Assisted Living Feasibility Study in the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA Metro Area

Atlanta: a top metro with a thin local share

Assisted living without nursing care is an Atlanta niche: assisted living holds 19 of 39 in the Atlanta tally and carries a location quotient of 0.87x, yet the metro itself stands 11 of 321 nationally for the class. The 50 loans, worth $93.3 million across FY2017 to FY2026, are large, and the middle loan, at $1.3 million, comes to 1.65x what the middle loan nationally is. Atlanta is therefore a place where such homes are financed at size even though they form a modest part of the local book, and a study should expect scrutiny of whether its own project is larger or smaller than the typical home financed here.

Programs, lenders and counties

Loan amounts in the middle half range from $501,750 to $2.7 million. Counting by program, 44 loans are 7(a) and 6 are 504. The franchise share is withheld. Craft Bank is logged against 7 7(a) loans worth $9.4 million, Oconee State Bank against 6 worth $3.5 million, with 5 more under Live Oak Banking Company, worth $9.9 million. Those entries are SBA's holder records. Cobb County has 14 loans, Rockdale County 6 and Cherokee County 5, and the remaining loans sit in counties too small to print.

The class here excludes homes with nursing: assisted living with nursing is indexed to other codes, so a project with skilled nursing belongs on a different page. The page also prints only three years of volume: 8 loans in FY2019 ($7.5 million), 6 in FY2020 ($8.7 million) and 8 in FY2022 ($14.7 million). Every other year is withheld, and so are the cancellation and charge-off rates. Absence does not mean zero, and three years are too few to establish any direction. Counties on the 2023 area list place each loan in the metro.

Underwriting an Atlanta care home

A plan for a care home here has to show demand from residents who can pay, inside a realistic distance of the site, and how the home's licensed capacity will fill after opening. Building or converting the home should be costed with the median loan of about $1.3 million in view, next to staffing cost and the rate structure, and the study should show that income covers the debt when the census has settled, plus a case where fill-up runs slower. Beds and the income they earn drive the appraiser's value, so each revenue assumption needs a source. If nursing is planned, the project falls under a different class. History here is context only.