Assisted Living Feasibility Study in Illinois

Big loans, a low concentration

Illinois shows an uneven pattern in assisted living without nursing care. SBA recorded 28 approvals from FY2017 to FY2026, a total of $53.4 million, which puts the state 19 of 50 for the class, while care homes sit 24 of 39 among Illinois asset classes. The location quotient is only 0.29x, so assisted living is a much smaller portion of Illinois approvals than of the national book. In other words the state finances care homes, but they are far from a pillar of its SBA lending.

What distinguishes the loans

The ticket is the other half of the story. A median of $1.1 million works out to 1.47x what a typical care home borrows nationally, and the middle half runs from $285,325 to $3.8 million, a wide band that stretches from a converted house to a purpose-built home. Of the 28 loans, 24 were SBA 7(a) and 4 were SBA 504, and there were no franchised loans, at 0.00%. A borrower considering an Illinois home should expect to be compared with this larger-than-usual ticket, while a lender should note how few loans stand behind it.

Counties, lender and the recent rise

Live Oak Banking Company is the lender listed most often under 7(a), with 6 loans; the figure is SBA's record of the holder, not a view of the bank's standards. DuPage County leads with 5 loans, then McHenry with 4, and Cook and Lake with 3 each, which means the suburban collar around Chicago holds more of this lending than the city's own county. Approvals picked up late: 7 loans in FY2025 and 7 in FY2026, worth $10.8 million and $15.4 million, against none in FY2019.

Coding limits and withheld rates

The industry code isolates only assisted living without on-site nursing. No separate code exists for memory units, and homes that staff nurses on site are tallied under two different classes, which an Illinois sponsor planning skilled care should consult as well. For Illinois care homes the cohort behind each loss rate is too thin to print, so neither cancellations nor charge-offs get a percentage here, and silence is not a zero.

What an Illinois study has to test

Demand comes first: a study should estimate residents able to pay privately near the site, county by county, and count the beds already licensed nearby. It has to price construction against a loan that may reach into the millions, and show a lease-up schedule with a stabilised occupancy that does not depend on the best case. Debt service coverage should hold if lease-up runs slower than planned. Since an appraiser will value the home on beds and the income they earn, the study must give a revenue basis the appraisal can test line by line.