Hello,
I am in the process of researching the idea of opening a childcare centre. My question is where can I look to buy an existing daycare centre and also how do I survey an area for childcare need? Also where do I look for financing help to open a childcare centre
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Unless you are going to get a small business loan based on your own credit from a bank, there is no funding I know of to help you open a daycare centre. Government programs to support non-profit child care centres, require purchase of service agreements and those can only be obtained after you have been open for a period of time and passed all requirements for quality assurance.
Calling your local Region office and children's services should be able to provide you answers to questions about need. There is a local real estate agent in my area that works with schools and daycares specifically, so perhaps calling your local agent may be a start to look at purchasing an existing business.
Hernanson...just curious, are you a recent graduate? I ask with a smile because I think that every single ece student and new grad dreams of opening their own day care (I did too - till my admin class in 2nd year and we had to create our own daycare complete with budget). A couple of years under your belt plus some assistant supervisor or supervisor experience soon teaches you how difficult and expensive (see Andrea's reply) it would be to operate your own centre. Virtually every privately owned centre is also generally a "for-profit centre" which I have found is usually frowned upon her in Ontario.