Idaho Feasibility Study Consultants & Market Data

Idaho's average SBA 7(a) loan runs $387,741, and the state added roughly 28,900 residents in a single year to rank second in the nation for growth. Loan Analytics publishes the lending tables, county demographics, and CRE market metrics behind numbers like these, and prepares independent feasibility studies for SBA 7(a), SBA 504, and USDA projects across Idaho when lenders require the full report.

Request Scope & Timeline

SBA Lending in Idaho: The Current Numbers

Idaho lenders closed 715 SBA 7(a) loans worth $277.2 million in FY2024, and the average loan of $387,741 ran about 12 percent below the national figure of $443,097. The Boise District Office, which serves the entire state, works through one of the more active preferred-lender networks in the Mountain West, with Certified Development Companies seated in Boise, Twin Falls, Pocatello, Coeur d'Alene, Hayden Lake, and Rexburg.

The national program sets the backdrop. SBA approvals reached a record in FY2025 at roughly 84,400 loans and $44.8 billion, after the agency guaranteed 70,242 7(a) loans worth $31.1 billion in FY2024. Idaho's smaller average loan size reflects a borrower base weighted toward main-street businesses, agriculture-adjacent operations, and rural projects rather than large metropolitan transactions, which is also why USDA Business and Industry financing carries real weight here: most of the state outside the Boise and Coeur d'Alene cores sits in USDA-eligible territory.

Higher national volume means busier credit desks and closer scrutiny of borrower projections, which is precisely where independent market data and third-party feasibility studies earn their place in the file. Loan Analytics maintains county-level lending and demographic detail for Idaho behind every figure cited here.

Where Idaho Is Growing: County Demographics

Idaho added about 28,900 residents in 2025 to reach roughly 2.03 million, a 1.4 percent gain that placed the state second in the nation for population growth, trailing South Carolina by a tenth of a point, per U.S. Census Bureau data compiled by the Idaho Department of Labor. Ada County, the state's largest at nearly 550,000 residents, added 10,916 people, while Canyon County grew fastest among the large counties at 2.9 percent, adding 7,679 residents to reach 275,125. Together with Kootenai County, home to Coeur d'Alene and Post Falls, those counties absorbed more than 75 percent of the year's growth. The Boise metropolitan area grew 2.2 percent, the 13th-fastest rate in the country, and the Coeur d'Alene and Idaho Falls metros also ranked among the nation's 50 fastest-growing markets.

The longer arc matters as much as the single year. Since 2020, Ada, Canyon, and Kootenai counties have added more than 109,000 residents between them, roughly 60 percent of all statewide growth, and Idaho's nine urban counties accounted for 90 percent of new residents in 2025 as rural growth slowed to 0.5 percent. For a feasibility study, these trajectories are the raw material of demand: trade-area population, household formation, and absorption assumptions all stand or fall on county-level growth, and lenders increasingly test borrower projections against independent figures.

Idaho Commercial Real Estate: The Five Major Markets

Industrial is the swing story. The Boise metro shifted into a clearly supply-driven phase over the last three years, with roughly 7.5 million square feet delivered against 4.1 million square feet of net absorption between early 2023 and early 2026. Vacancy rose to 9.2 percent in the first quarter of 2026, up about 110 basis points year over year, and quarterly net absorption cooled to 167,000 square feet, down sharply from the prior quarter, even as average asking rents held 2.7 percent higher than a year earlier. The overhang is new product, not failing demand, which is exactly the distinction a lender wants tested. Multifamily, by contrast, is stabilizing: vacancy ended 2025 near 5.0 percent, recovering from a late-2023 peak of 5.6 percent as the region digested its construction wave.

The other three sectors complete the spread. Retail remains the tightest market in the metro at roughly 4.2 percent vacancy, a level that signals pricing power for well-located centers but says nothing about the capital condition of older shells. Office carries the heaviest load at about 11.5 percent vacancy, unchanged quarter over quarter but up 200 basis points year over year, a figure still well below coastal-market distress. Hospitality runs on a different engine here, anchored by destination tourism at Sun Valley and Coeur d'Alene rather than purely by metro business travel, set against a national lodging market holding trailing-twelve-month occupancy near 62 percent. That divergence between sectors is precisely the question a lender asks a feasibility study to resolve.

Construction Costs: Boise Against the National Index

The Mortenson Construction Cost Index for the first quarter of 2026 put national nonresidential costs up 1.69 percent for the quarter and 6.77 percent year over year. Mortenson does not maintain a Boise index, so the nearest regional reads bracket the market: its Pacific Northwest offices in Seattle and Portland posted the most modest quarterly gains in the country at 0.56 and 0.86 percent amid competitive bidding, while Salt Lake City, the closest Mountain West office, ran hottest at 3.38 percent for the quarter. For a project budget, that spread is not an abstraction. Hard-cost assumptions flow straight into total project cost, loan sizing, and the debt-service coverage a lender stress-tests, and a market positioned between the competitive Northwest and the overheated Intermountain corridor demands a cost basis checked against current regional indices, not last year's.

What This Means for a Feasibility Study in Idaho

Read the four datasets together and the assignment becomes concrete. Below-average loan sizes set against record national volume mean more Idaho projects are reaching credit committees with thinner margins for error. Growth concentrated in Ada, Canyon, and Kootenai means a demand case that works in the Treasure Valley can fail two counties over. Five CRE sectors pointing in different directions, from a supply-heavy industrial market to a 4 percent retail market, mean asset selection, not the Idaho label, drives the outcome. And construction costs sitting between the competitive Northwest and the overheated Intermountain corridor mean a budget assembled last year is already stale. Every line of a pro forma now has a current, checkable number standing behind it, or against it.

The state's investment story sharpens all of it. Micron is building leading-edge memory fabs at its Boise headquarters under a multibillion-dollar expansion expected to create more than 17,000 jobs, Meta has placed an 800 million dollar data center in Kuna, and Idaho remains the nation's leading potato producer inside an agricultural economy that drives a large share of statewide sales. Each of those anchors reshapes trade-area demand, labor demand, and absorption in the markets around it, and none of them shows up in a generic template.

Loan Analytics prepares independent feasibility studies for SBA 7(a), SBA 504, and USDA-financed projects across Idaho, built on the same data published on this page and extended to the subject property: trade-area demographics, competitive supply, demand and absorption, financial projections, and sensitivity testing organized around what credit committees actually review. The study arrives as a third-party document, written for the lender's file. To scope one, use the form below or write to Info@analytics.loan. Include the property type, the county, and the loan program, and we come back with scope and timeline.

Request Scope & Timeline

Idaho Feasibility Study FAQ