Gas Station Feasibility Study in Maryland

The smallest tickets against the nation

Maryland gas station loans are strikingly small. The median loan is $246,000, merely 0.23x the nationwide gas station figure, and the location quotient of 0.35x says the class is a very thin slice of state lending compared with the national book. The state ranks 36 of 53 and the class 17 of 39 within Maryland. From FY2017 to FY2026 SBA approved 40 loans totalling $21.1 million, and most loans fall from $53,750 to $879,750. Station owners in Maryland seem to use SBA for small improvements or modest acquisitions, rather than full site development.

Product mix and franchise reach

On product, 32 loans use SBA 7(a) and just 8 use SBA 504. Franchise affiliation reaches 17.5% of loans. In 7(a), Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company has 16 loans, worth $4.5 million, a very small average, and Business Finance Group, Inc. is the 504 name, with 5 loans worth $1.9 million. Anne Arundel and Washington counties each have 7 loans, Montgomery has 6, and Allegany has 4. The pattern reaches the western mountain counties and the Baltimore ring, not just the Washington suburbs, where land and fuel retail permits are expensive.

Two rates we do not publish

Two outcome rates are missing here, cancellation and charge-off, since each rests on a cohort under 30 loans. No figure is given and neither should be read as zero. For a gas station, this matters: environmental cleanup, tank replacement and licence transfers are common reasons for deals to stall, and a lender cannot see from this page how often that happened in Maryland.

Limits of the code, and the study questions

Industry coding records what the borrower sells, so truck stops stay inside this count and electric vehicle charging is not broken out. A Maryland study should test fuel volume and margin per gallon on the exact corner, the share of revenue from the convenience store, and the cost of tank compliance and any environmental risk. It must run debt service coverage on a conservative gallonage. Appraisal should separate land, building, tanks and the going concern. The record above shows what similar SBA loans looked like.