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How Long Does It Take To Buy A Dental Practice?
Description
📋 Free Download: Practice Evaluation Checklist https://practiceown.com/pdf
How long does it take to buy a dental practice? It's one of the most common questions I get, and most dentists go in with the wrong expectation. In this episode I break down both phases step by step, and I show you why rushing either one is the most expensive mistake you can make.
What we cover:
- The two phases of an acquisition, split at the letter of intent
- Median time to find the right practice: 4 months (some take weeks, some take years)
- Why your search radius is the single biggest factor in your timeline
- Why dental brokers don't split commissions like realtors, and what that means for you
- Why brokers send you their worst listings first
- 84% of the 500 practices I've reviewed were not worth buying
- Why every professional in the deal is paid to close fast, not to close well
- LOI negotiation: typically 2 to 3 weeks of back and forth
- Due diligence: 3 to 4 weeks, including a second in-person site visit
- The site visit where I told a client to walk away, and the practice he found 3 weeks later paid 2 to 3 times more
- Financing: about 3 months total, and why you need more than one bank
- When to hire your attorney, and how the wrong one adds months
- How a landlord can kill a deal days before closing
- When to give notice at your associate job, and why you should never sign a 90-day notice
- Why you need weeks off between leaving your job and taking over the practice
💼 Work with me: I help dentists evaluate dental practices before they buy. Every practice I evaluate gets compared against my database of 500+ evaluations.
📬 Questions? Reach out directly: chris@practiceown.com
0:00 The Two Phases, And Where Your Search Starts
4:23 Practice Brokers And What They Show You
7:09 How Long The Search Really Takes
7:54 Phase 2: Signing The Letter Of Intent
9:20 Due Diligence And The Site Visit
12:44 Financing, Attorneys, And The Lease
18:40 When To Leave Your Associate Job
23:11 The Total Timeline