Selling a day spa or massage business

This guide is general information about selling a day spa or massage business, not legal, tax or financing advice. Rules differ by state and change over time, so confirm how they apply to your sale with your attorney, your CPA and the buyer's lender.

What does a day spa or massage business sell for?

BizBuySell publishes separate sale figures for spas and for massage businesses. The spa figures blend beauty, day and med spas, independent and franchised, so they are not day-spa-only numbers. We found no published sale figures for day spas alone, so these are the figures we use.

The revenue rows show the massage discount. BizBuySell says massage businesses tend to sell at a discount relative to their above-average sales, because buyers face a highly competitive industry and rely heavily on the therapists, which makes the purchase riskier than other beauty and personal care businesses. If your regulars book with particular therapists, those relationships can leave with them.

BizBuySell says some of the massage businesses in its figures are marketed as broader wellness concepts, such as flotation, cryotherapy or combined chiropractic and massage clinics. We found no separate published sale figures for stand-alone float or cryotherapy studios, so in our judgment the massage figures are the nearest guide if you run one, not a direct match.

In 2025, the 73 spa sales reported to BizBuySell had a median sale price of $277,500 and a median of 161 days on the market. That is one year and a small sample, so read it alongside the range above, not as a price for your spa. From 2021 to 2025, spas sold for 0.89 of their asking price on average. The full sale tables, SDE versus EBITDA and a worked example are in how much a spa business is worth.

Industry averages you may have seen

Day spas were 78% of the 22,060 U.S. spa locations in 2025, according to the International SPA Association's 2026 study as reported by Spa Business. The same study's average revenue per spa, $1,063,000, is an average across all spa types, including large resort and hotel spas; spas sold on BizBuySell that year had median revenue of $478,925. Profitability slipped in 2025: outside resorts and hotels, 60% of spas reported a spa profit percentage above 10%, down from 67% in 2024, measured before fixed charges and self-reported. A buyer will judge your spa on its own margin, month by month, after therapist pay and commissions, not on a survey average.

Who buys a day spa or massage business?

Two kinds of buyer show up in the published record for day spas and massage businesses: individuals who plan to run the business themselves, and franchise operators adding locations. A med spa operator is a third, less documented possibility, covered in selling a day spa to a med spa.

Individual buyers financed by the SBA

Advisors surveyed by the IBBA and M&A Source ranked personal services, including salons and spas, among the top industries for business sales in 2025. Across all industries, most buyers expect to borrow: in BizBuySell's Q2 2026 buyer survey, 78% expected to use SBA financing, and 46% called themselves corporate refugees leaving traditional careers. So your buyer may never have run a spa. Under SBA rules effective October 1, 2026, the lender must also get the financial information the business valuation relied on and check it against your IRS tax transcripts.

Expect to be asked to finance part of the price. In the same all-industry survey, 90% of buyers expected seller financing, while only 29% of owners planned to offer it. Decide how much you would carry before the first offer arrives. A seller note on a spa gets repaid out of bookings, so it is only as safe as the therapists who stay after you leave, and SBA rules limit how it can be structured: see the SBA limits on seller notes.

Franchise operators buying existing locations

Published deals show operators who already run units, in the same brand or another, buying existing spas.

• Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa says it has steered experienced multi-brand franchise operators toward buying existing spas; in 2024 and 2025, an operator of six Take 5 Oil franchises and the head of a franchise group with more than 100 locations, including VIO Med Spa units, bought established Hand & Stone locations in Georgia and Florida.
• In 2024, a restaurant franchise group making its first wellness investment agreed to buy eight existing Elements Massage studios in Utah and Colorado and develop 14 more.
• In January 2023, PCRK Group, which described itself as Massage Envy's largest multi-unit franchisee, was backed by Trivest Partners and Three20 Group and ran 95 clinics. The count is dated, and we did not find how many of those clinics were bought rather than opened.

Multi-unit ownership is common in waxing too: at the start of 2026, 120 of European Wax Center's 172 franchisees ran more than one center, according to its annual report to the SEC. The report shows how franchisees are organized, not how many centers changed hands. The Hand & Stone and Elements deals did not disclose prices, so they tell you who buys, not what they pay. If you own a franchised unit, the other operators in your system are logical buyers, and the franchisor's transfer rules apply to all of them.

Can a day spa sell to a med spa?

We found no published data on how often day spas sell to med spas, so do not build your plan around one. In our view, a med spa operator would see your day spa mostly as a location: built-out treatment rooms, a front desk and a local client list that already pays for facials. Expect them to value it on what it earns today, not on what injectables might earn after they own it.

Ask any med spa buyer two things early: what happens to your therapists and estheticians if massage rooms become rooms for medical treatments, and who honors the massage series and memberships your clients have already paid for. If the answers are vague, put a plan for both in the purchase agreement.

Many states bar a company not owned by physicians from directly employing a physician or controlling the medical side of a practice, so med spas often operate under a medical director or management agreement. Setting that up is mainly a question for the buyer and its counsel; how med spa sales are structured explains what they will be dealing with. If you carry a note or stay involved after closing, have your own healthcare counsel look at it too.

Does a spa or massage establishment license transfer to the buyer?

Not for the license types we checked. In Texas (barbering or cosmetology establishments and massage establishments), Florida (cosmetology or specialty salons and massage establishments) and California (barbering and cosmetology establishments), the seller's establishment license does not pass to the buyer, who applies for its own. We did not check California's rules for massage businesses. In Texas, the licensing agency's form says a massage establishment cannot begin operating until its license application is approved.

Set the closing date around the buyer's license approval, not the other way around. For a massage establishment, fingerprinting in Texas and background screening in Florida add steps, so the buyer should file as early as the board allows. The purchase agreement should say what happens if the license is late: whether the closing moves, and who carries rent and payroll meanwhile. Whether anyone may operate the spa in the gap is a question for a lawyer in your state. Ask your board in writing how a change of ownership works for your license type and whether any city or county permit must be reissued, and check that every therapist's and esthetician's own license is current before a buyer asks.

What does the buyer's lender need from your lease?

It depends on how much of the loan or collateral is tied to the space. Past a set threshold, SBA rules say the lease term, counting only renewal options the borrower controls, should run at least as long as the loan (details below). Separately, check whether your lease needs the landlord's consent to assign it to a buyer.

A spa cannot take its wet rooms and treatment-room build-out with it, so the buyer is buying your lease along with the business. BizBuySell notes that a long lease that can be transferred supports value because the buyer can predict the rent, while a short-term or month-to-month lease can decrease the value of the business, and buyers might walk away from a deal that requires them to negotiate a new lease.

If your buyer uses an SBA loan, a specific rule can apply to a built-out spa. It applies when leasehold improvements take at least $500,000 or 30% of the loan, whichever is less, or when that share of the collateral is improvements, fixtures or equipment attached to the space. The lease term, counting only renewal options the borrower can exercise, should then equal or exceed the loan term, and it must if the lender cannot get either the assignment of the lease or the landlord's waiver. The rule carries over unchanged into the SBA's October 1, 2026 update. Under that update, a change-of-ownership loan may not amortize over more than 10 years or have a balloon. A real estate portion bought in the same deal may run up to 25 years, and so may the whole loan for an owner-occupied special-purpose property where real estate is 85% or more of project costs.

A day spa can trip this rule: wet rooms, hydrotherapy plumbing and treatment-room build-out may count as leasehold improvements or fixtures attached to the space. Whether it applies to your deal is the lender's call, so find out early. Before you go to market:

• Count the years left, including renewal options, and check whether those options pass to someone who takes over the lease or are personal to you. If the term is short, negotiate an extension now, while the landlord sees a tenant with years of treatment-room build-out in the space, not a seller who needs a signature to close.
• Ask your landlord what they will need to consent to an assignment, such as the buyer's financial statements or a personal guarantee, and whether you stay liable afterward. Check too that the lease's permitted-use clause covers massage and, if a med spa could be the buyer, medical treatments.
• If you own the building, you can sell it with the spa or keep it and lease the built-out treatment rooms to the buyer. BizBuySell says keeping and leasing it widens the pool of buyers by reducing how much cash and financing they need. If you keep it, the lease you write is the one the buyer's lender will read.

How do you keep your therapists through a sale?

Tell them late, give them a reason to stay, and keep their pay the same on day one. Retention is a large part of what a buyer is pricing: BizBuySell ties the massage discount partly to buyers' reliance on therapists. Staffing is a known problem across the industry: in ISPA's 2026 industry survey, as reported by Spa Business, one in three respondents named staffing as their single biggest challenge, the most common answer.

A buyer will set your pay and commission rates against the local market. Well below it reads as retention risk; well above it reads as thinner margins after closing.

Show the buyer where the bookings sit

Run a report from your booking system for the last 12 months showing revenue, repeat visits and requested appointments by therapist. If one therapist carries a large share of your regulars, say so early and show the plan for it. A buyer who finds it in your booking data during due diligence will assume those regulars leave with the therapist.

Check commission pay before a buyer does

If you pay therapists per service or on commission, check overtime. Under federal law, commissioned employees of a retail or service establishment are exempt from overtime only if their regular rate exceeds 1.5 times the applicable minimum wage in every overtime week and more than half their earnings over a representative period are commissions. Tips never count as commissions. That comes from a Department of Labor fact sheet last revised in July 2008, and state wage laws can be stricter. Whether your spa qualifies is fact-specific, so have an employment lawyer review your pay plan before a buyer's due diligence does.

Non-competes, non-solicits and stay bonuses

Whether anyone can stop a therapist from opening a studio down the street and taking your regulars is a question of state law. A federal court stopped the FTC's non-compete rule in August 2024, and in September 2025 the Commission moved to dismiss its appeal, though the FTC may still pursue individual cases. California makes void employee non-competes unenforceable wherever and whenever they were signed, and bars employers from trying to enforce them. Minnesota voids non-competes for employees, a term its law defines to include independent contractors, but its definition of a non-compete leaves out non-solicitation agreements and agreements restricting use of client lists. For a therapist's regulars, those are the agreements that matter most, so confirm how they apply with Minnesota counsel.

Your own non-compete as the seller is a different matter. California allows one when you sell the goodwill of a business or all of your ownership interest, within a specified area where the business was carried on, for as long as the buyer carries on a like business there, and Minnesota allows one agreed during the sale of a business. Expect the buyer to ask for one, so you cannot open a studio nearby and take your regulars, and have counsel in your state review your therapist and esthetician agreements and the one you will sign.

Where a non-compete is off the table, a stay bonus is the practical tool: for example, a payment to each key therapist at 90 days and again at six months after closing, with who pays agreed in the letter of intent. Tell key therapists once the buyer's financing is approved and the closing date is set, ideally with the buyer in the room. Tell them earlier and you risk losing them before there is anything definite to say.

How does selling a franchised massage or spa location work?

Start with your franchise agreement: check whether the franchisor must approve your buyer and on what conditions, and whether it can buy the location itself on your buyer's terms. Franchise relationship laws in some states limit a franchisor's ability to withhold consent to a transfer, as European Wax Center's annual report to the SEC notes. Massage Envy's 2026 Franchise Disclosure Document shows what these terms can look like.

What that means for your terms and timeline:

• Under Massage Envy's agreement, the offer you submit must be a fixed price with no earnout. An SBA-financed buyer could not offer an earnout anyway, because SBA-financed acquisitions cannot include a seller earnout.
• If your agreement requires the buyer to complete initial training, as Massage Envy's does, ask for the franchisor's next training dates as soon as you have a serious buyer; the closing may have to wait for them.
• Add the clocks together: the franchisor's review, the buyer's establishment license, the SBA loan and landlord consent. Under Massage Envy's agreement, if the sale does not close within 60 days after it declines, or the terms change materially, Massage Envy gets another 30 days. Read the transfer section of your own agreement before you talk to buyers.

Can you sell your spa to your manager or a therapist?

Yes, and a manager or lead therapist your regulars already book with can make for the steadiest handover, because clients do not have to get used to a new face. The hard part is the money. Most buyers across all industries expect to use SBA financing, as the survey above shows, and if your manager does, SBA rules limit how much your own financing can help:

• Ask the lender which SBA category the sale falls in. Under the rules for applications issued an SBA loan number from October 1, 2026, SBA's categories turn partly on whether the buyer has worked in the business for 24 months or more, and the equity rule and the rule on your staying on differ by category.
• Your note can cover at most half of the required equity, and only on full standby. For SBA applications submitted through September 30, 2026, a complete change of ownership to a new owner needs an equity injection of at least 10% of total project cost. Under the rules for applications issued an SBA loan number from October 1, 2026, an Initial Acquisition, SBA's default category, needs at least 10% of total project cost and the lender cannot reduce it. A seller note counts toward that equity only if it is subordinated and on full standby, with no principal or interest paid for the whole term of the SBA loan, and it can supply no more than half. Under the rules from October 1, 2026, a change-of-ownership loan without real estate may amortize over up to 10 years, so a note on full standby can mean waiting that long; standby interest may accrue and is paid only after the SBA loan is repaid.
• The price has to appraise. Under the rules from October 1, 2026, the business valuation must support the price. Anything above it must be made up by equity, which can include a seller note only on full standby, and total debt, including any seller note not on standby, is capped at the valuation. A lead therapist and a grateful owner can agree on a price the appraiser will not.
• No earnout. SBA-financed purchases cannot include a seller earnout.
• You may not be able to stay on the payroll. Under the rules for applications issued an SBA loan number from October 1, 2026, if the SBA treats the sale as an Initial Acquisition or a Business Expansion, you may not remain as an officer, director, stockholder or employee, and the business can hire you as a consultant for no more than 24 months in total, including extensions. For applications submitted through September 30, 2026, the same restriction applied to changes of ownership, with a 12-month cap. If you hoped to keep treating a few regular clients, raise it with the lender before you agree on a price.
• Selling in stages has a cost. Under the rules from October 1, 2026, if you keep less than 20% in an SBA-financed partial sale, you must personally guarantee the full loan for at least two years after final disbursement.

Treat a sale to your manager or a therapist as a real sale: a letter of intent, then full due diligence, including the by-therapist booking report. Before you talk price, request a free valuation of your spa so you have an outside view of value to start from. It is not the business valuation the buyer's SBA lender relies on, and the price still has to be supported by that one. Use the spa due diligence checklist to gather what the lender will want.

How do you hand over reviews, bookings and payments?

Plan each one before closing day. BizBuySell lists a well-maintained client database and a strong online presence among the things that raise a beauty and personal care business's multiple, so these are part of what the buyer is paying for.

• Google Business Profile. Google advises transferring primary ownership to the new owner when a business is sold, so information such as reviews is kept. Only the primary owner can make the transfer, and only to someone already on the profile as an owner or manager, who then waits 7 days before managing every feature. Add the buyer to the profile before closing and transfer primary ownership on closing day, rather than letting the buyer start a new profile.
• Booking software and card payments. Payments need lead time. Zenoti's help pages, for example, tell a new owner who is not already a Zenoti merchant to start KYC (know-your-customer) verification at least 4 to 7 days before handover, and payment processing is unavailable until it is complete. In Zenoti Payments, chargeback liability moves to the new merchant account, refunds on invoices from the previous merchant account are not allowed, and saved client cards re-link once the center is connected to the new account. Ask your own platform for its change-of-ownership steps before you set a date.
• Prepaid series, memberships and gift cards. If your platform works like Zenoti's, the new owner cannot issue a refund against an invoice from your merchant account, such as a massage series a client bought from you. Agree in the purchase agreement who honors prepaid balances, who handles refund requests and how the price is adjusted. Gift cards, packages and memberships in a spa sale covers how buyers treat them.

How long does it take, and where should you start?

Across all industries, Main Street business sales took 6 to 10 months from engagement to close in the IBBA and M&A Source Q2 2026 survey. A spa sale has its own clocks on top of that: the buyer's establishment license, landlord consent and, if you are a franchisee, the franchisor's approval. Start on those early, and start with a number: request a free valuation. Requesting one does not list your business. How to sell a spa business covers the full sequence, and preparing to sell a spa covers the year before you list.

Sources

All sources accessed September 29, 2026.

1. BizBuySell (CoStar Group), Undated page
2. BizBuySell Insight Report (CoStar Group), Full Year 2025 sector table (page shows Q2 2026 listing data alongside). Accessed 2026-09-29.
3. BizBuySell (CoStar Group), Undated
4. BizBuySell (CoStar Group), Undated
5. BizBuySell (Shelly Garcia), Undated. Accessed 2026-09-29.
6. BizBuySell (The BizBuySell Team), Undated. Accessed 2026-09-29.
7. Spa Business (Leisure Media), reporting the ISPA 2026 U.S. Spa Industry Study, 2026-07-22
8. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Last modified 2026-08-27
9. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Last modified 2026-08-27
10. International Business Brokers Association and M&A Source, 2026-08-25
11. International Business Brokers Association and M&A Source, 2026-02-24
12. BizBuySell (CoStar Group), Q2 2026 Insight Report
13. Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa (franchisor), 2025-03-19
14. PCRK Group (PR Newswire), 2023-01-17
15. Elements Massage / WellBiz Brands, 2024-05-09
16. European Wax Center, Inc. (SEC Form 10-K), 2026-03-04
17. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, Not dated on page
18. The Florida Senate (Florida Statutes 477.025), 2025 Florida Statutes
19. California Board of Barbering and Cosmetology, Not dated on page
20. The Florida Senate (Florida Statutes 480.043), 2025 Florida Statutes
21. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (Form MAS-LIC-005), Form rev. June 2026
22. Federal Trade Commission, Accessed 2026-09-29
23. California Legislative Information (Business and Professions Code 16600.5), Added by Stats. 2023, Ch. 157 (SB 699), eff. 2024-01-01
24. California Legislative Information (Business and Professions Code 16601), Amended Stats. 2006, Ch. 495, eff. 2007-01-01
25. Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes (Minn. Stat. 181.988), Current statute as accessed 2026-09-29
26. U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division (Fact Sheet #20), Revised July 2008
27. ME SPE Franchising, LLC (Franchise Disclosure Document, Item 6), Issuance date 2026-04-29
28. Google Business Profile Help, Accessed 2026-09-29
29. Zenoti, Not dated on page
30. U.S. Small Business Administration (SOP 50 10 8.1), Effective 2026-10-01
31. Spencer Fane LLP (Crystal L. Howard, Hillary R. Martel), 2025-08-19
32. U.S. Small Business Administration, 2025-06-01
33. U.S. Small Business Administration (Information Notice 5000-880695), 2026-08-14

BizBuySell's Insight Report page always shows its latest quarter, so it may no longer match the Q2 2026 survey figures cited here.