Auto Businesses for Sale in Ontario - Page 3

An auto business for sale is a working shop or dealership sold as a going concern: repair garages, collision and body shops, tire and exhaust shops, used vehicle lots, and parts and accessory businesses. The sale typically covers the equipment, the tooling, the parts inventory, the customer base and the trading name, together with an assignment of the lease on the premises, which are more often rented than owned. Where the seller does own the land and building, the real estate is priced separately from the business and can be bought or leased back.

Start with the floor. Anywhere oil, coolant, brake fluid or solvent has been handled there is a contamination question, so buyers of a garage or body shop commonly commission a Phase I environmental site assessment and follow it with a Phase II when the first one turns up a floor drain, an oil water separator, a buried or aboveground tank, or a history of spills. Lenders frequently require that work before they will fund a purchase, and on a leased site the lease usually says who carries the cost of a problem found later, so read that clause alongside the report.

Licensing is next, and it does not simply ride along with the sale. Where a shop issues safety inspection certificates, that authority is licensed to the operator and does not come with the premises. Used vehicle dealing requires its own provincial registration. Automotive service technician is a compulsory trade in several provinces, so in those provinces certified people have to be on the floor from the day you take over. Each of those approvals sits with a provincial regulator under a different name, so confirm what your province requires and that you can hold it before you commit.

Then the premises. Confirm that automotive use is permitted under both the lease and the local zoning, since body work, outdoor vehicle storage and fuel handling are frequently treated separately from general repair, and a shop running on a long-standing non-conforming use can lose that status after an interruption. Get the remaining lease term, the renewal options and the landlord's written consent to an assignment, and ask who the lease makes responsible for the floor, the drains and any contamination discovered later.

Then the equipment. Ask the age of every hoist and for its latest inspection record, find out whether the alignment rack, the paint booth, the welders and the diagnostic scan tools are owned outright or sitting on finance contracts, and price the software subscriptions the shop needs to keep working on recent model years. A collision shop adds a spray booth with its own ventilation and fire requirements. Insurer referral work usually depends on certifications held by the shop and its technicians rather than by the premises, so ask which accounts rest on a certification, which on a contract, and which on a relationship with the person selling.

The listings on this page are the ones the MLS® feed classifies under its automobile business category in the city or province you are viewing, refreshed daily. That is a broad category, so it mixes repair and collision shops with dealerships, tire shops and parts businesses, and because the classification comes from the listing brokerage an auto business filed elsewhere will not appear here. This page does not claim to show every auto business for sale. Check each listing for whether the premises are leased or included in the sale. This overview is general information, not legal, financial, or tax advice.

A business listed for sale is a going concern rather than a property. What changes hands is usually the equipment, the stock on hand, the trading name and customer goodwill, the staff who stay on, and the balance of the lease on the premises. The premises themselves are more often rented from a landlord than owned by the seller, so most of these sales are an asset purchase plus an assignment of that lease.

Where the seller does own the land and the building, the real estate is priced separately from the business and can be bought outright or leased back. Each listing states which of the two it is, so read that before you compare one asking price against another.

Three things decide whether a business can keep trading the day after it changes hands: the licence or registration the operator holds rather than the premises, the landlord's written consent to assign the lease, and a registry search showing which equipment is owned outright and which is still financed. Settle all three before you remove conditions.