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Dental practice for sale: Tips and tricks for buying and selling.

Isaiah Rendorio Headshot

Isaiah RendorioProduct Marketing Manager, Campaigns

Interested in buying or selling a dental practice? Read over these tips and tricks to get you started on the right foot.
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Your guide to a dental practice for sale.

Buying or selling a business can be tough. There are a lot of moving pieces involved as well as a lot of factors to consider when you start down the road to buy or sell a business. You might need to consider financing or possibly need to look at repairs to the business location before you can buy or sell a business. You may have to look into getting a business loan, or you might have a lot of debt to pay back against the property as part of the sale.

 

No matter what considerations you have to keep in mind, there are usually solutions to your issues related to the sale of your practice or to a purchase of a new practice for you to move into. Read on to learn more about the tips and tricks for buying and selling a dental practice.

Are dental practices profitable?

Dental practices are profitable, but you do need to make sure that you can handle the right kinds of services daily to make enough money for it to be worth buying a practice. You will need the space to make sure that 30% of your total production hygiene appointments. Out of these services, a large portion will need to be therapeutic visits and not preventative.

 

You need to balance the space requirements to see patients against the consideration that there are operating costs associated with every square foot of space that you have under your roof. If you are maintaining a large number of areas set up for surgeries, but you are mostly doing preventative services, you are probably losing money on your business..business plan and an experienced practice manager to help you execute it. You might think that you know enough to run a practice, but if you have never done so, you will need help to make things work out for you, especially in the first few months.

 

Consider working with a partner or running your business as an affiliated group if you are not sure that you have the experience to run an entire office by yourself. Remember that you will need to hire staff, manage emergency visits, and handle many other concerns that are hard to manage when you work alone.

 

Working with a group of dentists, you can reduce your overheads by 75% in some cases! As a new dentist, these savings can be a huge help while you get your practice started, and the support from older and more experienced dentists can be very helpful as you learn and grow as a practice owner.

 

By all means, if you have the relevant experience to run your practice alone, you should go for it! But do remember that business owners have to wear many hats, and not all of them are dentist hats.

dentist at work on a patient's teeth

How much does it cost to start a dental practice?

The average dentist’s practice costs $500,00 to start, but you might find that there are many unexpected costs along the way. If you do not have a bunch of money in savings to help fund the start-up process, you will need to be sure that you will have the ability to get a loan that will cover most of the cost of your purchase. This can be tough if you do not have excellent credit.

 

Always remember that costs are not congruent between states, so you will pay 10% or so within the variance of the local market. The prevailing market in your area will dictate the price, and the neighbourhood and other factors will determine the value of the practice. Plan to pay more for real estate in states like California, on the East Coast, and in Colorado.

 

Dentists have specific tax laws to attend to each year, and these are separate from the taxes that they file for the business itself. There have been recent tax changes related to deductions across Australia, so dentists need to be aware of the changes that are going to affect their tax situation each year. These tax costs can impact the purchase price of the practice at the end of the year.

 

Starting a dental office can be expensive, but if you are able to find all of the necessary financial and professional resources, you should consider starting one rather than working for someone else’s practice. If you want to look at some statistics related to your industry salaries and incomes, check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics information on the profession.

Getting ready to sell your dental practice?

This is a hard decision to make, but sometimes it is the right one. If you are ready to start the process of selling your dental practice, there are some things that you should take care of before you put your practice on the market.

  1. Talk to Partners: Sometimes, a partner will want to buy you out, and this can be the best way to leave your office behind without having to sell your office to another dentist.
  2. Make Sure the Building Looks Great: An attractive and clean office in good repair is a must if you are ready to sell.
  3. Be Prepared to Wait for the Right Offer: You should not hurry to sell your practice. Your dental practice is worth a lot of money, no matter where it is located, and you should not part with it to the first offer that you get unless it is at least a full-price offer.

 

The bigger consideration that you need to keep in mind is that you should find the right dentist to continue your practice and take care of your existing clients. There is nothing worse as a dental client to see that your dental office has sold and that the incoming dentist will make a lot of changes.

How much do dental practices sell for?

The average price that dental offices sell for in the US is usually relative to their annual income that has been collected over the past 1-3 years. This can be as much as one million dollars for an oral surgery practice or $685,700 for a regular practice. However, many factors go into this number, and some are based on practice size and location.

 

All dental practices are subject to valuation, and it is important to consider various factors including the size and location of the practice.

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