates the agreement from those terms. It is irrevocable until the time you state, and void after it.Waive your conditions, or walk
An accepted offer is not yet binding: your conditions are running. Deliver a written waiver by the condition date and the deal goes firm. Deliver nothing and it ends automatically and your deposit comes back. Silence does not extend it — that is the single most expensive thing a first-time buyer learns late.
“An offer past its irrevocable time is refused at acceptance, whether or not anybody noticed it lapse.”
If you are selling
From listing to money in trust
Write the listing anonymously
You describe the business, not yourself. The listing carries the region, the industry and the figures; it does not carry your name, your address or your trading name until a buyer has signed a confidentiality agreement.Back the numbers with documents
Upload the statements the figures come from. They are checked before the listing goes live, and the listing says which figures are supported. A buyer who can see that your numbers came from somewhere argues about price rather than about whether you are telling the truth.Meet the buyers, in order
Enquiries arrive with the buyer's verification already done. You choose who gets the confidential package. If several are interested at once you can set a date and hear every offer together, which is the only arrangement that reliably moves a price.Answer the offer on its clock
Every offer states how long it stands. You may accept it, sign it back with your amendments, or decline. A sign-back retires the original — until they accept yours, there is no agreement on the business at all.Hold the deposit properly
The deposit goes into trust with a lawyer or brokerage, not to you. If the deal dies, it does not move until both parties sign a direction — which the platform generates, rather than leaving a buyer several thousand dollars down and wondering who to ask.Close with your own solicitor
When conditions are waived the agreement is firm and the file goes to the lawyers, with a closing checklist already built: the HST election, the price allocation, the landlord's consent, the clearance certificates. MicroM&A is not a party to your agreement and never has been.
Where this leaves you
MicroM&A is a marketplace and a set of document tools. It is not a brokerage, not a law firm and not your agent, and it does not give legal, tax or valuation advice. Every document it generates is a template built to Ontario convention and says so on its face. Have your own solicitor read the one you are about to sign — on a transaction this size that is the cheapest money you will spend.
Still deciding? The FAQ answers the narrower questions, and pricing is one page.