When the time comes to sell, owners often wonder who they should actually appoint. A commercial estate agent and a business broker, sometimes called a business transfer agent, do very different jobs, and confusing the two is a surprisingly common and expensive mistake. Choosing the right one has a real impact on the price you achieve and on how smoothly the whole sale runs. This guide explains the difference clearly.
What a commercial estate agent does
A commercial estate agent specialises in property. They sell or lease the bricks and mortar, value premises, market the building and handle property transactions. They are the right choice when what you are actually selling is the property itself rather than a trading business.
Their expertise is in real estate values and property law, not in the profit, goodwill and customer relationships that make a trading business valuable.
What a business broker does
A business broker sells the business as a going concern: its profits, customers, brand, staff and goodwill, not simply its premises. They value the business on its earnings, market it confidentially, qualify buyers and manage the deal through to completion.
This is a fundamentally different skill set. It involves understanding how buyers think, how businesses are valued on profit multiples, and how to keep a complex, emotional transaction moving to a successful close.
Which do you need?
- Selling only a property or lease: use a commercial estate agent
- Selling a trading business as a going concern: use a business broker
- Selling a business that also owns its premises: a business broker can handle both, often alongside a property specialist
Why the choice matters so much
Valuing a profitable business as if it were just property almost always undervalues it dramatically, because it ignores the years of goodwill, the recurring revenue and the growth potential that a buyer is really paying for.
A specialist business broker captures all of that. agentlocal sells businesses as going concerns, valuing them on their earnings and marketing them confidentially to funded buyers, so you realise the full value of what you have built rather than just the worth of the four walls around it.
Key takeaways
- Estate agents sell property; business brokers sell trading businesses.
- A going concern is worth far more than its premises alone.
- Use a business broker to capture goodwill and earnings.
- Where a business owns property, both skills may be needed.
- agentlocal values and sells your business on its true earning power.
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