Dental Office Feasibility Study in Florida

Florida's dental lending looks like the country's in proportion and outdoes it in scale. The location quotient is exactly 1.00x, dental offices rank 7 of 39 among Florida's classes, and the state is 3 of 54 for the class, with 620 loans and $565.7 million approved from FY2017 to FY2026. A typical loan, at the median, is $597,300, or 1.18x the national median for dental offices, and the middle half reaches from $269,500 to $1.2 million. The value of the record lies in its loss history and its lenders.

A charge-off record close to nil

Of 252 Florida dental loans disbursed in FY2017 to FY2021, only 1.2% have ended in charge-off, while the rate for the first five years after approval stands at 0.00%. Every loss in the cohort came later than that. It is a floor, so it can still rise. Cancellation is a different matter: of the loans approved in FY2017 to FY2024, 13.7% were cancelled after approval, rising to 15.0% when undisbursed loans are added, so a fair share of approved deals never closed.

Lenders, programs and counties

Live Oak Banking Company leads with 84 loans for $139.2 million, followed by Bank of America, National Association (51 loans, $32.9 million), United Community Bank (48 loans, $56.9 million), Wells Fargo Bank National Association (37) and The Huntington National Bank (36 loans, $40.8 million). The mix is 511 loans under 7(a) and 109 under 504, where Florida First Capital Finance Corporation, Inc. (57 loans) and Florida Business Development Corporation (47) lead. With no franchise share at all, SBA's records point to owner dentists, not branded chains. Miami-Dade (90), Broward (70) and Hillsborough (69) lead the counties. Approvals dropped to 38 in FY2020, then returned to 86 in each of FY2024 and FY2025.

What a Florida dental study must establish

For a startup, the study has to show patient demand: the population the office can draw within a realistic drive, the payer mix and the dentists already practicing there. For an acquisition, the question becomes whether the selling dentist's production will stay after the sale. Cost should price operatories, imaging and the build out, which in a medical building can be large. The coverage test belongs on the buyer's own production, with the seller's numbers treated as a ceiling. Where the deal includes the building, the appraisal must value the real estate separately from the practice goodwill, since a lender's collateral is only the first.

No special coding limitation applies to the dental class; each loan sits under the industry its borrower declared, and every rate on this page is a floor.