Dental Office Feasibility Study in the Columbus, OH Metro Area

Dental offices in the Columbus lending record

The Columbus, OH Metro Area shows 81 dental office loans for FY2017 to FY2026, carrying $81.8 million in gross dollars approved. Dental office sits 8 of 39 among the classes recorded for the area, while the area itself sits 24 of 562 among metro and micro areas ranked for dental office loans. A location quotient of 0.84x says the class takes a slightly lighter slice of local loans than of loans nationwide. Franklin County carries 46 loans, Delaware County 15, Fairfield County 7 and Licking County 6, so the record is concentrated around the urban core and its northern neighbour.

Ticket size, programs and franchises

A median of $650,000 puts the typical Columbus dental loan at 1.28x the class median across the country. The middle band of loans lies between $250,000 and $1.4 million, which is a wide corridor and tells a lender that practice scale differs sharply from one project to the next. The program count is 68 for SBA 7(a) against 13 for SBA 504. The franchise share prints as 0.00%, so franchise affiliation does not enter this record. Any study for this area should be framed around an independent practice with its own patient list and equipment plan.

Who holds the loans and how the years run

What follows describes today's holders in SBA's files. It does not say who wrote a loan or how a lender chooses. The Huntington National Bank holds 17 of the 7(a) loans, $10.9 million in all. United Midwest Savings Bank National Association holds 16, valued at $23.2 million. Live Oak Banking Company holds 13, valued at $31.5 million, and Avidia Bank holds 6, valued at $2.4 million. By fiscal year, approvals ran 11 loans and $10.9 million in FY2017, 11 and $6.6 million in FY2018, 9 and $9.1 million in FY2019, 8 and $6.8 million in FY2020, 10 and $8.6 million in FY2021, then 11 and $10.8 million in FY2022. Figures for FY2023 to FY2026 are withheld; none of them is a zero.

What the cancellation figures can and cannot say

Cancellation after approval reaches at least 8.7% for approvals made FY2017 to FY2024, and a floor is all it is, since it rests on cancellations SBA has recorded. No ceiling is given for the cancellation rate, and no charge-off rate is given at all. Under Loan Analytics' own rule, a rate stays hidden when its cohort is thinner than 30 loans, and this cohort is thinner. Borrowers should not treat the floor as a forecast for their own project, and lenders should not read the missing charge-off rate as a clean bill of health.

Testing a dental project in this metro area

Metro assignment follows the project county of each loan against the July 2023 metropolitan and micropolitan boundaries, matched by county name; a county outside every 2023 boundary leaves its loans out of the area figures. Treat the counts as a minimum, then test the business itself. Operatory count has to be set against the patients reachable from the chosen site. Build-out of treatment rooms and imaging space needs a cost plan, and coverage of debt service should be tried with new-patient growth well below what the owner hopes for. The appraisal will separate real estate from equipment, so a loan sitting near the upper end of the middle half must be justified by earnings the practice can carry on its own.