SBA 7(a) Assisted Living Feasibility Study in North Carolina

A Live Oak stronghold with one dominant county

North Carolina's SBA 7(a) record for assisted living without on-site nursing is concentrated in more than one way. By lender, Live Oak Banking Company is the holder of 21 of the 58 approved loans, carrying $25.2 million of the $62.9 million total, trailed by Pinnacle Bank, with 5 loans totalling $7.0 million, then The Bancorp Bank National Association, also with 5 loans but $5.1 million. By geography, Wake County alone has 18 loans, Mecklenburg 7 and Durham 4. Everything beyond the Triangle and Charlotte is thin: Davidson has 3, and Buncombe, Catawba, Iredell and Union have 2 apiece. Rank among states is 9 for this program and class, yet the class is 16 of 39 within North Carolina, so assisted living is a specialty rather than a staple of local SBA lending.

Ticket size and franchise exposure

Loans approved between FY2017 and FY2026 have a median of $800,000, a figure 1.06x the nationwide 7(a) level, so size is close to ordinary. The middle half stretches from $517,250 to $1.4 million, a range that fits a house conversion or a modest purpose-built home but not a large campus. Franchising accounts for 6.9% of loans, noticeably more than for many care classes. Yearly volume has been fairly even: 6 loans and $3.1 million in FY2017, a single loan of $760,000 in FY2018, and then between 5 and 8 loans per year, reaching 7 loans and $11.7 million in FY2026. Amounts in FY2023 ($10.9 million) and FY2020 ($9.8 million) stand out.

Cancellations, losses and coding limits

For loans approved through FY2024, the cancelled-after-approval floor is 9.3% and the ceiling that adds undisbursed loans is identical at 9.3%. SBA's count of earlier funded loans here is too short to print a loss rate for North Carolina; the blank means withheld, never zero. A coding limit shapes everything above: only assisted living without nursing has its own industry code, memory care has none, and homes that employ nurses land in the skilled nursing and continuing care groups instead. A North Carolina project with a memory-care wing or skilled beds therefore belongs partly on those other pages, and the numbers here understate the whole market for senior housing.

What a North Carolina assisted living study has to test

The study needs a defensible catchment: residents aged to need help with daily living, their ability to pay private rates, and the licensed beds already operating nearby. In the Triangle the question is saturation, while outside it the question is whether enough qualified residents exist to fill a building. Cost and timing of licensure deserve explicit treatment, as does staffing, since wages are the largest operating line. Cash flow must cover the payment at the census the lender will actually underwrite, with a slower lease-up beside it, and the appraisal should value licensed beds and the income they earn, not a generic residential comparison.