Before you buy that business
The listing gives you the price, the rent and the square metres. It does not give you who is selling, or how long the listing itself has been waiting. We counted the market ourselves, and we show you where your listing sits in it.
The advice to walk away is free, and useless
“People/families would continually come here with their retirement money and without any research or knowledge of running a bar would invest every penny they had in a bar.” — britishexpats.com, thread “Dont buy a bar in spain”, 1 December 2008.
“The worst mistake of my life. Don't think twice, think twenty times.” — r/askspain, “Buying/transferring a bar in Spain”: a buyer quoting the previous owner.
The forums all give the same answer. That advice is free, and it is useless — because it isn't about your listing. A lawyer will look at yours, weeks later, for four figures. Between those two doors there has been nothing.
What we counted ourselves
On 2 August 2026 we went through 345 business-for-sale listings on milanuncios — one by one, by hand. 344 of them carried a publication date.
- How long the listing has really been up
- Half had been up for more than 146 days, and 28 % for more than a year. The portal showed almost all of them as “refreshed today”.
- Where the price sits among comparable businesses
- Every percentage is given together with the number of listings it was counted from.
- What the listing leaves unsaid
- In a separate count of 140 listings, 10 % stated revenue and 1 % stated profit.
That count is Spanish. We have not counted the Portuguese market ourselves, and we do not present a Spanish number as a Portuguese one.
Three fears, and what we do with each
About each one we say two things: what we look at, and what we do not. That second line almost never appears on a page that wants to sell you something.
- “The seller has already hidden something”
- We look at what the listing does not name — revenue, rent, floor area, licence, who is selling — and at how rare that silence is. We do not look at the seller's intent: we do not judge whether he is lying. We separate what he states from what he omits.
- “The numbers won't add up”
- We look at how long the listing has been waiting for a buyer and where its price sits among comparable ones. We do not look at the seller's accounts: testing his numbers against his own documents is separate work at a separate price.
- “I'm buying from another country and trusting someone already there”
- We look at the listing before you send anything. The reading reaches you and does not depend on someone on the ground explaining it. We do not look at people: we do not verify your partner, the broker, or the safety of a payment.
If you are coming from outside the EU, the business is usually also your route to residency. That does not change what we read, but it raises the price of being wrong.
Where to start
Start with the free step. The extension shows an open listing against the measured market, right in your browser. The self-check gives you a list of questions for the seller. Neither needs an account.
Deeper: €550 against the public record, €950 against the seller's own documents. The free step will tell you whether the deal deserves either.