How to Find Off-Market Businesses to Buy in the UK

Most good UK businesses never appear on a marketplace. When they do change hands, it's often because a buyer found them first, wrote to the owner, and started a conversation before any adviser ran a process. That is what "off-market" means here: a business whose owner has not put it up for sale, or has not done so publicly.

Off-market buying is slower than browsing listings and it takes discipline, but it puts you in a conversation with no auction and no competing bidders. This guide covers how to do it properly in the UK: defining what you want, building a target list from public data, spotting owners who may be ready to sell, approaching them within the rules, and running the whole thing as a pipeline rather than a pile of letters.

Why off-market sourcing works now

Plenty of UK owners are thinking about an exit but have not acted on it. In a May 2025 survey of 250 UK small business owners for Capital on Tap, 47% said they would consider selling to an unrelated third party, the most popular exit route in the survey (Capital on Tap). Armstrong Watson's 2025 family business report found two thirds of respondents intend to leave their business within the next ten years (Armstrong Watson, Family Business Report 2025). Family succession is less certain than owners assume: Hymans Robertson found 66% of family business owners intend to pass the business to family, but only 34% have a formal succession plan (SME Today).

An owner who is open to selling but hasn't hired an adviser is exactly who an off-market approach reaches.

Step 1: Write your buy box as numbers

You can't search for "a good business". Before you build any list, write down what you will buy and what you won't: sector and sub-sector, revenue and EBITDA range, geography, ownership type, customer profile and how much the business depends on its founder. UK practitioners make the same point. Acquisitiv describes precise criteria as what makes a long list "buildable" and screening "tractable" (Acquisitiv).

The detail matters. Separate the hard limits that end a conversation from the preferences that only move a score, and attach the industry codes you'll search on to each sector. Our guide on how to build an acquisition mandate walks through the nine dimensions with a worked example.

Step 2: Build a long list from Companies House

The Companies House register is the backbone of UK off-market sourcing, and most of it is free.

• Advanced company search. The free Find and update company information service lets you filter by industry (SIC) code, company status and type, registered office address and incorporation date. A walkthrough on DEV Community notes its limits: one SIC code per search, address matching on text rather than postcode area, at most 10,000 results shown and 5,000 rows downloadable (DEV Community).
• The free bulk snapshot. Companies House publishes a free monthly snapshot of every live company, with SIC codes, status, registered office and filing dates, available within five working days of month end (GOV.UK, Companies House data products). It's the right source if you want to screen a whole sector or region yourself.
• The API. The free Companies House API supports the same advanced search programmatically. It has no filters for turnover, profit or employees, because the register itself holds no such figures; those come from filed accounts (CompanyStack).

Add sources the register can't give you: trade association member lists, accreditation registers, sector directories and LinkedIn. Acquisitiv suggests a typical UK mid-market long list runs to 150 to 300 businesses before screening (Acquisitiv).

A practical warning: SIC codes are self-declared and often broad. A long list built only on codes will include companies that don't do what you want, so budget time to check websites before anyone gets a letter.

Step 3: Look for signals an owner may be ready to sell

Not every company that fits your buy box has an owner who wants to talk. Signals UK sourcing guides commonly point to (Midacreek; Acquisitiv):

• Owner age and tenure. A founder-director who has run the business for decades, with no younger directors appointed.
• No visible successor. A single shareholder or director, or a board that hasn't changed in years.
• Years since any ownership change. Long-unchanged shareholdings and persons with significant control.
• Flat or declining performance in filed accounts. This can point to an owner who has stepped back.
• A dated online presence. Midacreek argues a business with an old website and no marketing can be a better target than a polished one, because it may signal an owner who has already mentally stepped back.

None of these proves anything on its own. Treat them as reasons to prioritise, not as conclusions, and expect to be wrong often.

Step 4: Screen down to a shortlist

Research each business on the long list before you contact anyone: filed accounts, ownership history, website, reviews and management team. Acquisitiv puts a typical shortlist at 40 to 80 businesses that genuinely fit (Acquisitiv). Score each one against your buy box the same way every time, and record a missing figure as an unknown to find out, not as a fail. Our guide on how to screen acquisition opportunities covers scoring in detail, and red flags when buying a business covers what should stop you.

Step 5: Approach owners directly, and within the rules

The first approach decides most outcomes. What works, according to UK practitioners, is a message that is specific to the business, says plainly who you are and why you're interested, is discreet, and asks for a low-commitment conversation rather than making an offer (Acquisitiv; Midacreek). A generic "are you thinking of selling?" template is easy to spot and easy to ignore.

Expect low response rates. Published estimates vary widely: Midacreek suggests cold outreach often gets under 5%, while Acquisitiv puts well-targeted direct outreach at 15 to 30% (Midacreek; Acquisitiv). Track your own rates and judge your approach on those, not on someone else's.

Know the UK rules before you send. Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), you can send unsolicited marketing emails to limited companies and LLPs without consent, but sole traders and most partnerships are treated as individuals and need consent or a soft opt-in. Whoever you email, you must not hide your identity and must give a way to opt out. UK GDPR still applies to the personal data of the people you contact (ICO, business-to-business marketing; ICO, electronic mail marketing). Many buyers use letters for the first touch for this reason. Take your own advice before running a campaign.

Step 6: Build referral relationships

Accountants, solicitors and independent financial advisers often know which clients are quietly thinking about retirement long before those owners talk to a broker. Midacreek describes these relationships as slower to build but likely to produce the best introductions (Midacreek). Tell them precisely what you buy, using your buy box, and make it easy for them to recognise a fit.

Step 7: Run it as a pipeline, not a mailing

Off-market sourcing is a numbers game played over months. Acquisitiv describes it as needing "consistency over several months" (Acquisitiv). Keep every target, every approach, every reply and every next step in one place, so a "not now" in March becomes a follow-up in September rather than a lost lead. Our guide to M&A deal pipeline stages sets out the stages from sourced to completed, and deal sourcing software explains what tools in this space do.

Once an owner engages, the work shifts to valuation and structure. See what multiple should I pay for a business and how to structure a business acquisition.

Start with a free target list

If you want a head start on steps 2 and 3, TrueValue's free target list screens the live Companies House register against your buy box and returns 10 named UK companies, scored on ownership signals, with the signals that fired on each one named and the full list downloadable as CSV. It's free and needs no card.

Deal Team, £499 a month: Get 10 qualified off-market targets in your first 14 days, or your next month is free. TrueValue finds UK companies that match your buy box, analyses them from Companies House data and drafts outreach for you to approve. See Deal Team pricing