A relocatable Class 5 retail license is listed in New Jersey this month at $69,000, price reduced. A pre-operational Class 1 cultivation license in Bordentown sits at $175,000, also reduced.
In July, TerrAscend agreed to terms valuing a single dispensary in Flemington at $9 million.
Same state, same year, same regulator, same six license classes. So when an owner asks me what is my NJ dispensary worth, the first honest answer is that almost none of the distance between those numbers is the license. Here is what it actually is, in the order a buyer builds it.
The floor: what paper trades for by itself
Start at the bottom, because this is the part of the market owners misread most badly. A New Jersey license with no operating business behind it is cheap, and getting cheaper:
- $69,000 — a portable Class 5 retail license, relocatable statewide, reduced and pending
- $125,000 — a retail license opportunity in Hudson County
- $175,000 — a Class 1 cultivation license with annual approval, Bordentown, pre-operational
- $249,000 — a nearly finished 9,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Somerset, advertised by its own broker as a fire sale
- $550,000 — just under six acres in Millville, I-3 zoned, with Class 1 and Class 2 licenses attached
Those are asking prices, not closed trades, and asking prices in a thin market drift down. The reason is arithmetic: New Jersey has awarded roughly 2,435 licenses and has only about 397 operational ones. Paper is not scarce here. Stores are.
A license by itself is a permission slip with a to-do list stapled to it — a town, a buildout, a payroll, a year of losses — and buyers price to-do lists at what it costs to finish them, less a discount for the risk that you cannot. Which is why the same listing sheet carries a licensed Tier II cultivator asking $9 million. Same class as the Bordentown listing. One of them actually grows and sells cannabis.
What a buyer builds on top of it
A buyer is not valuing your license. They are valuing the cash it throws off, rebuilt from your records rather than your description of them. The standard stack for a retailer runs gross margin 50 to 60 percent, operating expenses 30 to 40 percent of revenue, leaving EBITDA around 10 to 20 percent.
Put a number on it. A New Jersey store doing $3 million a year lands between $300,000 and $600,000 of EBITDA before anybody argues about add-backs. That $300,000 spread is not market conditions. It is operating discipline — the same money that leaves as unexplained shrink or gets handed back at the register through undisciplined discounting. One caution: a well-run single location typically supports $150,000 to $300,000 of owner pay, and that gets normalized against a general manager's salary — not added back in full, and never presented as profit.
The multiple, and the four things that move it
Profitable dispensaries generally change hands at three to six times EBITDA, with most closed transactions clustering at four to six. Distressed or heavily competitive situations trade as low as two times. Limited-license markets sit at the top of the band, which is the best structural argument a New Jersey seller has.
Four things decide where inside that band you land.
Scarcity you did not create. A license in a town that said yes, in a state where hundreds said no, is a position capital cannot replicate. That is the premium, and you get it for free.
Margin a stranger can prove. Not what you believe you earn — what a buyer's accountant rebuilds from Metrc, your POS, your deposits and your returns without you in the room. That reconciliation is the ninety-day job, and it moves the multiple, not just the earnings being multiplied.
A transfer path with no surprises — Commission approval, municipal approvals that survive a change of ownership, a lease your landlord cannot hold hostage. Every open question gets priced, never in your favor.
A clean compliance record. Unresolved violations are commonly reported to cut valuations 20 to 30 percent. On a $450,000 EBITDA store at five times, that is a $450,000 to $675,000 haircut for a file nobody closed out.
The revenue cross-check
Multiples get argued about. Revenue does not. Aunt Mary's in Flemington was reported at more than $10 million annualized out of 5,200 square feet on a high-traffic corridor — one of the strongest single stores in the state. The agreed structure valued it at $9 million: a $3 million five-year convertible note at 6 percent for a 35 percent option, plus $6 million cash on exercise.
That is under one times revenue for a best-in-state performer, bought by a public operator that could have wired the whole thing. Against a New Jersey average closer to $4.3 million per store, an owner modeling two or three times revenue is not being optimistic. They are working from a different industry.
The one number nobody can price yet
Every valuation conversation now detours into federal taxes, so here is the state of play. The April 2026 order moved marijuana held under a state medical license, and FDA-approved marijuana products, to Schedule III. Adult-use was not included and remains subject to 280E.
The broader question went to an administrative hearing that ran June 29 to July 15, 2026, with post-hearing briefs due August 17. No recommendation has issued, the Administrator has no deadline, and litigation is pending — practitioners tracking it put any operator-level impact 12 to 24 months out at the earliest. Which means a buyer will not pay you today for relief that has not arrived. Model under current law, and take the tax question to your own cannabis CPA. I am a broker, not an accountant, and none of this is tax or legal advice.
- Trailing twelve months of revenue, from bank deposits rather than the P&L you wish you had.
- Gross margin. Under 50 percent is a sourcing and discounting problem before it is a valuation problem.
- EBITDA before add-backs, with your own pay normalized to a general manager's salary.
- Open compliance items. Count them. Each is arguing for a 20 to 30 percent haircut.
- Years left on the lease, and the assignment language. Under five years is your buyer's financing problem, which makes it yours.
Owners see a $9 million headline and a $69,000 listing in the same week and conclude the market is irrational. It is not. It is unusually precise. New Jersey is paying real money for finished businesses and almost nothing for unfinished intentions, and the gap is measured in ordinary operating work: reconciled inventory, a margin that holds, a closed compliance file, a lease somebody read.
Four decades of New Jersey transactions have convinced me most of the price is decided long before a buyer appears. The owner who spends ninety days on those five numbers and the owner who spends them waiting for one more good quarter are not selling the same business, even when the revenue is identical. If you want the number on yours — today's number, not a flattering one — see the current New Jersey listings or start a confidential conversation.