01-projects/acquisitions

shortlist liveness check

2026-09-01·acquisition-research·status: superseded·! high

Acquisition funnel — liveness check, 2026-09-01

Abbreviated run. The monthly /acquisition-rescan cron fired for the first time on 2026-09-01, two days after the 2026-08-30 full scored refresh. A full five-lane sweep at a two-day interval would return an all-UNCHANGED diff and supersede a fresh, fully browser-verified 35KB note with a near-duplicate. Deliberate deviation from the skill's step 7: no superseding note written; the 2026-08-30 note remains status: live and stays the canonical roster. First real re-scan deferred to 2026-10-01.

What was run instead: browser liveness verification on the two top-ranked candidates — the only thing that can genuinely change in 48 hours (sale-pending, pulled listing, re-price).

Acronyms used throughout, expanded once here: CPA certified public accountant; RCM revenue cycle management; SBA US Small Business Administration; SDE Seller's Discretionary Earnings.

Diff vs 2026-08-30

Decay rate over the 2-day interval: 0%. Not a meaningful statistic at this interval; the operative decay figure remains the 2026-08-30 finding of 60% over 119 days.

Verified this run (HIGH — browser-rendered 2026-09-01)

#1 Palm Beach CPA practice — Bookkeeping/CPA lane, 8/10 — LIVE Asking still "on request"; SDE $468,837 on sales revenue $688,247. No status badge. Rendered at us.businessesforsale.com/us/est-cpa-and-accounting-practice-lender-pre-approved.aspx (301 from the prior slug), page displays Listing ID 3968292. Broker unchanged: Transworld Business Brokers of South Florida, ask for Max Crescenzi, internal ref #6401829634.

One change worth noting, though not a re-price: the listing has been retitled "Est. CPA & Accounting Practice Lender Pre-Approved" and the body now states outright "third party SBA lender approved with only 10% down," with an indicative structure of $810,000 / 120 months / 10.00% / $10,704.21 per month. This does not move the model. The ~$900k implied asking and ~$90k down were inferred in the 2026-08-30 note and are now published; the $128,450/yr debt service was already a published figure there, not an inference. Treat this as the broker sharpening the pitch, not new economics.

#2 Medical billing / RCM firm — Home health/RCM lane, 8/10 — LIVE Asking $2,200,000; SDE $548,378. No status badge. Rendered at websiteclosers.com/businesses/.../119279/, page displays "CODE NAME: Project Billing Pro / WC 4081". Confirms behavioral-health/addiction-treatment RCM, 21 active clients, owner at 1-2 hrs/week, 1 FT + 2 PT billers.

Two margin figures, do not conflate them: the listing card claims 85% net margin; the computed SDE margin on the 2026-08-30 note's stated revenue of $628,801 (carried from that note, not re-verified this run) is 87%. They are not the same metric and the rendered page does not reconcile them.

Unverified inference, flagged as such: an older Website Closers URL for an apparently similar business (listing 118226, average contract $40k) now renders a genuine 404, and 119279 restates average contract size at $50k. This is consistent with 119279 being a relist of 118226 — which would be the $1.8M → $2.2M re-list discussed on 2026-08-30 — but the rendered pages do not establish they are the same seller. Do not treat the relist as fact. Note that the 2026-08-30 note states the relist flatly and unhedged in its Medical billing / RCM section; this run downgrades that claim to inference, and that note has not been amended.

Not run this cycle

No fresh lane sweep (bookkeeping/CPA, home health/RCM, vertical agency, dental supply, AI-hardware). No re-verification of roster rows 3-10. No new scoring, no updated step-away math. All of that is deferred to the 2026-10-01 run, at which point the baseline will be ~32 days old and a diff carries real signal.

Carried forward, unchanged

The two open diligence asks from 2026-08-30 are both still the correct next move and both still require the founder, not Ray (no autonomous broker contact):

  1. Palm Beach CPA — ask Max Crescenzi for the published asking price and, on the same call, whether the buyer must be a licensed CPA. The lender pre-approval language makes this call more time-sensitive than it was, not less.
  2. Medical billing / RCM — ask Website Closers whether listing 119279 is a relist of 118226 and, if so, what drove the $400k increase. Separately, reconcile the margin: the card says 85% net, the arithmetic on $628,801 revenue says 87% SDE. That SDE is a question, not an input.

The two gates (phData conflict-of-interest; build-vs-acquisition cash sequencing) are not re-litigated here — see the "Two gates" section of [[2026-08-30-shortlist-refresh-scored]].

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