When Jeff Wiberg and his family formed Wiberg Enterprises LLC in 2011 and began looking for a business to buy, they found limited options.

Looking for a professional services company—ideally one involved in the health care industry—the family found only three companies that it thought merited exploratory negotiations before the opportunity arose to buy Liberty Lake-based Family Home Care, where Jeff Wiberg had worked. Wiberg Enterprises, which is owned by Wiberg, his six siblings, and his father, acquired that 200-employee company last March.

If that opportunity hadn't presented itself, Wiberg says the family might still be looking.

"If we had wanted a restaurant or small retail shop, there seemed to be a lot of opportunities," he says. "The size and industry segment of a service company, that was tough."

Ed Kirk, a principal at Bellevue-based ASG Partners Inc. who works at times out of the company's Spokane office, says the number of business-sales transactions is flat this year, but the number of buyers interested in acquiring a company is picking up at a faster rate.

"We're seeing a bit of a seller's market," says Kirk, who focuses on representing sellers during mergers and acquisitions. "We're seeing more and more buyers. Over the last six months, we've really seen some high-quality individual buyers come to market."

Gary Fievez, who owns Spokane-based Corporate Resources Inc. and specializes in representing buyers, says he's working with a few prospective buyers who are looking for businesses to buy, but there doesn't seem to be a large inventory of businesses for sale.

He says, "If you have a good business that's cash flowing, it is a seller's market."

The current trend, however, is in conflict with what the merger-and-acquisition industry has been expecting in recent years and likely doesn't paint a complete picture of the market, experts say. The industry has been expecting an onslaught of business for sale as more baby boomers surpass 60 years old and enter what traditionally have been considered retirement years.

Kirk says, "It's definitely relevant. The question is timing. There is this wave we think is coming, and the statistics says it's coming, but we've been talking about it for a number of years now."

Fievez says aging business owners face a couple of dilemmas. First, in many cases, business values have begun to rise during the last couple of years, but they haven't increased to pre-recession levels.

"Almost without exception, businesses have taken a hit," he says. "Do I sell now and get a fraction?"

Fievez says most—not all, he emphasizes, but most—business owners don't fund a retirement account separate from their business and plan on selling their company to finance their golden years. Consequently, they're looking to get as much as they can for their businesses.

In some cases, he says, it's ideal if a business owner can work with a prospective buyer for a number of years before turning it over, to insure maximum value in the transaction and success after the transition.

"Buying a small business is more like an adoption in many ways," he says.

Observers say business-sales activity is either flat compared with last year or on the rise somewhat.

NAI Black, the longtime commercial real estate brokerage, has added business-sales specialists to its team in recent months. Dave Black, the company's CEO, says John Powers, son and namesake of the former Spokane mayor, is focusing on business sales at the brokerage, and Scott Martin, a principal in Spokane-based accounting firm Anastasi Moore & Martin PLLC who also is a NAI Black agent, is handling business valuations and sales.

"There's more activity for us," Black says. "Is there more activity in the marketplace? That's tough to measure."

Black says throughout the company's history, it has had agents who have brokered business asset sales, adding that he thinks it's a natural extension, at times, of buying and selling commercial real estate.

In 2009, NAI Black announced that longtime Spokane-area entrepreneur Greg Green was joining the company to focus on business sales, but Green left shortly thereafter to start an enterprise of his own. He currently is president of Fatbeam LLC, a company he founded that provides broadband fiber-optic networks.

"It's a niche we've always wanted to be involved with," Black says. "Between Scott and John, we're going to be doing more."

Kirk says activity at ASG Partners is on par with 2012, which was well ahead of the recessionary years.

"It's mirrored the overall economy fairly well," he says. "It's steadily recovered."

ASG Partners, which receives a commission upon completion of a sale, similar to a real estate transaction, typically works on transaction valued at between $1.5 million and $25 million.

Many smaller businesses that change hands in the Spokane market, however, go for between $250,000 and $500,000.

Kirk says health care-related concerns and technology companies typically sell well, and manufacturing companies are always in demand.

"A lot of buyers are looking for steady businesses that are easy to understand," he says. "They're looking for unsophisticated businesses with recurring revenue and good mid-level managers."

A business asset sale typically takes longer to negotiate and complete than a real estate transaction, usually between six months and a year—though sometimes longer.

Wiberg says Wiberg Enterprises might look at buying another business in the future.

It's still having some conversations with one of the business owners it had been talking to when the Family Home Care acquisition surfaced.

Even so, he says, "It was a fun, tiresome, grueling, exciting process all at the same time. It's definitely not for the faint of heart."

He adds, "The end justified the means, but I don't know that I'm in a hurry to do it again."