The SBA Loan Playbook for Buying a Business in 2026

The SBA 7(a) rules are changing. What does that mean if you’re trying to buy or grow a home service business? Jack Carr takes over the show with Alan Peterson from First Internet Bank to break down the latest SBA changes and what buyers need to know before financing their next acquisition. They cover the new equity requirements for first-time buyers, seller financing, changes to minority investors, and why sellers can now stay involved for up to 24 months after closing. Alan also explains how buyers can navigate licensing requirements when acquiring plumbing, HVAC, electrical, and other skilled trades businesses. They also dig into Quality of Earnings requirements for larger acquisitions, business valuations, and one of the biggest opportunities for existing operators: using SBA expansion loans to acquire another business with potentially 0% down when the deal qualifies. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ In This Episode ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • The latest SBA 7(a) changes for business acquisitions • How much cash buyers now need to bring to a deal • Using seller financing toward your SBA down payment • New rules for minority investors • Why sellers can now stay involved for up to 24 months • How to handle licensing when buying a home service business • Quality of Earnings requirements for larger acquisitions ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Sponsors ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Avoca See how Avoca helps home service companies book more jobs with AI that handles calls, texts, follow ups, and dispatching without adding more chaos. Book a demo: https://www.avoca.ai/partners/oao FieldPulse Ready to ditch the whiteboard and spreadsheets? See how FieldPulse helps home service companies simplify scheduling, dispatching, invoicing, and more. Book a free demo: https://landing.fieldpulse.com/owned_... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Chapters ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 00:00 SBA Updates Kickoff 08:11 Equity Rules for Search Funds 13:08 Seller Transition and Licensing 25:37 Mentorship Makes Deals 29:10 QoE Rules Explained 36:42 Expansion Loans And Wrap Up ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Connect ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Jack Carr https://x.com/thehvacjack Alan Peterson https://alanfib.com/ Owned and Operated https://www.ownedandoperated.com/