Feasibility Study Data for the St. Louis, MO-IL Metro Area

St. Louis, MO-IL: reading the area whole

St. Louis, MO-IL logged 4,471 SBA approvals in FY2017 to FY2026, worth $2.55 billion in gross dollars. St. Louis is an upper-tier area: 33 of 928 by loans. St. Louis, with every class pooled, is read in St. Louis, MO-IL. No IL and MO state page offers that view of St. Louis.

$250,000 is the St. Louis median loan, and the middle half runs $98,900 to $605,350. St. Louis sits above the national level, at 1.20x the national median, so a St. Louis study should size its request from St. Louis approvals. In St. Louis, MO-IL the 7(a) count is 3,909 and the 504 count is 562, which puts 7(a) ahead in St. Louis. 14.5% of St. Louis loans went to franchised businesses, so a St. Louis study names the brand, if any, for St. Louis.

St. Louis: classes, places and lenders

St. Louis's tracked classes with the most loans: full-service restaurant with 204; limited-service restaurant with 165; fitness center with 120; child care center with 97. 3,281 St. Louis loans sit outside the tracked classes, so St. Louis operating businesses show up in these totals. St. Louis lending concentrates by county: St. Louis County, MO (1,787 loans), St. Charles County, MO (772 loans), and St. Louis city, MO (512 loans). St. Louis 7(a) record, longest first: U.S. Bank, National Association with 547 loans, $73.7 million; Midwest Regional Bank with 234 loans, $182.1 million; The Huntington National Bank with 130 loans, $54.6 million. St. Louis 504 list: St. Charles County Economic Development Council ($189.5 million, 244 loans); Small Business Growth Corporation ($123.9 million, 124 loans); Rural Missouri, Inc. ($79.4 million, 77 loans). St. Louis lender figures, U.S. Bank, National Association's 547 loans included, are an SBA record of St. Louis loans held or once held; no St. Louis lender is judged by them.

St. Louis ended FY2026 at 349 loans, lower than FY2017's 528; the peak came in FY2025 (546 loans, $343.2 million) and the low in FY2026 (349). A St. Louis borrower should know the cancellation record: 13.8% as a floor and 15.0% as a ceiling, for FY2017 to FY2024 St. Louis approvals. The St. Louis charge-off floor reaches 5.7% across a cohort of 1,926 loans disbursed between FY2017 and FY2021. 3.3% of the St. Louis cohort was charged off in five years. St. Louis, MO-IL membership follows the July 2023 delineation; St. Louis counties are matched by name, and a St. Louis loan with no match is dropped, so 4,471 is a floor, and every St. Louis rate is too.

St. Louis: what a study has to test

A St. Louis feasibility study begins with St. Louis demand from the right counties: St. Louis County, MO leads the loan counts, though St. Louis is wider. Full-service restaurant projects have the most local record in St. Louis, and other St. Louis concepts cannot borrow credibility from these St. Louis counts. Test St. Louis coverage of debt service on a $250,000 loan, and on a $605,350 loan, after pricing St. Louis costs from bids. St. Louis, MO-IL spans IL and MO, so a St. Louis study weighs licensing and incentives in IL and MO separately, and a St. Louis appraisal needs St. Louis comparables from the right side of St. Louis, MO-IL. St. Louis appraisals compare within one submarket of St. Louis, MO-IL, not across averages. Nothing printed for St. Louis predicts approval; each St. Louis lender still reviews a study.