SBA 7(a) Dental Office Feasibility Study in Massachusetts

Massachusetts dental offices: a modest median ticket

Dental offices are the eighth-ranked class in Massachusetts, and the state places 13 among states under 7(a), with 173 approvals across FY2017 to FY2026 worth $118.7 million, ten full fiscal years. The ticket size is the distinctive metric of this cell: the $350,000 median is 0.71x the nationwide benchmark, and typical approvals span $100,000 to $900,000. Franchising is nearly absent at 0.58% of loans.

Live Oak and Eastern lead

Live Oak Banking Company holds 42 loans totalling $62.4 million, while Eastern Bank holds 29 totalling only $3.8 million, a stark contrast in average ticket. Further down are TD Bank, National Association (10 loans, $1.8 million), Salem Five Cents Savings Bank (8, $2.7 million) and Citizens Bank, National Association (7, $754,300). SBA records the current holders, which says nothing about policy. Essex County has 36 loans, Middlesex 34, Norfolk 22, Worcester 21, Plymouth 18, Suffolk 14, Bristol 10, Barnstable 8, Hampshire 4 and Hampden 3.

Cancellation and charge-offs

Cancellation reached 17.0% of approvals made through FY2024 at a minimum, with an identical ceiling. Charge-offs are modest, as the 90 loans funded in the early cohort show the same 1.1% floor both to date and at five years. Read together, the figures say that the Massachusetts risk in this cell lies more in a loan that never closes than in one that fails afterward, though open loans can still change that.

Testing a Massachusetts dental practice

Begin with the closing path, since so many approvals fall away: purchase agreement, lease, permits and equipment quotes. Then test the patient base in the service area, the competing practices, and the new patients per month the office needs to cover payroll and debt. Fit-out and equipment should be reconciled with a ticket near $350,000, and a practice purchase needs a plan for keeping the existing patients. Run coverage with production below plan. Appraisal depends on business value and, where owned, the building's alternative use.

Essex and Middlesex counties lead the table, with Norfolk, Worcester and Plymouth behind, while Hampshire and Hampden show only a handful. A practice in Hampshire or Hampden will therefore rest on thinner local evidence, and the study should name the market it borrows from and explain how patient volumes and rents differ between the two places before a lender relies on the comparison.