Data Center Feasibility Study in North Carolina

A larger share of loans than nationally, and a small band of sizes

North Carolina places 10 of 52 states for data center loans. Its location quotient stands at 1.35x, and the class holds 22 of 39 at home. Approvals from FY2017 to FY2026 number 28, for $10.4 million, and the median loan of $250,000 is 1.22x the national median for the class. What stands out is how narrow the range is: the middle half runs only from $137,500 to $350,000, so there is little of the large-loan tail seen in some other states.

A 7(a) cell with a surge in FY2025

Every one of the 28 loans is SBA 7(a); the SBA 504 count is none. Franchising is absent, at 0.00%. Newtek Bank, National Association is the leading lender, with 7 loans and $4.0 million. Wake County holds 7 loans, Buncombe, Iredell and Mecklenburg 4 each, and Durham, New Hanover and Watauga 2 each, a spread that reaches the mountains and the coast as well as the Triangle and Charlotte. Volume jumped to 10 loans in FY2025, from 4 the year before, then fell to 3 in FY2026. A lender should note that a single year with that many approvals may reflect a lender campaign as much as demand.

What the code includes

Colocation buildings cannot be separated from hosting services, and the same code is assigned to data processing and hosting businesses. The loans may therefore describe hosting and data processing firms as much as facilities. The cancellation and charge-off rates stay unpublished for North Carolina, where the loan count is too low to steady a rate; they are not shown as numbers or as zeros.

Tests for a North Carolina facility

Power comes first for a North Carolina data center: the available capacity at the site, the utility's schedule for new service, and the price of electricity over the lease term. Tenant demand needs testing against operators already established in the Triangle and Charlotte, and whether the project's customers are enterprise tenants, a local network or a hosting business with its own clients. Fit-out cost, cooling and backup power should be set against a loan that tends to be quite modest, and loan-payment coverage counted only on signed or well-documented revenue. The appraisal will separate the real estate from the equipment, so the study should do the same.