Audiologists · BC · AB
When the other bidder is a corporation, certainty wins the clinic.
Hearing clinics are bought by corporations as often as by people. If you are the individual bidding, what usually decides it is not your price — it is whether you can answer as fast and as certainly as they can.
Arranged by Ramin Hallaji, licensed mortgage broker — with the very best connections inside each of Canada’s major lenders.
The four pillars
What gets financed
The purchase is rarely one number. It is four, and they are underwritten together — by whichever lender is prepared to write this category.
Real estate
The premises, where you are buying rather than leasing them. Most clinics in this category lease, and then this piece simply is not in your deal.
Usually 25 yearsPractice acquisition
The practice itself: the patient base, the bookings, the goodwill and the going concern you are taking over.
Term set on your fileLeasehold & equipment
The sound booth and testing equipment, the fitting rooms, and the build-out itself.
Term set on your fileWorking capital
The float through the handover — payroll, the hearing-aid stock on the shelves, and the weeks while the diary settles under new ownership.
Revolving lineStraight about this one
Harder to place — and worth saying so
There is no shortage of banks that will finance a dental or a medical practice. Audiology sits outside that group for most of them: it is not one of the professions their healthcare programs were written around, so the file lands with a general commercial team who have no template for it — which is exactly the delay you cannot afford when a corporate buyer is bidding on the same clinic.
That is a placement problem rather than a verdict on your practice. A clinic with real revenue, a real patient base and a sensible price is financeable; it simply will not be financed by whoever happens to hold your business account, and a general commercial application will usually come back as a no.
Which is why there is no leverage figure on this page. The other professions on this desk sit in a defined bank program with published terms. Yours does not, so what a lender will do is decided on your file — the practice’s cash flow, the price, the security, and your own position — and any number you are given here before that work is done would be a guess dressed up as a quote.
What to expect
- Leverage
- Case by case
- Lender appetite
- Far narrower than medical or dental
- What it turns on
- The practice’s cash flow and the price
- What we do
- Place it with the few who write it
- Your answer
- In writing, before you commit
Deliberately no percentage here. This desk publishes terms where a program defines them and stays quiet where it does not — a figure you cannot rely on is worse than none.
Affordability
Practice-acquisition estimator
Set the practice’s cash flow and your own assumptions; the estimator shows the borrowing the cash flow could support. It quotes nobody’s pricing — the rate is your input.
Arithmetic on figures you supplied — not an approval, a pre-approval, or an offer. Real estate in a project runs on its own longer clock and can carry further than this single-term illustration.
They arrive in the message box, editable — straight answer inside one business day.
Hearing clinic specifics
What a hearing clinic actually costs to buy
A hearing clinic purchase has the same four parts as any practice purchase — the premises if you are buying them, the practice itself, the equipment and fit-out, and the working capital to carry you through the handover. What differs is who will lend against them, and who else is bidding.
Two things sit in this deal that do not sit in most. The booth and the testing equipment are real fixed assets, which helps — a lender can see them. The hearing-aid stock is the part people forget: it is inventory with a resale value and a revenue line of its own, and it belongs in the working-capital piece rather than something you fund out of your own pocket at closing. Ask early about any supply agreement the seller has with a manufacturer, because whether it survives the sale changes what you are actually buying.
Where these files are won is the practice’s own numbers. A clinic with a stable patient base, associates who are staying, and books that survive a proper read is a financeable business. Bring the financials early and the conversation is short.
You are usually not bidding against another audiologist. Hearing clinics in Canada are bought by the hearing-aid manufacturers themselves and by private-equity-backed chains, and those buyers arrive with their funding already settled. You will rarely win that on price. You win it by being the offer that does not wobble — which means having the financing question answered before you make it, not after.
We work alongside your healthcare practice broker, your accountant and your financial adviser — the financing is built around the deal they helped you shape, not the other way round.
Questions
The ones that come up first
Because far fewer lenders write it. Most banks’ healthcare programs were built around physicians, dentists and a short list of others; audiology is not usually on it, so a general application goes to a commercial team with no template for a practice purchase. The clinic is not the problem — the panel is. It matters more here than elsewhere, because the delay costs you the deal rather than just your patience.
No. It means the file has to go to the right desk rather than the nearest one. A clinic with real cash flow and a sensible price is financeable; what changes is how many places will look at it, and how much the presentation matters.
Because there is no program that sets one. The other professions on this desk sit inside defined bank programs with published terms, so those pages can state them. Yours does not, so the answer comes from your own file — and is given to you in writing before you commit to anything.
The practice financials — two or three years if they exist — and the asking price or the purchase agreement if there is one. That is enough to tell you quickly whether it is placeable and roughly what shape it would take.
Not on price — they will usually go higher, and they arrive with their money already arranged. What you can beat them on is being straightforward to deal with: a seller who has spent thirty years building a practice often cares who takes it over, and an individual audiologist with financing already lined up is a real offer rather than a hopeful one. The part you control is arriving with the financing question already answered.
Get started
Bring the deal you are actually looking at
A purchase agreement, a set of practice financials, or a location you are considering for a cold start. Early is better — the structure is easiest to influence before anything is signed.