Listings Related FAQs
| Question | Answer |
| Can I phone or chat with you? | Yes of course. Our contact details are on our Contact page along with a contact form that you may wish to use after hours or instead of phoning or chatting.
Sellers are allocated an Account Manager, with direct contact details provided at the time of listing with us. Please note, when contacting us by phone or chat, our business hours are between 10am and 5pm (UTC +07:00) Monday to Friday excluding public holidays gazetted for Thailand. |
| Can I post my own Listing/s in this website? | Sorry, no you can't. This website is for providing information about buying and selling businesses, business partnerships, commercial property, franchises and land for commercial use in the Asia-Pacific region. It is also used to showcase the many listings we have on offer to potential Buyers under contract to sell/lease directly with Owners. The site is not a portal service. The only way your Listing can appear in this website is for you to contract with Asia Business Brokers to sell and/or lease via our Standard Listing Plan.
Because of the confidential nature of selling businesses, some information is only available to logged in registered users. To access this information you need to have a current User account with us and be logged in. Register login |
| Can I sell/lease my business if it is not trading? | Yes, you can. It is best to advertise it quickly after closing and the advertisement should state that the business is closed and the reason why. Buyers will understand this and if interested (many will see it being recently closed as a good opportunity) they will still show interest.
If a Buyer attends an inspection expecting an operational business and finds the business closed because it was not stated in the advertisement, they will (quite rightly) think you are hiding information and will be easily turned off buying your business. If you cease trading after you begin advertising, or indeed change any aspect of your business offer which makes the advertisement inaccurate, you need to amend the advertisement immediately. |
| Can you advertise, but not in the location of my business? | Surprisingly, we get this question A LOT, hence the FAQ. The answer is simple, "Yes, we can advertise in locations other than the business location". The real reason for asking the question though is probably more so that Sellers are concerned that people in their location (notably staff and customers) will learn that the business is for sale and this can mean loss of staff and/or customers while waiting for the business to sell. Not advertising in the business location though, does not strictly address the reason for the question (as asked) as people do not just read advertisements in their own location.
A chef, for example, working in your restaurant in (say) Singapore, could in fact subscribe to international channels (let's say a culinary Facebook group in the USA). Guess what? That chef will most likely see the advertising. To assist you the best we can, and accommodate your requirement to not be known to be selling in your location, our Listings and advertising do not state your business name, nor EXACT location. We also try to use images that do not divulge your business name nor exact location. There is no hiding (in this example though) that you are a restaurant and you are in Singapore. There is a chance that someone in your local area may recognize this. In terms of advertising on our own website, we have the ability to show a region (like South East Asia or Australasia or Melanesia, etc), but not specify a Country and/or Province and/or District and/or Location. |
| Do I need to sign a contract to list with Asia Business Brokers? | Yes, you do. The Listing Agreement is either completed in paper or online and prior to any work being undertaken. You may read about our Listing Service at our Services page.
Listing conditions, along with all other services are also covered in our Terms and Conditions page, which we encourage you to read prior to listing. If you do not agree with our terms and conditions, please do not create an account, or deactivate your account (as the case may be) and cease using this website. Importantly, listing with Asia Business Brokers is NOT an exclusive service. Please feel free to also advertise yourself and/or with other Brokers. If you have engaged another Broker to assist you to sell under an EXCLUSIVE arrangement, please consult with that Broker before listing with Asia Business Brokers. |
| Do you offer discounts on the Standard Listing Plan commission or Extra Listing Services? | Sorry, we do not offer any discounts as our rates of commission and cost of optional extra services are already comparable or lower than industry standard.
Our Standard Listing Plan is commission-based and comprehensive. There are absolutely no up-front payments required. We provide this service in anticipation of being responsible for identifying and introducing you to the Buyer. In this situation, if we don't deliver the Buyer, we don't get paid - it is entirely performance-based. We do, however, offer various promotions from time to time including Loyalty rewards, Incentive offers and Free offers details of which may be seen at our Specials page. |
| How Long does it take to sell a business? | This question is not one that can be reliably answered as a 'one answer fits all' because businesses vary considerably in terms of location, viability, desirability, etc. Many Sellers think it's all about price, but this is not true. Price is important, but is just one of the many considerations which will affect how long it takes to sell.
Regardless, to provide an answer that may be of assistance to you - assuming you get your marketing and advertising right, you present a viable option at a realistic price, our data shows us that a sale will occur between six months to three years after advertising commences. |
| If I buy an Extra Listing Service (for example a Feature Listing) for 90 days and I sell my Listing (say) a week after, do I get a pro-rata refund? | Unfortunately no, you don't and the reason is because when you order and pay for a Service, we too order and pay for it from other Vendors. Most of the Vendors we use do not have a refund policy (or even pro-rata refund policy). Some of the Services we provide ourselves, we often have to pay commission on them up-front and with a no-refund policy. |
| Is Asia Business Brokers an MLS Agency? | No, we are not. A Multiple List Service (MLS) is where a Listing is made available for co-brokering with other Brokers and Agents also designated as MLS-Agents.
By way of example, if we advertise a business for sale and we state that it is an MLS Listing (or that we are an MLS Agency), then other MLS Agents, who may or may not have potential buyers for that listing may request additional information with a view to entering into an agreement with us to sell that business in an MLS partnership arrangement by finding or providing a potential Buyer. On the surface, it offers a Seller (potentially) multiple brokers or brokerages all working to sell one listing. The reason we do not subscribe to an MLS is that we believe our Sellers should make the decision to share listing information and that this should not be done simply because other brokerages state they may have a Buyer. We do, underlyingly, support the concept of MLS, but it works much better for residential real estate as it presents many issues for commercial real estate and businesses because of the confidential nature of the listings. Because ALL of our listings are non-exclusive, our Sellers are entirely at liberty to list themselves and/or with other brokerages so we see this as as a much better option as it puts the control over information being shared (what and by whom) with the Seller as we believe it should be. |
| What is the Sale/Purchase Value of a Business? | We all know that there are many methods used to determine the value of a business. Different formulae producing different values, so let's be clear right from the outset. We are talking value in terms of how much you should expect to receive when selling, and how much you should expect to pay when buying.
And, we are talking about the 'business' component ONLY. If the sale offer includes property (freehold or strata title), this gets added to the business value. For start-ups and small businesses, typically a multiplier of net profit is used to calculate the sale value. The multiplier changes with changed economic conditions and Buyer trends because it represents what Buyers are willing to pay at that time given the conditions at that time. There can be additional factors which may be added like allowance for recent significant capital acquisitions or recent award of supply/service contracts, or a significant value of stock on hand or other assets. These factors are often applicable to larger businesses and M&A's, but may apply to small business also. We have more information about value in our information sheet Valuing a Business for Sale which you can download from our Downloads page. For the purpose of this FAQ however, the current multiplier for Asia-Pacific is 2 to 3 years ROI (ie, what the business has demonstrated it has made in net profit over the last 2 to 3 years). Updated: 4 April 2022 |
