Buying a farm, nursery or agricultural service business in South Florida

• A grower or production manager who knows the crop and plans to stay. In a nursery, much of the know-how lives with that person.
• Repeat buyers spread across landscapers, builders and retailers, not one big account.
• Inventory that is counted, healthy and in the sizes and varieties that sell in your area now.
• Reliable water: wells, pumps and irrigation in good repair, and a water use permit that covers what the business actually pumps.
• A clean record with state plant inspectors: no stop-sale orders or quarantines.
• Shade houses, greenhouses, tractors and trucks that weren't patched together after the last storm.
• Records good enough to show which crops or services actually make money.

• Land. Is it included, leased or a separate deal? For a leased farm or nursery, the lease's length and renewal terms can matter more than anything else.
• Inventory. Count and grade it with someone who knows plants. Buyers and sellers disagree most over what plants in the ground are worth, and pests or disease can lead to a stop-sale order.
• Weather. Ask about hurricane and freeze damage, what was lost and what insurance or disaster programs paid.
• Labor. How the business finds and pays seasonal workers, whether it uses a labor contractor or the federal H-2A visa program, and whether it follows housing and wage rules.
• Water and environment. Compare what the permit allows with what's actually pumped, and look at fuel tanks, chemical storage and old dump spots. An environmental site assessment is common when land is part of the sale.
• The building cycle. Nursery demand rises and falls with home and commercial construction.

• Which plants or crops make you the most money, and which do you grow mostly out of habit?
• Who are your biggest buyers, and how long have they been buying from you?
• How did the place come through the last few hurricanes or freezes, and what did you change afterward?
• Who grows the crop day to day, and would they stay on after a sale?
• In a dry spring, how much water do you pump compared with what your permit allows?
• When did the state plant inspector last come out, and did they find anything?
• How do you find enough workers at your busiest time of year?
• What would come with the business: the land, the equipment, the plants in the ground and in containers?

South Florida covers Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties: Miami, Hialeah, Doral, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pompano Beach, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Jupiter, and the Florida Keys down to Key West. It's the state's largest metro area and its most international. PortMiami, Port Everglades and Miami International Airport tie the region to Latin America and the Caribbean, which supports a deep base of wholesalers, freight forwarders and logistics firms, many of them near the airport. Tourism and cruises, finance and wealth management, health care, real estate and construction carry much of the rest. Palm Beach County adds wealthy seasonal residents and, out west near Lake Okeechobee, sugarcane and vegetable farms. In the Keys, nearly everything turns on visitors, fishing and boating.

Companies that serve homes, condo buildings and other businesses do well here: the building trades, property services, insurance agencies, medical and dental practices, and professional firms.

Costs run high: commercial rent, wages and, above all, property and windstorm insurance. Price the insurance before you make an offer, not after. Miami-Dade and Broward make up the Florida Building Code's High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, with stricter rules for roofs, windows and structures. That raises building costs, and it also gives steady work to the contractors who know those rules well.

Much of the workforce and many customers speak Spanish as well as English, and a company that works well in both languages has an edge. The winter season matters more in Palm Beach County and the Keys than in Miami. In the Keys, the cost of housing makes hiring and keeping staff one of the hardest parts of running a company. Ask any seller there how they find workers and where those workers live.