Dental Office Feasibility Study in North Dakota

A 504 class in a small state

North Dakota dentists borrow differently from the national pattern. Of 25 SBA loans approved from FY2017 to FY2026, worth $19.0 million, 19 were SBA 504 and only 6 were SBA 7(a), which suggests that buildings, not just practices, are being financed. The median loan of $840,000 is 1.66x of the median dental offices draw nationally, and the middle half runs from $320,000 to $1.1 million. For a state that ranks 43 of 54 for the class, those are large checks.

Weight in the state

Dental offices place 8 of 39 within North Dakota, and with a location quotient of 0.97x the class carries almost exactly its national share of state lending. No loan in the record is a franchise, a franchise share of 0.00%, which is typical of independent practices. Cass County dominates with 13 loans and Burleigh follows with 4; Dickey, Dunn, Grand Forks, Morton, Ramsey, Stark, Ward and Williams each show a single loan.

The certified development companies

Two development companies stand behind the 504 loans. Dakota Business Lending holds 12 loans worth $11.4 million, and Lake Agassiz Certified Development Company holds 5 worth $5.1 million. These are SBA's listings of loans each holds or held, and they speak to where this class has been financed, not to what any company would do with a new application.

Years and the missing floors

Approvals were irregular: 6 in FY2018, 7 in FY2021, and a single one in FY2025, with several years recording none. The small count makes any year a poor guide to the next. No cancellation or charge-off rate can be published for the state, the cohorts being small, so no floor can be cited and neither figure is zero. There is no coding limit on this cell, so a reader can take the class as dental offices in the ordinary sense.

What a North Dakota dental plan must test

The study for a dental practice in North Dakota should test the patient base within a realistic drive, particularly outside Cass and Burleigh, where there is a single loan in most counties; payer mix between insurance and self-pay; the number of operatories the build-out can support; and the practice's break-even on a loan near the size seen here. Because these loans lean toward real estate, the appraisal matters: it should value the building and the practice separately, and the study should say what a successor dentist would pay if the founder retires.