Feasibility Study Data for the Brownsville-Harlingen, TX Metro Area

Equal cancellation and charge-off floors, and a very small ticket

Brownsville-Harlingen is Cameron County, TX alone, with 286 loans and $108.0 million from FY2017 to FY2026, ranking 250 of 928. Two floors match: cancelled approvals total 10.6% through FY2024, and charge-offs total 10.6% across the 113 loans funded out of earlier approval years. A charge-off floor that high on a small base is a signal for any lender. SBA's release leaves out a cancellation ceiling and a five-year loss rate for Brownsville-Harlingen, so none is printed, and a gap must not be read as nil.

Median borrowing sits at $125,000, a mere 0.60x the national level, while the middle loans range from $25,000 to $350,000. Franchise brands account for 9.4%. The programme split is 275 under 7(a) and 11 under 504, and no 504 holder reaches a count large enough to list. Few tracked classes register: coffee shop and snack bar ties hotel and motel at 9, full-service restaurant has 8, medical office 7, and limited-service restaurant ties gas station and truck stop at 6. A total of 220 loans fall in no tracked class. Cameron County holds all 286 loans, so the evidence a study can cite is entirely local.

Brownsville's holder list

SBA's holder entries below say where each loan sits; practice is outside their scope. Wells Fargo Bank National Association holds 52 7(a) loans worth only $3.1 million, PNC Bank, National Association 43 worth $5.7 million, PlainsCapital Bank 25 worth $13.6 million, Newtek Bank, National Association 18 worth $4.5 million and PeopleFund 11 worth $1.1 million. PlainsCapital Bank's average loan is several times that of the first two names.

Annual approvals fell to 9 loans worth $830,000 in FY2020 and recovered to 37 loans in FY2024 and $19.6 million in FY2025. A lender reading this will see that the area's record has been rebuilt recently and that older seasoning is limited.

What a Brownsville study should do

A study should keep cost in line with the small tickets that dominate and should test demand in Cameron County for the specific trade area. Debt service coverage must hold at a charge-off floor near one in ten, and the appraisal has to support value. Since the floors above rest on modest numbers, we advise reading them as warnings, not forecasts. The 2023 delineation sets the county. Nothing on this page implies an approval.