Professional review of the seller's records, legal work on the purchase agreement, the preparation of a business plan capable of supporting the application, and the working capital the business needs after closing. Government fees vary by filing route and should be confirmed from the official current source.
The plan and the diligence are part of the investment
Buyers routinely budget the purchase price and forget everything around it, then find the remaining cash is thin exactly when the business needs equipment or a first payroll. Build a list: accounting review of the financials, a lawyer for the asset or share purchase agreement, a business plan written to a standard an adjudicator will read rather than a bank, immigration counsel, and post-closing working capital. Where the purchase price is modest, these surrounding costs can be a meaningful share of the total, which also matters because the assessment looks at the investment relative to the total cost of the enterprise. Treat all of it as one number when deciding whether the household can afford the plan without leaving the business undercapitalized.
Hypothetical example: Roxane, a pet-grooming salon purchaser, compares a cheap asset purchase with a larger build-out using only headline prices. She should calculate the total cost of acquiring and making each version operational, then measure how much is already committed and exposed to loss. Substantiality is proportional to the actual enterprise; there is no universal minimum that makes a thin transaction sufficient. The budget should distinguish investment expenditures from legal, filing, translation and household costs, and government charges should be checked on official schedules. Ownership, operating forecasts and staffing also matter because a lower price cannot cure a business that is merely speculative or marginal.