Grocery Store Feasibility Study in the Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX Metro Area

Houston grocery: all 7(a), big tickets

Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands is 18 of 412 for grocery lending nationally, but the class lands low in its own mix, 17 of 39, and its 0.48x location quotient sits below half the national weight. The 40 loans total $49.7 million across FY2017 to FY2026, and every one is 7(a), with none on 504. On ticket size, Houston centres at $350,000; the national ratio is 0.99x; the central half of approvals spans $164,625 to $1.6 million.

The middle half is a wide band, $164,625 up to $1.6 million, which stretches from small neighborhood stores to much larger formats, so a borrower should find a comparable loan of nearly any size and should be wary of averaging across them. Harris County, TX has 26 loans and Fort Bend County, TX 8, so the record is overwhelmingly a Harris County one, with a second suburban county adding a modest block, and a store outside both has almost no local precedent in this file. All 40 Houston grocery loans are SBA 7(a), so there is no program split to compare. Franchise flags are not reported for the cell, again on thin counts, and no lender reaches the listing threshold.

Loss and years

Nothing on loss appears for Houston grocery: the two rates are withheld for want of enough loans, and no reader should treat them as zero. FY2018 shows 6 loans and $2.4 million, FY2023 shows 5 and $2.5 million, FY2024 shows 6 and $6.6 million, and FY2024's dollars are the largest of the three. All other years are held back, which leaves the earlier and later cycles unreadable. The Houston metro here means the counties placed inside it by the 2023 delineation; loans elsewhere, however close, are not counted.

What a Houston grocery study has to test

A grocery study measures household counts, incomes and spending within the draw, the location of competing chains and independents, and delivery and parking access. Equipment, refrigeration and inventory are budgeted against the $350,000 midpoint, and gross margin per square foot of selling space has to cover the debt. The appraisal separates business value from real estate. Financing is never presumed from these figures, and 40 loans do not predict the outcome of a new request.