How to find off-market businesses to buy in the UK: write a buy box, build a list from Companies House, rank it by owner signals, and approach owners before any sale process starts. 865,182 active UK companies have an average director age of 60 or over.
Set the sector, region, EBITDA band and owner age you buy, and see which UK companies fit. The free trial includes 3 unlocks to reveal the companies behind the matches.
Start free trialMost of the businesses you might want to buy are not for sale. Not officially, anyway. Their owners have not called a broker, and the business is not on BusinessesForSale.com or Daltons. But plenty of those owners are in their sixties, have run the company for twenty years, and have nobody lined up to take over. A letter from the right buyer at the right time is often how the conversation starts.
That is what buying off-market means: finding the business and approaching the owner before anyone else is selling it. This guide sets out how to do it in the UK, step by step, with the free data that makes it possible and figures from our own analysis of the Companies House register.
An off-market business is one that is not being advertised for sale. There is no listing, no information memorandum and no broker running a process. An on-market business is the opposite: it is listed with a broker or on a marketplace, and every buyer on that broker's list can see it.
Off-market does not mean secret, and it does not mean the owner refuses to sell. Usually it means nobody has asked. Many owners of profitable, owner-run companies have thought about retiring but have not taken the first step, because selling a business is unfamiliar, slow, and feels risky. A credible buyer who turns up first saves them the trouble of finding one.
The trade-off is effort. Most owners you write to will not reply, and the ones who do may not be ready for a year or two. Off-market buying is a numbers game run over months, which is why the list you start from matters so much.
A buy box is a short description of the business you want: the sector, the size (we use EBITDA, the profit before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, rather than turnover), the region, and anything you will not accept, such as one customer making up half the sales. Without it, off-market searching turns into reading company names at random.
Be specific. "A B2B services business in the Midlands with £500k to £2m EBITDA and a team that runs without the owner" gives you a list you can actually work through. You can build a buy box in a few minutes and see how many UK companies match it.
The Companies House register is free and covers every UK limited company. For off-market searching it holds most of what you need:
You can search one company at a time on the Companies House website, or download the free bulk data and filter it yourself in a spreadsheet or database. Either way, the first job is to remove what you cannot buy: dormant companies, shell companies, subsidiaries of larger groups, and companies limited by guarantee (charities and clubs have no shares to sell).
A list of every company that fits your buy box is still too long to write to. The next step is to put the owners most likely to sell at the top. The signals that matter most are all on the register:
| Signal | Why it matters | UK companies today |
|---|---|---|
| Average director age 60+ | Owners near retirement are the most likely to sell in the next few years | 865,182 |
| A single director aged 60+ | No one else on the board to take over | 468,495 |
| Single director aged 60+, in post 15+ years | A founder who built the business and has run it a long time | 161,420 |
| Average director age 70+ | Past the usual retirement age and still running the company | 215,019 |
Counts are active UK companies, from our analysis of the Companies House officer register, November 2026. Our UK Business Succession Index breaks the same signal down by trade and region.
Age is the most common signal, but not the only one. Look for these too, starting with the one most often missed:
Treat each one as a reason to write sooner, not as proof the owner wants to sell. An off-board owner also changes who you write to: the letter goes to the owner, not to the directors who run the business, so use the correspondence address the register gives for that person.
The register gives you raw filings. Turning them into a list worth writing to is most of the work, and it is what ExitRadar does, with the score as the last step, not the first. Before any company is scored, we:
Then we score every company that is left on two questions: is the business worth owning, and is the owner likely to sell? A company that scores well on both, and is established, profitable and financially sound, gets our top grade, PURSUE. 28,083 UK companies hold it today. How the score is built.
And we tell you when something changes. Saved searches are rechecked every night, so a company that newly fits your buy box is flagged. Changes to the companies already in your pipeline, such as a change of status, are flagged too, and with a sector or buy box licence you get new PURSUE targets by email as they appear.
The direct approach is where off-market deals start: a letter from you, the buyer, to the owner by name. Expect few replies. Buyers who run these programmes report that only a few owners in every hundred answer a first letter, so the letter has to be good and the list has to be long. What makes the difference:
A worked example: everything in bold is made up, and is what you replace. Keep yours to one page, then print it, sign it and post it to the owner by name.
Re: Hargreaves Kitchen Fitters: an enquiry from a private buyer
Dear Mr Hargreaves,
I'm writing because Hargreaves Kitchen Fitters is exactly the kind of business I hope to buy. You've been fitting kitchens across Leeds since 1991, and most of your work still comes from repeat customers and referrals, which says a lot about how you work.
A little about me: I spent twelve years running operations for a building services firm in Manchester. I'm now looking to buy one well-run home improvement business in Yorkshire and run it myself for the long term. The purchase would be funded from my own savings and a bank loan.
I'm a buyer, not a broker, so I'm not asking to sell your business for you. If you've ever thought about what happens to Hargreaves Kitchen Fitters when you step back, whether that's next year or in five years' time, I'd welcome a confidential chat, by phone or over a coffee. It wouldn't commit you to anything, and I'd want to start with what matters most to you: your team, your customers and what you've built.
If the timing isn't right, please do keep this letter. I'd be glad to hear from you whenever it is.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Moore
07700 900123 · [email protected]
A worked example: everything in bold is made up, and is what you replace.
Re: Pennine Comfort Heating: an enquiry from Northvale Building Services
Dear Mrs Walsh,
I'm writing because Pennine Comfort Heating is exactly the kind of business we'd like to welcome into Northvale. Your engineers have looked after boilers across Calderdale for over twenty years, and your service contracts show how many customers stay with you year after year.
I'm Sarah Collins, Acquisitions Director at Northvale Building Services. We own six heating and plumbing businesses across the North of England. Every business we buy keeps its name, its team and its premises. We look after finance, purchasing and recruitment, so the team can get on with the work, and we fund each acquisition from our own balance sheet.
We're buying for ourselves, not acting as a broker. If you've ever thought about what happens to Pennine Comfort Heating when you step back, I'd welcome a confidential chat about whether joining us could work for you, your team and your customers. It wouldn't commit you to anything.
If the timing isn't right, please do keep this letter. I'd be glad to hear from you whenever it is.
Yours sincerely,
Sarah Collins
Acquisitions Director, Northvale Building Services
07700 900456 · [email protected]
Sent a few weeks later, by email or post. Everything in bold is what you replace.
Re: Hargreaves Kitchen Fitters
Dear Mr Hargreaves,
I wrote to you on 3 March about Hargreaves Kitchen Fitters. I know a letter like that can arrive at a busy time, so I just wanted to say that my interest hasn't changed. If a confidential chat would ever be useful, I'd be glad to hear from you, whenever suits you.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Moore
07700 900123 · [email protected]
The people and businesses in these letters are made up. Replace everything in bold with your own details:
Everything not in bold can stay as it is. A letter that could have gone to any company reads as if it did. If you send the follow-up by email, use the Re: line as the subject. Most owners of established UK businesses expect "Dear Mr Hargreaves" and "Yours sincerely"; switch to first names once they do.
Or start from a letter written for that company. A template still leaves the hardest part to you: the one specific reason, and the right tone for this owner. Every ExitRadar intelligence brief includes a draft approach letter built for that business. It opens on a fact from the company's own record, says why that business in particular, is addressed to match how the company is owned and run, and comes with the recommended channel and timing for the approach. You edit it and sign it. See the approach letter in our sample report.
Track every letter, reply and call in a spreadsheet or CRM from the first day. Off-market searching runs for months, and the owner who says "not yet" in March may call back in October.
Accountants, solicitors, independent financial advisers and corporate finance boutiques often know which of their clients are thinking about retiring before anyone else does. They will not hand you a list, but a clear buy box and a credible story about how you will fund and run a business make you someone they can introduce a client to. Start with the smaller firms in your target region: their clients are the owner-run companies you are looking for.
People inside a sector know who is winding down. Trade associations, trade shows, industry forums and suppliers all hear about owners who are tired, unwell or retiring. If you are buying in one sector, become a known face in it. Suppliers are especially useful: they lose a customer when a business closes, so they have a reason to help it find a buyer instead.
Brokers are on-market by definition, but most hold businesses they have not advertised: owners who have signed up but are still preparing, or who asked for a quiet sale. Register with the brokers in your sector and region, send them your buy box, and ask to hear about anything that fits before it is listed. It is not truly off-market, but it puts you ahead of everyone who only reads the listings.
| Off-market (direct approach) | Listed (broker or marketplace) | |
|---|---|---|
| Competing buyers | Usually none at first | Everyone on the broker's list |
| Owner's mindset | Has not decided to sell yet | Has decided, and set a price |
| Information | You ask for it as trust builds | Information pack ready on day one |
| Price | Agreed between two people | Set by competition between buyers |
| Time to first conversation | Weeks to months, many letters | Days |
| Fees | Each side pays its own advisers | The seller usually pays the broker |
Most serious buyers run both at once: the broker channel for businesses already on the market, and a steady off-market programme for the ones that are not.
You can do all of this by hand from the free Companies House register, and many buyers start that way. The tools that save time fall into a few groups: company data platforms for filtering the register, exit-readiness scoring (ExitRadar) to rank owners by how likely they are to sell, outreach tools for sending and tracking letters and emails, and a CRM to keep track of every conversation. We compare the main UK options in Deal Sourcing in the UK: Platforms Compared.
Once you are talking to an owner, our business valuation calculator and deal calculator help you test a price and a funding structure. If you are a broker looking for owners who may want to sell, see how to source business sale mandates.
An off-market business is one that is not advertised for sale. It is not on a listing site, and no broker is marketing it. Most owner-run UK companies are off-market at any given time, including many whose owners would sell to the right buyer if someone asked.
Write a buy box (sector, size, region), build a list of companies that fit it from the Companies House register, rank that list by signs that the owner may be ready to sell (an older owner, long tenure, no younger director), then approach the owners directly by letter, email or phone. Alongside that, ask accountants, solicitors and corporate finance advisers who know owners planning to retire.
Yes. Many UK owner-to-owner sales start with a buyer writing to an owner who had not advertised the business. The owner may not have planned to sell yet, so expect a slower start than a brokered sale and a conversation about timing before any conversation about price.
It is the best free starting point. The register shows every company's directors with their month and year of birth and appointment dates, the people with significant control, filed accounts and registered charges. Small companies often file accounts without a profit and loss account, so profit has to be estimated, and the register says nothing directly about whether an owner wants to sell.
865,182 active UK companies have an average director age of 60 or over, and 468,495 of them have a single director. That is from our analysis of the Companies House officer register, November 2026.
Write to the owner by name, as the buyer rather than a broker. Say who you are, why their company in particular, and how you would fund the purchase, and ask for a short, confidential conversation rather than accounts or a price. Post the letter, send a short email that refers to it a week or two later, follow up once more a few weeks after that, and keep a note of every reply.
Both. Brokers bring businesses whose owners have already decided to sell, but every other buyer on the broker's list sees them too. Writing to owners directly reaches businesses before any sale process exists, usually with no competing bidder, but most letters get no reply and it takes longer to reach a deal.
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Counts of UK companies are from ExitRadar's analysis of public Companies House filings and the officer register, November 2026. Director age is the average age of a company's current directors, from the month and year of birth Companies House publishes. The search fund figure is from the IESE Business School 2024 International Search Fund Study. The first-letter reply rate is what search fund practitioners report from their own outreach (for example, PrivSource's guide to how search funds find off-market businesses), not our data.
About ExitRadar: ExitRadar scores every active UK company on exit timing and business quality from public Companies House data, so buy-and-build platforms, strategic acquirers, search fund operators and brokers can find off-market businesses to buy and reach owners before a sale process starts. Build your buy box or see a sample report.