Discovery Point Blog

August 7, 2019
child care center for sale

3 Ways to Find a Child Care Center for Sale

Searching for a child care center for sale can be a long and daunting job. Especially if you don’t know how or where to start your search. But if you’re serious about owning a child care business, it’s important that you find the right child care center for sale.

That could take several weeks or months of your spare time. Or it might mean hiring a professional business broker. But so long as you find the right center for your needs and resources, the search will be worth it.

Whether you’re searching for a small, independent child care center for sale or a larger child care franchise like Discovery Point®, here are 3 strategies you can use to conduct your search.

How to Find a Child Care Center for Sale

#1. Ask Around

When you’re interested in buying a business, it never hurts to ask around and keep an ear to the ground.

If you’re looking for a local child care center for sale, try networking with local child care center owners. You don’t need to ask if they’re looking to sell. Simply say that you’re hoping to own a child care center yourself and you want to learn about the business. 

This way, you’re signaling an interest to buy without stating it outright. At the same time, you’re developing contacts within the local industry. The larger you make this network, the more likely you are to get tips about sale opportunities.

If you’re not too concerned about the location of your business, you might want to network in other ways. Industry conferences and events offer a great way to familiarize yourself with the child care sector. But they’re also a great way to meet child care center owners. Some may already have a child care center for sale. Others might know someone else looking to sell their center.

#2. Browse Business Listings

Today, you can find businesses for sale on a number of dedicated websites. And most of these sites make it easy to narrow down your search to child care centers for sale within a particular area.

At first glance, these listings may seem impressive. But in many cases, this first impression doesn’t hold up. On closer inspection, you might find that the business is overvalued, comes with underlying issues, or isn’t the type of center that you wish to operate

When searching these websites to find a child care center for sale, keep the following in mind:

  • Listings are often created by business owners who are selling a business for the first time.
  • Inexperienced owners often overvalue their business or leave key info out of listings.
  • Some owners might also try to hide expenses or liabilities when listing their business.
  • High-quality businesses get purchased quickly, so you need to act fast on these opportunities.
  • Low-quality listings will linger for some time, often making up the bulk of the listings.

While speed is important for online listings, it’s also a danger. You never want to rush a purchase as valuable and important as a business. Instead, learn how to identify the best opportunities on these websites. When you’ve found the right listing, you’ll be able to pounce.

#3. Contact Franchise Brands

If you’re searching for a child care center for sale, you’ll come across a number of child care franchise opportunities. Some will be resale opportunities, allowing you to buy an established child care franchise location. Others will give you the chance to start a new franchise from the ground up. Either can be a great choice, depending on your goals, preferences, and skills.

To give yourself the inside track on these kinds of franchise opportunities, you can contact franchisors directly. When contacting a franchisor, you can request detailed franchise information and ask about available franchise locations.

If you’re interested in purchasing a new location, you can get details about available territories. And if you’re looking for an existing business, you can ask about franchise units available for resale.

Even if there aren’t any franchises currently available, contacting a franchisor can be greatly beneficial. At Discovery Point, we know that our brand is only as strong as our franchise owners. So if you can distinguish yourself as an ideal candidate, we’ll take notice. If we have a child care center for sale in the future, we’ll seek you out to see if it’s a good fit.

Looking for a child care center for sale? Call Discovery Point at (770) 623-1140 today for detailed information about franchise opportunities!