When people say they want to buy a dental office they usually mean three different purchases at once. The office is a lease and a build-out; the practice is the patients and the collections they produce; the equipment is a schedule of chairs, units and imaging with ages and service histories. Each is proved by a different document, each carries a different part of the price, and a buyer who prices the whole as one number cannot tell which part they overpaid for. This page takes them one at a time.
The lease is the part you cannot replace
An office with a fully fitted four-operatory suite is worth little if the lease has two years left and no assignment clause. Ask for the lease, every amendment, and the landlord's consent to assign before the offer goes hard; on the checklist sheet it is one of the 24 items, and one of the first the register in Pro should show as received rather than requested.
The chairs are a schedule with dates on it
The equipment list is worth as much as its ages. Units, chairs, compressors, vacuum, imaging and sterilisation each have a service life, and a room of twelve-year-old chairs is a capital bill in the second year that the seller's price does not mention. Both sides will also report how much of the price sits on that equipment when they file the asset acquisition statement, so the list decides tax as well as cash.
The patients are the reason to pay for the rest
On the checklist sheet's example 1,800 active patients each produced $555.56 of collections last year and the asking price is $416.67 a patient. Those two figures say what the buyer is really paying for, and how much depends on the patients staying through the handover, which is why the seller's transition terms belong on the same list as the lease.
Questions people ask about buy a dental office
Can I buy a dental office without the practice?
You can buy a lease and equipment and start a practice in it, but that is a start-up costed differently. This site's tools assume you are buying the patients too.
How long should the lease have left?
Long enough to outlast your financing, and with an option to renew. An SBA note on a purchase without real estate runs at most ten years, so a lease that ends before the note does is a problem the lender will see first.
Where do the documents go?
Into the checklist sheet as counts today, and into the register in Pro as dated items with who owes them for $14 a month.