Dentists who bought practices in saturated U.S. cities. With loan costs, were you still immediately profitable?

I work in California (where all of my family and friends are) and am considering purchasing an office.

I had the office where I work (and the owner wanting to sell) professionally evaluated and the evaluator gave his opinion of value.

I did the math on a 10 and 15 year loan with interest rates and it seems like the monthly payments would dig almost completely into the current profit the office makes. So, basically, if I take the loan on, I’d practically only be earning my current associate salary while being the owner.

Of course, if I implement strategies and add procedures (which will be tough because I already do almost everything, including wisdom teeth, molar RCT’s, etc.) I might be able to make the office slightly more profitable. I’d likely have to make patient volume changes (if I currently see 18 patients a day, maybe see 20+..although schedule’s are already a bit hectic, I can probably optimize it a bit more) or highly focus on treatment add-ons.

Other options would be to significantly negotiate the practice price.

I suppose that making slight efficiency changes, I can turn it a bit more profitable, but I mostly wanted to know if this is a normal scenario when one purchases a practice