SBA & USDA Lending Data and Market Intelligence
Utah Feasibility Study Consultants & Market Data
Utah's average SBA 7(a) loan runs $541,962, about 22 percent above the national figure, and the state has grown past 3.55 million residents inside a tech-driven economy that has ranked first in the country for economic outlook for nineteen straight years. 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 Utah when lenders require the full report.
SBA Lending in Utah: The Current Numbers
Utah lenders closed 1,334 SBA 7(a) loans worth $723.0 million in FY2024, and the average loan of $541,962 ran roughly 22 percent above the national figure of $443,097. That above-average loan size reflects a borrower base weighted toward the Wasatch Front's expansion-stage businesses, franchise and hospitality operators, and commercial real estate transactions rather than the smallest main-street deals. Thirty SBA-approved lenders are headquartered in the state, twenty of them holding Preferred Lender status, and together Utah lenders have approved more than 12,500 SBA 7(a) loans worth roughly $7.8 billion since 2020.
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. Utah consistently punches above its weight on a per-capita basis, a function of its fast-growing population, low unemployment, and one of the most business-friendly operating climates in the country.
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 Utah behind every figure cited here.
Where Utah Is Growing: County Demographics
Utah reached an estimated 3,551,150 residents as of July 2025, adding 44,351 people in a single year for a 1.3 percent gain, according to the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. Utah County led all counties, adding 15,914 residents, roughly 36 percent of the entire state's growth, and has been the largest contributor to statewide growth for six straight years. Salt Lake County added 8,281, Washington County 4,751, and Tooele County 2,466, while Tooele and Iron counties grew fastest in percentage terms at 3.0 percent each. For the first time this decade, natural increase rather than net migration drove the majority of the state's growth.
The longer arc matters as much as the single year. State projections carry Utah from roughly 3.6 million residents today toward 5.6 million by 2065, with the Wasatch Front and the Provo-Orem corridor absorbing much of that expansion. 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.
Utah Commercial Real Estate: The Five Major Markets
Industrial is the swing story. Salt Lake County closed 2025 with industrial vacancy at roughly 8.9 percent, up about 160 basis points year over year, as more than 2.5 million square feet of new space delivered and another 2.4 million square feet was projected to reach the market in 2026. The first quarter of 2026 showed early signs of stabilizing, with overall vacancy including sublease around 7.9 percent and net absorption rising to a six-quarter high, even as asking rents held roughly flat near $0.80 per square foot monthly. The overhang is new supply meeting moderating demand, which is exactly the distinction a lender wants tested. Multifamily, by contrast, is working through a softer patch: asking rents eased 2 to 3 percent across the Salt Lake market in 2025 as a heavy construction pipeline pushed concessions higher, even as population growth keeps underlying demand intact.
The other three sectors complete the spread. Retail remains the tightest market in the state, with vacancy often running under 3 percent in major Utah markets on the strength of population-driven demand, and Utah County alone has more than 700,000 square feet of new retail underway. Office carries the heaviest load: Salt Lake City direct vacancy stood near 19.4 percent entering 2026, though the market closed the year with its first positive absorption after sixteen straight quarters and no meaningful new construction in the pipeline. Hospitality runs on a distinct engine here, anchored by national-park tourism, the Park City and Sundance ski economy, and convention demand in Salt Lake City, 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: Salt Lake City 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. Salt Lake City ran hottest of all eight metropolitan areas Mortenson tracks, with costs rising 3.38 percent in the quarter alone, well ahead of the national pace and a direct reflection of the labor and procurement pressure created by large-scale data center and advanced manufacturing projects competing for the same trades. For a project budget, that differential 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 where construction inflation runs well ahead of the national rate compresses developer margin unless rents and revenues keep up. A feasibility study earns its keep by checking the cost side of the pro forma against current local indices, not last year's.
What This Means for a Feasibility Study in Utah
Read the four datasets together and the assignment becomes concrete. Above-average loan sizes set against record national volume mean more Utah projects are reaching credit committees, and at larger dollar figures that draw closer review. Growth concentrated in Utah County and the Wasatch Front means a demand case that works in Provo can look different in Tooele or St. George. Five CRE sectors pointing in different directions, from a supply-heavy industrial market to a sub-3 percent retail market to a recovering office sector, mean asset selection, not the Utah label, drives the outcome. And construction costs running hottest in the nation 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. Silicon Slopes has made technology nearly 10 percent of Utah's GDP, with Adobe, more than a thousand tech companies along the Wasatch Front, and one of the fastest data-center expansion pipelines in the country reshaping demand in the markets around them. Aerospace and defense, anchored by Hill Air Force Base as the state's largest single-site employer, account for close to a fifth of state GDP. 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 Utah, 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.
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