Greenwich Village Dental Practice, 14-Year Manhattan Operation

$3.5M

Revenue

$1.1M

SDE

3.0x

Multiple

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Full Editorial Writeup

This is a general dental practice in Greenwich Village, one of Manhattan's most desirable and stable residential neighborhoods. Founded in 2012, the practice runs out of a ground-floor unit with four modern operatories, digital imaging, and digital x-rays, positioned to capture high pedestrian traffic and affluent local demographics. It generates $3.55M in gross revenue with $1.1M in seller's discretionary earnings, a roughly 31% margin that is healthy for a solo-location dental practice carrying Manhattan overhead.

The practice serves a loyal, long-tenured patient base with recurring recall visits plus continuous new-patient flow from referrals and organic walk-in traffic. A tenured clinical and administrative staff is already in place, which matters enormously for a buyer who needs continuity of care and scheduling during a transition. The owner is retiring and has committed to a full year of post-close production and handover, an unusually long runway for this asset class.

At a $3.3M ask against $1.1M SDE, the deal prices at roughly 3x cash flow, which is in-line to slightly rich for a single-location practice but supported by the location quality, revenue scale, and modern build-out. The real story is whether the $1.1M SDE holds after replacing the retiring owner's clinical production with an associate dentist, which is the central question any buyer must answer before writing the check.

Why we like it

Earnings quality is strong for the category: $1.1M SDE on $3.55M revenue is a ~31% margin despite Manhattan rent and labor costs, and dental cash flow tends to be sticky because recall hygiene visits and treatment plans recur predictably. Fourteen years of operating history and a loyal patient panel reduce the odds this is a spike year.
Dental services are among the most recession-durable healthcare verticals: patients defer some elective cosmetic work in a downturn but keep coming for cleanings, fillings, crowns, and pain-driven care. The recall-based model means revenue is anchored by a returning patient base rather than re-won each month.
Greenwich Village is a rare, defensible location with affluent demographics, high foot traffic, and enormous barriers to entry for new competitors given Manhattan real estate scarcity. A turnkey four-operatory build-out with digital imaging in this micro-market is hard to replicate from scratch at anything near this price.
The seller offering a full year of post-close clinical work is the single most valuable term in this listing, giving a buyer time to transition patient relationships and, critically, to onboard an associate dentist to backfill production before the owner departs.

How to improve it

Model day-one economics assuming you must pay an associate dentist to replace the owner's clinical production, then recalculate true buyer earnings. If the owner personally produces a large share of the $3.55M, hiring an associate at 30-35% of collections could cut real SDE materially, so restructure the price or earnout around this.
Audit the payer mix and fee schedule within the first 90 days. Manhattan practices often leave money on the table with outdated fees or over-reliance on low-reimbursement insurance plans, and repricing high-demand procedures or shifting toward fee-for-service can lift margin quickly.
Push hygiene recall reactivation aggressively. Pull the list of patients overdue for cleanings and run a structured recall campaign, because dormant patients in an established 14-year practice are the cheapest revenue you will ever add.
Add or expand higher-margin service lines like clear aligners, implants, and cosmetic dentistry that suit an affluent Village demographic. These treatments carry strong per-chair economics and are underexploited in many general practices.
Optimize operatory utilization across the four chairs. If the owner was working solo, a second provider plus extended hours can materially increase capacity without adding rent, which is the biggest fixed cost in this market.
Tighten scheduling and no-show protocols with confirmations, deposits for large cases, and block scheduling for high-value production. Small operational discipline gains flow straight to the bottom line in a fixed-overhead practice.
Build a lightweight local marketing engine: Google Business Profile optimization, review generation, and targeted local ads. Organic referral flow is nice but a systematic acquisition channel de-risks the practice's dependence on the departing owner's personal reputation.

Diligence notes

Quantify exactly how much of production and revenue is generated by the retiring owner personally versus associates and hygienists. This is the make-or-break question: an owner producing most of the dentistry means the true post-acquisition SDE is well below $1.1M once you pay a replacement.
Verify the lease. The listing says real estate is an owned building at 1,000 SF but real estate is not included in the asking price, so confirm whether the buyer leases from the seller, and at what rate and term, because a below-market or above-market related-party lease distorts the economics.
Scrub the SDE add-backs and get three years of tax returns, production reports, and collections data. Confirm the 31% margin is consistent and not propped up by owner comp normalization, one-time items, or aggressive add-backs.
Analyze patient retention and new-patient flow with hard numbers: active patient count, recall rate, average revenue per patient, and referral versus organic mix. Confirm the base is genuinely loyal and not concentrated in patients who follow the retiring dentist specifically.
Confirm staff tenure, compensation, and willingness to stay post-close, especially hygienists and front-desk who hold patient relationships. Also review payer contracts and credentialing to ensure insurance participation transfers cleanly to a new owner.
Reconcile the stated reason for selling. The highlights say owner retirement while the detailed field says relocation, and clarifying the true motivation matters for negotiating the earnout and understanding how committed the seller really is to the promised one-year transition.

Source

Originally listed on BizBuySell. View original listing →