Child Care Center Feasibility Study in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL Metro Area

Heavy child care loans, thinly spread across lenders

Child care around Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater is financed at large tickets: the median loan is $717,000, 1.59x what the class's median is nationwide. Half of the loans sit between $373,000 and $1.6 million. Behind that sit 171 approvals and $185.5 million between FY2017 and FY2026. Nationally Tampa Bay is 14 of 493 for child care; locally the class is third, 3 of 39. The location quotient is 1.55x, so child care takes a larger share of local lending than it does of lending nationwide.

SBA 7(a) carried 127 loans and SBA 504 carried 44, which puts a sizeable fixed-asset program beside the working-capital one. Franchised units are 25.7% of loans. The industry code also covers home-based child care, and centers cannot be told apart from family child care homes, so a few loans here may not be centers. A study should say plainly whether it addresses a licensed center and what capacity the building supports.

Lenders and counties

On SBA 7(a), Bank of America, National Association holds 8 loans and $5.6 million and BayFirst National Bank holds 7, with 6 each at Wells Fargo Bank National Association ($11.5 million), Centennial Bank (AR) ($8.7 million) and Banesco USA ($6.7 million). On SBA 504, Florida Business Development Corporation holds 23 loans ($29.6 million), Florida First Capital Finance Corporation, Inc. 13 ($18.0 million) and Sunshine State Economic Development Corporation 8 ($5.0 million). Each lender above is the current holder in SBA's record, and it tells a borrower nothing of how a given holder handles a request. By county, Hillsborough County, FL has 88 loans and Pasco County, FL 45, so the record sits mostly on the Tampa side of the bay.

Cancellation of FY2017 to FY2024 approvals is 13.1% at the floor and 13.1% at the ceiling, so approvals still waiting to disburse change nothing. For the 78 loans funded in FY2017 to FY2021 the file prints 0.00% charged off to date and 0.00% charged off within five years, and both are floors that time may lift. Approvals dropped from 23 loans in FY2017 to 11 in FY2018 and were 11 again in FY2023, then recovered to 21 loans and $23.0 million in FY2025 and 20 in FY2026. Under the 2023 delineation, each loan reaches the Tampa Bay totals through its project county.

Testing a Tampa Bay child care center

An analysis should count children under school age and working households near the site in Hillsborough or Pasco County, and the licensed seats that already compete for them. Costs for safety build-out, classrooms and playground have to be set against the $717,000 median. Enrollment, tuition and staffing ratios must carry debt service, and the appraisal must reflect a special-purpose building. The 171 past approvals are context for that work, and approval is never promised.