Seller Financing When You Buy a Business in Ontario: How It Works, What’s Legal, and How to Structure It
Thinking about buying a business but the purchase price is more than you can fund on your own?
Here’s something most first-time buyers don’t know: in a huge number of private business sales, the seller helps finance the deal themselves.
Seller financing means the seller takes part of the price as a promissory note, paid out of the business’s own earnings after closing. Done right, it bridges the gap between what you can raise and what the business is worth, and it keeps the seller invested in your success.
Done wrong, it leaves you personally exposed on a note for a business that stopped performing the day the seller walked away.
In this guide we’ll walk through how seller financing actually works in Ontario, what the note should say, and the protections a buyer should never close without.
