The private buyer market, broken down by state, by specialty, and by the variance inside a single state line. 4,395 active listings, 21 states with enough sample to rank.
Price-to-revenue is arguably the most important KPI in a dental practice transition. This number moves with state, specialty, and deal structure.
This article looks at the private buyer market: practices listed on transition marketplaces where the buyer is typically another dentist or a small group, not a DSO. We pulled 4,395 currently-listed U.S. dental practices with both an asking price and broker-reported revenue, capped both at $5M to keep this about single-office sales, and computed price divided by revenue per listing. 3,868 of them are general dentistry.
Here is what the active market shows.
The national picture.
The median GP practice on the market today sells for 76.5% of its annual collections. The 25th percentile is 64.5%. The 75th percentile is 87.9%. About 1 in 10 listings is priced at 100% of revenue or higher.
The middle of the listed market is 0.77x revenue. The 75th percentile clears 0.88x.
To private buyers, specialists sell for less. To DSOs, the opposite is true.
A common assumption is that specialists trade at higher multiples than GPs because they collect more per chair. In the private buyer market, the data says the opposite.
Median price-to-revenue by specialty
GPs trade at the highest multiple in the private market. Oral surgery at the lowest.
Median price-to-revenue ratio by specialty in the private buyer transition market. GP at the top, oral surgery at the bottom.
Oral surgery practices collect the most revenue per listing in this dataset, $1.17M at the median, and sell for the lowest multiple to private buyers. General dentistry collects the least, $752K, and sells for the highest. Three things drive the inversion in the private market.
The buyer pool. Any dentist can buy a GP. Only specialists can buy specialty practices. Less competition, lower price.
Revenue stickiness. A GP's revenue is recurring: hygiene, exams, restorative, cosmetic. Patients come back. A specialty practice's revenue depends on referral relationships, and referrals don't always transfer when ownership changes. Private buyers discount for that uncertainty.
Equipment overhead. Oral surgery and endo carry meaningfully higher embedded equipment costs. Private buyers either inherit aging equipment or have to recapitalize. The discount shows up in the multiple.
The DSO flip.
The DSO market inverts all of this. Oral surgery practices trade at the highest multiples in the DSO market, often well above any GP multiple. An OMS practice that lists at 62% of revenue to a private buyer can trade for well above 100% of revenue to a DSO.
Oral surgery sells for the lowest multiple in the private market. In the DSO market, it sells for the highest.
The state rankings, top to bottom.
Ranking the 21 states with enough listings to measure, the dashed line marks the 76.5% national median.
Median price-to-revenue by state (GP only)
NC leads at 89.2%. Wisconsin sits at the bottom at 70.0%.
Median sale price as a percentage of annual collections, GP listings, states with at least 30 listings.
North Carolina leads at 89.2%. Wisconsin sits at the bottom at 70.0%. A $750K-collecting GP practice would typically list at $669K in NC and $525K in WI. That's a $144K spread on the same revenue profile, on state alone.
The Sunbelt cluster at the top is the clearest pattern: NC, GA, AZ, FL, TX. These are some of the most DSO-consolidated markets in the country. Heartland Dental, Pacific Dental Services, Smile Doctors, MB2, and a long list of regional groups are all active in those states, competing for the same inventory. When multiple buyers want the same practice, asking prices move up, even on the private buyer side, since brokers price against the highest available bid.
Massachusetts and New Jersey are the Northeast exceptions. Less DSO concentration than the Sunbelt but dense local markets with limited inventory. Same outcome through a different mechanism: more buyers per listing, higher prices.
The spread inside a state often beats the spread between states.
The within-state distribution matters as much as the headline median.
North Carolina ranks first overall. Its 25th percentile is 76.4% and its 75th percentile is 97.2%. That is a 21-point spread inside one state.
Wisconsin ranks last overall. Its 25th percentile is 69.9% and its 75th percentile is 73.5%. A 4-point spread.
The gap between the NC median and the WI median is 19 points. The gap inside North Carolina alone is wider.
The gap inside North Carolina alone is wider than the gap between North Carolina and Wisconsin.
A wide within-state spread tells you the market is bifurcated. There are premium listings, well-located, modern, DSO-attractive, and value listings, smaller, older, weaker locations, trading at the same time. A narrow spread tells you the market is moving as a block, with most practices clustering around one price point.
If you are buying in a wide-spread state, the practice-level fundamentals matter more than the state average. If you are buying in a narrow-spread state, the state average is most of what you need to know.
How to read a listing.
The national GP median is 76.5%. Anything quoted below 70% is a buyer-side number, not a market number. Anything above 90% is the upper edge.
The state matters more than any national rule of thumb. Use the state row from the table below as the starting point. A North Carolina practice priced at 70% is underpriced for its state. A Wisconsin practice priced at 80% is overpriced for its state.
Specialty practices clear at lower multiples in the private market but collect more revenue. An oral surgeon's $1.2M practice at 62% is still a $744K deal to a private buyer. The dollars are real even if the multiple looks light. And the same practice on the DSO market would price entirely differently.
Look up your state.
Find your row and read across. The 25th percentile is the value a quarter of the state's listings fall below. The median splits the listed market in half. The 75th percentile is what a top-quartile practice clears.
| Rank | State | Listings | 25th pct | Median | 75th pct |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | North Carolina | 80 | 76.4% | 89.2% | 97.2% |
| 2 | Georgia | 31 | 75.5% | 84.4% | 95.0% |
| 3 | Arizona | 378 | 74.1% | 83.3% | 89.3% |
| 4 | Massachusetts | 124 | 69.8% | 83.1% | 91.5% |
| 5 | Florida | 224 | 68.3% | 81.6% | 94.3% |
| 6 | Washington | 115 | 71.9% | 81.6% | 91.5% |
| 7 | New Jersey | 105 | 68.6% | 78.3% | 85.7% |
| 8 | Texas | 234 | 64.4% | 77.9% | 90.1% |
| 9 | Illinois | 68 | 70.5% | 77.8% | 91.3% |
| 10 | Nevada | 42 | 67.2% | 76.9% | 88.9% |
| 11 | Oregon | 86 | 63.0% | 76.9% | 86.1% |
| 12 | Virginia | 35 | 57.3% | 74.9% | 91.6% |
| 13 | Utah | 111 | 63.5% | 74.6% | 83.9% |
| 14 | California | 1,029 | 60.5% | 73.4% | 88.2% |
| 15 | New York | 236 | 64.1% | 73.3% | 83.8% |
| 16 | New Mexico | 65 | 62.5% | 72.5% | 83.1% |
| 17 | Connecticut | 98 | 61.2% | 72.3% | 78.8% |
| 18 | Michigan | 68 | 65.1% | 71.7% | 79.9% |
| 19 | Pennsylvania | 115 | 62.2% | 71.7% | 84.2% |
| 20 | Colorado | 269 | 60.2% | 70.7% | 81.5% |
| 21 | Wisconsin | 41 | 69.9% | 70.0% | 73.5% |
Method & data notes
4,395 currently-listed U.S. dental practices with both an asking price and broker-reported annual collections, restricted to listings with price between $50,000 and $5,000,000 and revenue between $100,000 and $5,000,000. Listings above $5M excluded as they are almost all multi-location group sales. State-level statistics computed only where the state has at least 30 qualifying listings. Specialty totals use the same price and revenue filters applied to listings with a primary specialty code. This sample represents the private buyer practice transition market, not DSO acquisitions and not the full U.S. dental industry. Asking prices reported here; actual sale prices typically close 5 to 15% below asking.
