What has to be in your account on closing day.

At least ten percent, and the ten percent is not measured against the asking price. The SBA requires ten percent of the total project cost, which is every cost required to complete the change of ownership: the price, the lender's fees, the guaranty fee, your lawyer and accountant, and the cash the business needs on hand. On a $500,000 business with about $64,000 of those costs, the injection is roughly $56,400 rather than $50,000. Ten percent is also a floor rather than the number. Lenders routinely ask for more where you have no experience in the industry, where the operating history is thin, or where most of the price is goodwill.

More than the down payment, and the gap is the thing nobody quotes. On top of what you put into the deal you need a household reserve, because the business will not pay you properly for months. We use six months of what you spend at home, which is not an SBA rule but is the single most useful line in the whole calculation. Most first purchases that fall over at the table fall over on this.

Partly, and only one way. A seller note counts toward the money you have to put in only if the seller takes no payments at all for the life of the SBA loan, which is usually ten years. Not deferred, not interest only, nothing. It also counts for at most half of what you owe. That sentence is what makes most sellers say no, so ask early. There is a workaround nobody volunteers: one note on full standby counts toward your own money, and a second note on a shorter standby sits outside that calculation entirely. Ask for both.

It is a real fee, it is charged on the guaranteed portion of the loan rather than the whole loan, and it is usually rolled into the loan rather than paid in cash. For FY2026 it is 2.0 percent at or below $150,000, 3.0 percent from $150,001 to $700,000, and 3.5 percent of the first million guaranteed above that. The SBA guarantees 85 percent up to $150,000 and 75 percent above it, so a $1,200,000 loan has a $900,000 guaranteed portion and a $31,500 fee.

The most a lender may charge on a loan over $350,000 is Prime plus 3.0 percent. With Prime at 6.75 percent that is a 9.75 percent ceiling. Acquisition loans are typically written between Prime plus 2.25 and Prime plus 3.0. Treat the ceiling as the number to plan against, because a payment that works at the ceiling works anywhere. Any calculator that does not tell you the date it last checked Prime is telling you about a different year.

Not unless the borrowing is fully secured by your own personal assets. The money also has to be seasoned: thirty to ninety days of consecutive statements proving where it came from. A gift needs a signed letter and the donor's statements. Two sources that are explicitly allowed and that most buyers do not know about: a retirement rollover into the business, and a home equity line, as long as you can repay the line from income that does not come from the business. If you are forty thousand dollars short, that is the first place to look.

Forty five to ninety days once you have agreed on a deal, not four weeks. Finding the right business takes six to eighteen months before that. Plan your last day at work around the long end of both. The lender will also pull the seller's tax transcripts from the IRS, which adds time and ends deals where the returns do not match the profit and loss statement the broker sent you.

Life insurance and hazard insurance are both back as requirements under the current rules, and for an older buyer the life policy can be slow and expensive to get. There is no prepayment penalty under a fifteen year term, which is worth knowing before you agree to a longer term than you need. And if you are buying part of a business rather than all of it, that now has to be a stock purchase, which changes the whole deal.