SBA 7(a) Dental Office Feasibility Study

Dental credit's main SBA channel

SBA's 7(a) file lists 7,105 dental loans from FY2017 to FY2026, totalling $6.10 billion. Treat it as the baseline for dental credit. The median loan, $494,000, sits inside a broad middle half from $150,000 to $1.1 million. Franchise share is 0.17%.

One lender carries the class

Live Oak Banking Company holds 1,157 of these loans and $2.01 billion, a concentration no other lender in the table comes near. The Huntington National Bank follows with 502 loans and $402.3 million, Wells Fargo Bank National Association with 464 and $365.4 million, United Midwest Savings Bank National Association with 256 and $302.8 million, and Bank of America, National Association with 246 and $151.0 million. California leads with 1,264 loans, then Texas with 720, Florida with 511, New York with 344 and Ohio with 301. The trend dipped hard after FY2021, when 911 loans brought $981.7 million, to 476 loans in FY2022, and has climbed back to 811 loans and $739.0 million in FY2025.

Dental charge-offs are low. The charge-off floor for the 3,472 dental loans funded during FY2017 to FY2021 is 1.7%, and just 0.98% failed within five years. Cancellations run from a floor of 12.0% to a ceiling of 12.5%. The charge-off and cancellation figures are floors, because open loans can still add to them, and each lender named above is shown as the present holder in SBA's file. For the buyer of a practice, the low loss rate does not remove the risk in the price paid for goodwill.

What a dental practice study tests

No coding limitation applies to this class. A feasibility study behind a 7(a) dental loan has to test demand from the active patient count, the payer mix and the dentists already competing in the area; cost, whether that is build-out and equipment for a start-up or the purchase price of a practice against its collections; debt service coverage after the owner's own pay and associate costs, at collections the practice has shown; and, where an office building is part of the loan, an appraisal that values it for other medical and professional tenants.