More buyers than sellers for strong 2026 dealership acquisition market, experts say

LAS VEGAS — The dealership buy-sell market will continue to be strong in 2026, as demand for acquisitions remains high, industry experts told dealers this week on the sidelines of NADA Show 2026.

Factors including the 2024 presidential election and buyer and seller concerns over potential income tax rate and regulation changes slowed the market and some transactions in 2025, Alan Haig, president of Haig Partners, a buy-sell advisory firm in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said Feb. 3 during the Haig Partners Maximizing Value Conference.

“The number of transactions we worked on in 2025 was about the same that we worked on in 2024. They just didn’t close at the same rate,” Haig said. “Our pipeline is probably as robust as it’s ever been. So we’re anticipating a strong year in 2026 in terms of M&A.”

The strength, though, is highly lopsided in favor of buyers, particularly larger groups managing their portfolios, George Karolis, president of Presidio Group, said Feb 3 during the AutoTeam America Dealer/CEO/CFO Forum & Buy-Sell Summit.

“The M&A market is expected to remain highly competitive, [with] 10 times more buyers than there are sellers, and even more competitive for desired brands and desired geographies,” Karolis said.

He said there are roughly 4,000 potential buyers competing for about 400 deals annually.

In a separate Automotive News interview, Karolis said that Presidio, an investment banking firm in Atlanta and Denver, has seven closings scheduled over the next few months, much of which is focused on portfolio management for larger groups.

He said the six publicly traded dealership groups will likely be active in the buy-sell space in 2026.

“They’ve generated significant cash flow and improved their balance sheets over the last five years,” he said. “Their liquidity has gone from close to $700 million to $1.4 billion as of the end of the year, so they’re flush with capital. They have a flywheel of additional earnings that are fueling additional growth, so I’d expect that to continue.”

Karolis, during his talk, predicted that the top 30 metros along with the states of Texas and Florida will see the most buy-sell activity.

Haig, at his company’s conference, agreed. “Dealers increasingly prefer larger metro stores compared to smaller, rural stores,” Haig said.

Acquirers will pursue transactions to manage their existing roster of stores. Their goal is to perfect a store mix that maximizes investment returns and nurtures high-margin businesses that drive growth such as fixed operations, Karolis said.

Andrew Gilleland, senior vice president of automotive operations at Toyota Motor North America, told the AutoTeam America event that buy-sells have gotten more complex.

“Buy-sells are not what they used to be,” he said. “It’s gotten massively complex. You have public ownership, you have private ownership, you have equity funds that are involved. And we’re open to all that. We just want to make sure that we know who’s behind it, who’s running the place and what are the rules of engagement?”

Dealers also are making buy-sell deals much more within their own market than they used to, Erin Kerrigan, managing director at Kerrigan Advisors, a dealership sell-side firm in Incline Village, Nev., said at AutoTeam America.

She said 65 percent of transactions in 2025 were completed by dealers who already had existing dealerships in the market where they were acquiring, according to the Kerrigan Advisors 2025 Dealer Survey.

“Whereas in the heydays of COVID, we heard many, many times, ‘I’ll buy something anywhere.’ ...Now it seems like growing groups are very much filling out their market share in their market,” Kerrigan said.