Dental Office Feasibility Study in Arkansas

What SBA's own loan files show about dental office lending in Arkansas, and what a feasibility study for a project there has to test.

Arkansas dentistry: larger loans, thin evidence

Arkansas shows 39 dental office loans from FY2017 to FY2026, with $27.5 million approved. The median loan of $569,000 is 1.12x the nationwide dental figure, and the heart of the Arkansas file runs from $233,250 to $824,300. Arkansas is 40 of 54 states, and dental offices are 10 of 39 classes at home, and the location quotient of 0.87x is a little below the national share. With so few loans, this page is a guide to scale, not a precise benchmark.

Two rates we cannot print

Arkansas dentistry gets no cancellation figure and no loss figure here, as neither cohort reaches the minimum of 30 loans. A lender looking at Arkansas dental files therefore has no state-level evidence on how often approvals fail to close or loans later default, and has to lean on national figures for the class. Neither blank should be taken as zero. To a borrower, the practical meaning is that the lender may ask for more of your own documentation, since it has little local history to rely on.

The program split is 33 SBA 7(a) loans and 6 SBA 504 loans, with no franchised borrower (0.00%). Live Oak Banking Company is the sole lender to qualify, at 6 loans and $9.8 million, an average above any other figure in the cell. A specialist lender with national dental experience, and not a community bank, is therefore the main source of large practice financing here, and a borrower buying a retiring dentist's practice should expect to compare it with local institutions.

What an Arkansas dental study must test

Pulaski County has 11 loans, Washington 7, Craighead 5 and Sebastian 4, so the experience sits in Little Rock, northwest Arkansas, Jonesboro and Fort Smith. A study should test demand through population per dentist, insurance acceptance and competing practices, then the cost of operatories, imaging and sterilization. Coverage of the debt has to survive the patient attrition that follows a practice sale. The appraisal should separate the practice from the building. The yearly record reaches 7 loans in FY2018 and again in FY2026, with only 2 loans in FY2017, FY2020 and FY2024, so the flow is steady but small.

SBA 7(a) and 504 dental office loans in Arkansas

Loans approved, FY2017 to FY202639
Gross dollars approved$27.5 million
Median loan$569,000
Middle half of loans, from$233,250
Middle half of loans, to$824,300
SBA 7(a) loans33
SBA 504 loans6
Franchise share of loans0.00%
Rank among states for dental office loans40 of 54
Rank of dental office among classes in Arkansas10 of 39
Location quotient (share of loans against the national share)0.87x
Median loan against the national median for the class1.12x

Cancellation and charge-off

Cancelled after approval, FY2017 to FY2024 approvals (a floor) not reported: fewer than 30 loans in the cohort
Charged off to date, FY2017 to FY2021 disbursed loans (a floor) not reported: fewer than 30 loans in the cohort

Both rates are floors. SBA withholds the status of open loans, so a loan counts as charged off only once SBA reports it; a rate needs at least 30 loans in its cohort and is otherwise not reported.

SBA 7(a) and 504 dental office loans approved in Arkansas, by fiscal year

02468FY2017FY2018FY2019FY2020FY2021FY2022FY2023FY2024FY2025FY2026Loans, FY2017: 2Loans, FY2018: 7Loans, FY2019: 3Loans, FY2020: 2Loans, FY2021: 5Loans, FY2022: 4Loans, FY2023: 3Loans, FY2024: 2Loans, FY2025: 4Loans, FY2026: 7
Fiscal yearLoansDollars
FY20172$2.2 million
FY20187$3.6 million
FY20193$2.0 million
FY20202$375,000
FY20215$5.3 million
FY20224$1.7 million
FY20233$4.0 million
FY20242$2.0 million
FY20254$1.8 million
FY20267$4.6 million

Most active SBA lenders

SBA 7(a): lenders by loans approved (the current holder of each loan, as SBA reports it)
LenderLoansDollars
Live Oak Banking Company6$9.8 million

Where the loans are, by county

CountyLoans
PULASKI11
WASHINGTON7
CRAIGHEAD5
SEBASTIAN4
BENTON3
FAULKNER2
WHITE2
GARLAND1
GREENE1
HOT SPRING1

Source: U.S. Small Business Administration, 7(a) and 504 loan-level FOIA files (data.sba.gov), as of 2026-09-30; Loan Analytics loan-outcome cell SA-AR-C20.

Loan Analytics prepares the feasibility study a lender reads before it commits: for a dental office project in Arkansas, financed under SBA 7(a), SBA 504, USDA Business and Industry or a conventional bank loan. Tell us the project and the lender's deadline, and we reply with scope, timeline and fee.

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