Independent Feasibility Study Consultant for SBA and USDA Loans

Volume, and where count and dollars part

California heads the table with 23,668 loans and $21.22 billion, Texas follows with 16,068 loans and $16.80 billion, and Florida with 11,725 loans and $10.17 billion. Below Florida the count order and the dollar order stop agreeing. New York's 9,829 loans carry $5.24 billion, less than Georgia's $7.98 billion on 7,128 loans and barely more than Washington's $5.11 billion on 5,717. Ohio's 7,638 loans carry $4.01 billion, less than Illinois at $4.91 billion on 6,489. For a feasibility study, the state's place in this table decides how much of the comparable record can come from the project's own state. In California, Texas and Florida the class and metro cells are deep enough that a projection can be tested against loans made nearby in the same property type. At the foot of the table, Alaska with 340 loans and Wyoming with 296, the state record is a short list, and the demand case has to rest on the trade area's own evidence, with the state numbers reported as context rather than offered as proof.

Loan size: the same count, a different book

States with almost the same number of loans can hold very different books. New Hampshire made 1,503 loans for $541.1 million; Alabama made 1,502 for $1.36 billion. Massachusetts made 4,909 for $2.08 billion, while North Carolina made fewer, 4,418, for $4.34 billion. The small-ticket states sit mostly in New England, with Hawaii the distant exception: Vermont's 523 loans total $184.5 million, Maine's 1,111 total $451.4 million, Rhode Island's 890 total $377.0 million and Hawaii's 477 total $153.7 million. The large-ticket states run across the South and Southwest: South Carolina with $2.15 billion on 2,126 loans, Tennessee with $1.79 billion on 1,982, New Mexico with $759.9 million on 846. A lender weighs a project against the loans it already makes. A full-service hotel or a multi-tunnel car wash in a small-ticket state is the file where the SBA may ask for a study on its own account: its procedure, which our 2026 fee survey quotes, names a project size disproportionate to the community it will serve as one such reason. There the study's first job is to prove demand at that scale. In a large-ticket state the same project is ordinary, and the work moves to the competitive set.

Cancellation floors: approvals that never funded

The cancellation column counts approvals in the tracked classes that were cancelled instead of funded. New Jersey prints the highest floor in the table, 15.5%, followed by New York at 14.7%, Florida and Maryland at 14.2%, Rhode Island at 13.9%, and Connecticut and Oregon at 13.7%. Every one of them but Oregon lies on the Atlantic coast. The low end mixes regions: Maine at 8.1%, Mississippi at 8.5%, North Dakota at 8.9%, Vermont at 9.1% and Utah at 9.3%. No reason for a cancellation is carried in the cells, and a study does not pretend to supply one. What it can do is check, before funding, the parts of the deal a lender can verify: a construction budget priced at the date of the study, a site the sponsor controls and can permit, equity shown in the file rather than promised, and a ramp that still covers debt service if the opening slips. In New Jersey, with the highest floor on the page, a lender has more reason than most to want that work in the file before the loan is approved.

Charge-off floors: losses after funding

Charge-offs are losses after a loan has funded, and the ranking changes. Hawaii prints 9.2%, the highest in the table, on 477 loans worth $153.7 million, the smallest dollar total of any state; New York prints 6.7%, Texas 6.4%, South Carolina 6.1% and Virginia 5.8%. At the other end Nebraska prints 1.8%, New Hampshire 1.9%, and Alaska, New Mexico and North Dakota 2.1%, while Washington, at 2.5% on 5,717 loans, holds the lowest floor of any state with a book that size or larger. A band of interior and northern states holds many of the other low floors: Idaho at 2.4%, Utah at 2.6%, Minnesota and Wisconsin at 2.8%, Montana at 3.1%. Wyoming prints 0.00% on 296 loans, a floor on the smallest cohort in the table and the weakest evidence in the column. Texas is the case a lender will raise with any sponsor there: behind only California in loans and dollars, its charge-off floor of 6.4% sits well above California's 4.4% and Florida's 5.3%. A Texas study needs a downside case sized to the Texas record. Georgia shows the reverse: large loans, $7.98 billion on 7,128, and a floor of 3.4%, so the same projection meets a different loss history in Georgia than in Texas, and the study's stress case should show the difference.

Two floors, two different questions

The two columns do not move together, which is why a study answers them separately. Texas has a cancellation floor of 11.6%, lower than California's 12.6%, with a charge-off floor of 6.4%. Hawaii cancels at 10.4% and charges off at 9.2%. New Jersey is the mirror image, 15.5% cancelled and 5.2% charged off, and Maine and Mississippi sit low on both, at 8.1% and 2.2%, and 8.5% and 2.3%. Kansas and Kentucky make the point with almost identical books: 1,408 loans and $921.8 million against 1,392 loans and $921.6 million, cancellation floors of 10.7% and 11.0%, charge-off floors of 4.4% and 3.1%. Washington and Colorado share a cancellation floor of 10.8% and part at charge-off, 2.5% against 3.9%. Cancellation risk is about whether a project reaches funding: budget, site, permits, equity. Charge-off risk is about whether it earns its debt service once open: demand, pricing, competition and the ramp. A lender in Hawaii or Texas will read the cash flow chapter of a study hardest; a lender in New Jersey or Maryland will read the project chapter just as closely.

Why the rates are floors

Both rates are floors, and each prints only where its cohort has at least 30 loans. The window runs through FY2026, so the approvals of the last years in the table have had little time to be cancelled or to fail, and the true rate for each state over the window is at least what the table shows. That shapes how a study uses them. A state's charge-off floor is the least loss its SBA lenders have already booked in these property types, and a projection that assumes the project will beat its state's record needs a reason in the market evidence, not in the sponsor's confidence. In the states with the shortest records, Delaware with 483 loans, Alaska with 340 and Wyoming with 296, a handful of loans can move a floor, so a study there reports the state rate with that caution and leans on the class record and the trade area for its stress case.

Restaurants lead in count, hotels in dollars

Full-service restaurants have the most SBA loans of any class, 28,716 under 7(a) and 3,515 under 504, and limited-service restaurants follow in 7(a) count at 19,828, then fitness centers at 11,604. Hotels and motels have the most dollars: $21.54 billion of 7(a) lending on 8,942 loans and $6.68 billion of 504 lending on 2,885, the largest dollar totals in both programs. The hotel loan is the largest typical ticket among the classes in this table, which makes the hotel study the one a lender reads with the most money riding on each decision. Our published fee bands for 2026 rank hotel construction among the complex studies for the same reason, since every competing property must be checked one at a time and the going-concern value split from the real estate. Restaurants are the opposite case, with many loans and smaller tickets, $14.04 billion of 7(a) on full-service and $8.83 billion on limited-service, so the lender's question there is less about scale than about how many similar loans it and its peers have already made nearby.

Fuel, car care and a 504 cluster

Gas stations and truck stops carry $9.34 billion of 7(a) lending on 6,403 loans, behind only hotels and full-service restaurants in 7(a) dollars. Liquor stores edge past them in count, 6,438 loans, with $4.68 billion. Automotive repair shops made more 7(a) loans than either, 9,568, for $4.11 billion, and car washes 2,713 for $3.84 billion. In 504 the order changes: car washes took 997 loans for $1.21 billion, gas stations 954 for $1.06 billion, and self storage, from outside this group, 946 for $1.22 billion. Classes with very different 7(a) records arrive at nearly the same place in 504. For a car wash or self storage study the program question is live, because a 504 file is read by a certified development company as well as the bank, and the study is written for both readers. For a gas station the 7(a) record dominates, and the study is built around the questions a 7(a) credit officer asks, with the environmental file beside it.

Where 504 carries the weight

The classes that lean hardest on 504 are built around a specialized building. Cold storage is the clearest case: 49 7(a) loans for $66.1 million and 39 504 loans for $102.3 million, the only class in the table where 504 dollars exceed 7(a) dollars. Self storage took 946 504 loans against 1,584 under 7(a); schools 315 against 603, with $439.5 million of 504 against $565.8 million of 7(a); warehouses 193 against 536; RV parks and campgrounds 281 against 645; marinas 80 against 220. Beverage manufacturing, the breweries, wineries and distilleries, sits between the poles with 642 504 loans against 3,278 under 7(a). At the other end, liquor stores took 302 504 loans against 6,438 under 7(a), coffee shops 375 against 7,958 and beauty salons 551 against 8,281, while the investor property classes took very few: multifamily 11, manufactured housing communities 13, nonresidential lessors 81 against 1,486. The program mix tells the study which structure the lender is likely to propose. A cold storage or self storage sponsor arriving with a 7(a) projection should expect the 504 question; a coffee shop arriving with a 504 structure is outside the record. The study builds its sources and uses and its debt service schedule for the program the class record points to, or explains why the project departs from it.

Health care and the licensing gate

The health care classes span a wide range of loan size. Dental offices took 7,105 7(a) loans for $6.10 billion and 1,440 504 loans for $1.10 billion; medical offices 6,346 7(a) loans for $3.68 billion and 1,477 504 loans for $1.47 billion, more 504 loans and dollars than dentistry on fewer 7(a) loans. Veterinary clinics carry $3.21 billion on 2,941 7(a) loans, while rehabilitation and therapy clinics made more loans, 3,063, for $951.7 million. In residential care, assisted living leads with 2,232 7(a) loans for $2.60 billion and 505 504 loans for $640.9 million, ahead of skilled nursing at 543 loans and $573.6 million and continuing care retirement communities at 130 and $102.6 million. Hospitals, 231 7(a) loans for $131.4 million, and dialysis centers, 28 for $31.9 million, print no 504 figure: a blank cell is an unpublished figure, and this page does not read it as zero. For assisted living, skilled nursing and behavioral health, where 1,018 7(a) loans total $674.5 million, a study has to cover the licence and the census ramp before it covers the building, which is why the fee bands posted here for 2026 class assisted living as complex work.

Thin records

Some classes rest on short records: land subdivision on 32 7(a) loans for $9.5 million, dialysis centers on 28, cold storage on 49 and 39, parking lots and garages on 118 and 22, continuing care retirement communities on 130 and 47, multifamily on 204 and 11. In those classes the SBA record proves that the program has lent to the business and not much more; it cannot carry a demand argument. A study for a project in a thin class puts its weight on the market itself: the trade area's population and income, the competing facilities counted and visited, the operating benchmarks of the property type. It uses the SBA record to show the lender that the structure has precedent. These are also the projects where the agency's own list of reasons to ask for a study, as the survey on fees reproduces it, names a 'unique market concept' and a 'highly specialized Project property', and a reviewer is most likely to reach for it.

Consumer services and the saturation question

The deepest counts belong to businesses that compete street by street: full-service restaurants at 28,716 7(a) loans, limited-service at 19,828, fitness centers at 11,604, beauty salons at 8,281, child care centers at 8,128 and coffee shops at 7,958. Their 7(a) dollars run from $14.04 billion for full-service restaurants down to $1.67 billion for beauty salons, the smallest tickets in the group. Child care stands apart: $6.75 billion of 7(a), and 1,959 504 loans for $2.02 billion, behind only hotels and full-service restaurants in both 504 columns. Because the 504 debenture finances land, building and equipment, in the fee survey's own description, that record points to child care sponsors who own their buildings more often than the others in this list. Grocery stores, with 3,701 7(a) loans for $2.75 billion, match coffee shops' $2.74 billion on far fewer loans. In these classes the first circumstance in the agency's list, market saturation by industry type and location, is the question a lender is most likely to put, and the answer has to be local: the competing operators in the trade area, their capacity and prices, and the share of local demand the project must capture to cover its debt.

Specialty medical and technical classes

Four classes in the table have not come up above, and their records are short enough to overlook. Urgent care and ambulatory surgery, diagnostic imaging centers and life science labs made almost the same number of 7(a) loans, 273, 298 and 292, on very different dollars: $311.4 million, $234.4 million and $143.4 million. Urgent care and surgery centers borrowed the most of the three on the fewest loans, which fits a center that opens with its clinical build-out and equipment already in place. The labs took the most 504 dollars of the four, $72.3 million on 48 loans beside $143.4 million of 7(a), against $54.5 million on 37 for urgent care and $30.7 million on 29 for imaging; a lab is built around a specialized building, and the 504 record follows the building. Data centers made far more 7(a) loans than any of the three, 911, for $476.9 million, fewer dollars per loan than urgent care or imaging, and they took only 50 504 loans for $41.6 million. That is a record of modest loans, and a study for a large purpose-built facility finds few comparables of its size in it. In all four classes the national record is short enough that it shows the program lends to the business and little more, so the study builds its demand case from the project's own market: the referral sources or tenants it expects, the competing facilities nearby, and the equipment the loan pays for.