Dental Office Feasibility Study in the Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD Metro Area

Dental offices in the Baltimore area

Within the Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD metro area, dental offices place 11 of 39 among the classes, and nationally the area is 45 of 562 for the class. Across FY2017 to FY2026, 36 loans worth $22.6 million were approved in the area. The location quotient of 0.52x says dental practices are a smaller piece of Baltimore-area approvals than of approvals nationwide. The median loan of $342,600 is 0.68x what the class's median loan is nationally, so the usual loan here is smaller than the usual one elsewhere.

Counties, holders and loan sizes

Half of the loans fall between $107,250 and $740,400, the span from a practice acquisition or chair fit-out to the purchase of a small building. No loan is franchise-affiliated, shown as 0.00%. Anne Arundel County, MD and Howard County, MD each record 11 loans, and Baltimore County, MD records 6. Wells Fargo Bank National Association is listed against 6 loans in the 7(a) program valued at $3.3 million, and Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company against 7 valued at $1.7 million. These are SBA's holder records, listing who holds each loan now. The program split is withheld.

Three years show a volume: 6 loans and $6.7 million in FY2020, 9 loans and $5.8 million in FY2021, and, for FY2023, 0 loans and $0, a year with no approvals. The other years stay hidden because they rest on too few loans. Rates for cancellation and charge-off are absent, since the cohort falls short of the 30 loans Loan Analytics requires. As for the boundary, a loan counts in Baltimore only if its project county appears on the July 2023 OMB list for the area; an unplaceable county means the loan does not appear.

Testing a dental project in this market

With the typical loan below its national counterpart, a study should first ask if the project is new, or instead buys a practice that already has patients. The study must weigh chair count against the patients a realistic catchment can supply, payer mix, staffing, and the build-out cost per operatory, then show coverage of the debt payment on a conservative first year. If the practice owns its space, the appraisal should treat the real property and the practice goodwill separately. Lenders will want the plan for the practice if its founding dentist steps back.