Arkansas Feasibility Study: Lender-Grade SBA and USDA Studies

MMCG Invest, LLC prepares feasibility studies for Arkansas projects where the underwriting questions reach past the national checklist. Arkansas is the state where the Northwest Arkansas cluster of Walmart Inc., Tyson Foods, Inc. and J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc. reaches a combined $746.4 billion, the sum of the three companies' own reported revenues for their most recent fiscal years, and sets a demand line built on headquarters-driven growth, not a generic metro curve; where Mississippi County steel, United States Steel Corporation's $3 billion Big River Steel expansion since 2019, carries workforce housing and hotel demand on a steel-sector payroll instead of a farm-county baseline; where the broiler industry, valued by the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service at $5,625,607 thousand in 2024 production, sets the labor and water-capacity line around a 30,374-person poultry-processing workforce; where Smackover lithium, Standard Lithium Ltd.'s $1.45 billion South West Arkansas project, introduces a capital program south Arkansas underwriting did not carry a decade ago; and where the Ebbing F-35 center at Fort Smith, priced by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Little Rock District at $807 million in total training center cost, drives a foreign-military demand line no other Arkansas metro carries. Every engagement is calibrated to the project address, the program of record, and the specific lender, CDC or USDA office carrying the deal.

Pricing starts at $4,900 with a 50/50 fee schedule. Delivery in 9 to 16 business days. A complimentary preliminary Arkansas market overview within one business day of submission.

The U.S. Small Business Administration serves the whole of Arkansas through a single district office. The Arkansas District Office at 2120 Riverfront Dr., Suite 1000, Little Rock states on its own page that it "services the entire state of Arkansas" and names Adriene Brown as District Director and Jerry Talbert as Deputy District Director, serving all 75 counties directly with no separate area office. MMCG's computation over SBA's 7(a) and 504 FOIA release as of June 30, 2026, keyed to the project state on each loan record, shows lenders approved 401 7(a) loans for Arkansas projects in fiscal year 2025 for $247,453,800 in gross approvals, of which 320 had been disbursed at the release date, against 286 loans for $143,940,700 in fiscal year 2024, a rise of about two-fifths in count; through June 30, 2026, fiscal year 2026 already stood at 217 loans for $166,487,400. The release's own district-office attribution, a separate field from the project-state figure above, credits 399 of the fiscal year 2025 loans and $247,103,800 to DO Code 669, labeled ARKANSAS DISTRICT OFFICE, with one loan each attributed to the South Florida and Arizona district offices, a reminder that the two fields do not always agree for the same loan. The 504 program is smaller: 20 loans for $15,500,000 in fiscal year 2025 through three Certified Development Companies, against 15 loans for $18,307,000 in fiscal year 2024.

Arkansas's 7(a) market is led by in-state community banks. On the FOIA release, Southern Bancorp Bank of Arkadelphia approved 41 Arkansas loans for $23,166,300 in fiscal year 2025, the largest count of any lender; Northeast Bank followed with 34 loans for $5,177,900, First Service Bank of Greenbrier with 26 loans for $21,283,300, U.S. Bank, National Association with 25 loans for $1,458,500, and Arvest Bank of Fayetteville and Newtek Bank, National Association with 18 loans each. By gross dollars, First Financial Bank of El Dorado wrote $21,697,000 across 16 loans, First Service Bank $21,283,300, and Live Oak Banking Company $20,526,600 across 16 loans, a pattern a lender should read as small community-bank volume set against a handful of national real-estate lenders writing the larger files. On the 504 side, Rural Missouri, Inc. of Jefferson City, Missouri closed 17 of the fiscal year 2025 projects for $12,470,000 in debenture dollars and an estimated $28,057,500 in total project dollars, well ahead of Capital Certified Development Corporation of Austin, Texas with 2 projects for $2,470,000 and Six Bridges Capital Corporation of Little Rock with 1 project for $560,000, the only Arkansas-domiciled CDC to close a project in the state on this release. A smaller-dollar channel sits beside both programs: SBA's own Congressional District Approvals Report shows the state's Microloan program approved 30 loans for $808,416 in fiscal year 2025, down from 48 loans for $1,410,862 the year before, a channel a sponsor with a thinner capital stack may pair with a 7(a) or 504 file.

The table below is MMCG's own cut of SBA's 7(a) and 504 FOIA release as of June 30, 2026, restricted to loans whose project state is Arkansas, disbursed, approved in fiscal years 2010 through 2026, and grouped by the NAICS codes of the asset classes this firm studies. The charge-off rate is the share of loans with a terminal outcome that ended in a charge-off, on a count basis, shown only where that resolved cohort holds at least 30 loans. Across all industries, Arkansas's 4,448 disbursed 7(a) loans for $2,415,592,700 resolved 2,927 with an 8.0 percent charge-off rate, and its 226 disbursed 504 loans for $187,689,000 resolved 81 at 12.3 percent. Hotels and motels resolved 52 of 108 loans for $193,876,200 at a 7.7 percent charge-off rate, below the all-industry figure, plus 16 504 loans for $27,008,000. Restaurants carry the largest count in the table, 298 7(a) loans for $114,405,200, resolving 181 at 12.2 percent; fitness and recreational sports centers, 67 loans for $21,985,900, resolved 39 at 12.8 percent, the highest rate the table shows. Car washes, 9 loans for $4,343,000, self-storage, 15 loans for $13,006,500, RV parks and campgrounds, 8 loans for $3,849,400, gas stations and convenience stores, 51 loans for $62,213,300, and child day care services, 58 loans for $39,232,600, each resolved fewer than 30 loans and carry no rate; assisted living and continuing care, under 5 loans on the release, is suppressed entirely. The caution that travels with every rate in this vintage: the June 2026 release collapses every open loan, current or stressed, into the single status EXEMPT, so the rate reads the resolved cohort only.

USDA Rural Development serves Arkansas from the Arkansas Rural Development State Office at 700 West Capitol, Room 3416, Little Rock, under State Director David L. Branscum, appointed in May 2025 after most recently serving as Director of Governmental Affairs at the Arkansas Department of Education and a former Rural Development State Director. Six area offices divide the state's 75 counties among them, based in Forrest City, Fort Smith, Harrison, Hope, Jonesboro and Monticello, each reached through the state office's own contacts page.

The program parameters a lender models come from the OneRD Annual Notice. For fiscal year 2025, Business and Industry loans carried a 3.00 percent guarantee fee, a 0.55 percent periodic retention fee and an 80 percent guarantee; the fiscal year 2026 notice changed the guarantee to 85 percent for applications under $5,000,000 and 80 percent for applications of $5,000,000 to $25,000,000, at the same fee and retention rate. Community Facilities loans carry a 1.25 percent fee, 0.50 percent retention and an 80 percent guarantee in both years, and REAP guaranteed loans carry a 1.0 percent guarantee fee and an 80 percent guarantee.

The clearest documented Arkansas round is REAP's: on October 18, 2024, the state office announced 21 rural Arkansas projects receiving more than $6.6 million in federal clean energy investments, including a $250,000 technical assistance grant to the Startup Junkie Foundation covering all 75 counties and project grants such as Keo Fish Farms, Inc. of Keo at $751,842. Named Business and Industry guarantees drawn from the federal government's own award-transaction data include a $19,000,000 guarantee to American Silica, LLC in Black Rock, an $18,000,000 guarantee to the Pine Bluff, AR Convention Center & Hotel project, a $17,450,000 guarantee to Office Equipment Center of America, Inc. in Little Rock, a $10,000,000 guarantee to Trilochan, LLC in Hot Springs National Park, and a $5,330,000 guarantee to Shivas Hotel 8 LLC in Texarkana.

The eligibility shape is set by the 50,000-inhabitant line. Measured against the Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 subcounty estimates, nine Arkansas cities exceed it and are ineligible for Business and Industry lending in their own right: Little Rock at 206,427, Fayetteville at 106,623, Fort Smith at 90,855, Springdale at 90,685, Jonesboro at 83,296, Rogers at 76,956, Conway at 72,328, North Little Rock at 65,120 and Bentonville at 63,057, the last of which had already crossed the line at 54,213 on the 2020 estimates base before growing to its current size. A community over 20,000 residents likewise sits outside the Community Facilities Direct program's eligible area; every one of the nine cities above, and thirteen more from Pine Bluff at 38,213 down to West Memphis at 23,336, already exceeds that ceiling, so a lender working inside any of these city limits looks to the unincorporated county for that program's eligibility.

The Arkansas Economic Development Commission, a division of the Arkansas Department of Commerce, administers the state's job-creation and investment incentives. Advantage Arkansas is a job-creation income tax credit requiring an average new-employee wage of at least $16.75 an hour, capped at 50 percent of annual tax liability and carried forward nine years; ArkPlus is a discretionary income tax credit of up to 10 percent of total project investment on the same cap and carryforward; and Tax Back refunds sales and use tax on building materials and equipment at 5.5 percent, the state's 6.5 percent rate less the 1 percentage point dedicated to the Educational Adequacy and Conservation Tax funds. A newer Modernization and Automation Tax Credit, effective October 1, 2025, pays up to 5 percent of eligible costs on a project of at least $25,000,000, capped at $2,000,000 of credit per state fiscal year. For tourism and lodging specifically, the Arkansas Tourism Development Act offers a sales tax credit of 15 percent of eligible project cost, or 25 percent in a high-unemployment county, plus an income tax credit of 4 percent of new payroll, on a minimum project cost of $1,000,000, or $500,000 in a high-unemployment county.

The Arkansas Development Finance Authority runs the state's loan programs and is the implementing entity for Arkansas's State Small Business Credit Initiative allocation of $81,621,691, payable in three tranches over six years. Its Arkansas Small Business Revolving Loan Guaranty Program guarantees 10 to 50 percent of a loan to a lender, capped at a $250,000 guarantee on a $500,000 loan with a 2 percent guarantee fee due at closing, and its Industrial Development Bond Guaranty Program, resting on a reserve fund Standard & Poor's rates A+, helps manufacturers access bond financing for a one-time 5 percent guaranty fee. Under the SSBCI allocation, ADFA also runs the Arkansas Venture Development Fund and the Arkansas Venture Capital Development Fund for equity investment, and a Bond Guaranty Loan Participation Program offering direct loans of up to 20 percent of total project financing on projects up to $20,000,000; a companion Bond Guaranty/CDFI Loan Participation Fund buys up to 50 percent of a Community Development Finance Institution's own loan, to a $10,000,000 maximum participation, on at least a dollar-for-dollar private match.

Assisted living answers to the heaviest gate this page tracks. The Arkansas Department of Human Services, Division of Medical Services, Office of Long Term Care licenses two tiers, an Assisted Living I License and a Level II assisted living facility license, the grant of a Level II license also constituting a Level I grant, under Ark. Code Ann. Section 20-10-201 et seq. and Act 1230 of 2001. No license issues without a Permit of Approval from the Arkansas Health Services Permit Commission or Health Services Permit Agency, itself descended from the state's original 1975 certificate-of-need program, on an application filed only on the agency's quarterly cycle, February 1, May 1, August 1 or November 1, for a $3,000 fee, with 30 days for the agency to find the application complete and 90 days to approve or deny it once under review. As of the Health Services Permit Agency's own July 2026 accounting, Arkansas carries 7,707 licensed assisted living beds statewide across its Level I and Level II tiers, plus 417 more approved but not yet licensed.

No statewide hotel operating licence was found; a lodging operator instead answers to the state's 2.000 percent Parks and Tourism Tax and 6.500 percent state sales and use tax, an 8.5 percent combined state floor, on top of each city's own Advertising and Promotion tax. A car wash answers to two state rules: a General Permit for subsurface wastewater disposal from the Division of Environmental Quality where it is not on the municipal sewer, requiring connection instead within 300 feet of an accessible sewer line, and Act 822 of 2019's Car Wash Water Usage Fee, a monthly charge of 80 percent of the month's gallons multiplied by $0.004 for a tunnel or $0.002 for an automatic bay, on water drawn from a public water system. A recreational vehicle park of three or more spaces is licensed by the Arkansas Department of Health under its Rules and Regulations Pertaining to Mobile Home and Recreational Vehicle Parks, effective since April 1, 2008 under Act 96 of 1913, on a plan-review fee of $25 to $100 by space count and a civil penalty currently capped at $250 per violation. The rule requires at least ten feet of separation between recreational vehicles and one sanitary station for every 100 spaces; a proposed 2025 amendment, whose public comment period closed February 20, 2026, would widen that separation to fifteen feet and raise the per-violation penalty cap to $1,000.

An Arkansas credit committee reads the study in the order of the programs above. For a 7(a) or 504 file under SOP 50 10 8 it wants the market area drawn to the parcel and the competitive set named, the demand case built from public series the underwriter can check, and the stabilized-year cash flow at the required coverage. For a Business and Industry, REAP or Community Facilities file the Little Rock state office reviews, it wants the rural-area determination at the address against the 50,000 or 20,000-inhabitant line, and the guarantee, fee and retention terms the current OneRD notice sets. For every Arkansas file it wants the state layer set out above in the lender's own vocabulary: the Permit of Approval sequence and bed count for an assisted living file, the county or city Advertising and Promotion tax rate a lodging operation will collect, the water permit and usage fee a car wash carries, the plan-review fee and space standards an RV park meets, the reappraisal group the parcel sits in under Constitutional Amendment 79, and the impact or connection fee the city schedules. A study that carries each of those with the source named in the sentence is the study an Arkansas underwriter can lift into the memo without a second round.

Five conditions specific to Arkansas move more underwriting weight than any generic checklist item, and a sixth, the state's own reappraisal cap, is unusual enough to carry alongside them.

The Northwest Arkansas cluster of Walmart Inc., Tyson Foods, Inc. and J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc., three headquarters within a 30-mile stretch of Benton and Washington counties, reaches a combined $746.4 billion, the sum of the three companies' own reported revenues for their most recent fiscal years, while the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metro grew 11.1 percent from 2020 to 2025 on the Census Bureau's own file. A lender underwriting a hotel, workforce multifamily, retail or industrial project in these two counties models demand against this corporate base and its population growth, not a generic metro absorption curve.

Mississippi County steel centers on United States Steel Corporation's Big River Steel Works, where the company states its $3 billion investment in BR2 since 2019 is the largest in state history, alongside Nucor Corporation's Nucor Steel Arkansas mill and over 3,600 combined steel-sector workers, per Mississippi County, AR Economic Development. A lender underwriting workforce housing, a hotel or retail near Osceola or Blytheville draws its construction-cost and labor assumptions from that steel-sector payroll rather than a generic rural Arkansas baseline.

Arkansas's broiler industry posted a 2024 value of production of $5,625,607 thousand, about $5.6 billion, behind only Georgia and North Carolina among the states the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service reports individually, on 44 Arkansas poultry-processing establishments employing 30,374 people per the U.S. Census Bureau's County Business Patterns. A lender underwriting workforce housing or a hotel in Washington, Benton, Sebastian or the state's other poultry counties draws its labor and water-capacity lines from that 30,374-person workforce, not a generic rural baseline.

Smackover lithium draws two international developers to the brine beneath south Arkansas: ExxonMobil holds brine rights to over 300,000 net acres of the Smackover Formation since early 2023, and Standard Lithium Ltd. puts the total capital cost of its South West Arkansas project at $1.45 billion, targeting first commercial production in 2029. A lender underwriting workforce housing or industrial land in Columbia, Lafayette, Union or the surrounding counties models a capital program that did not exist here a decade ago, and states which phase the project will be in at closing.

The Ebbing F-35 center at Fort Smith trains allied pilots from Singapore, Switzerland, Poland, Germany and Finland, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Little Rock District states the Air Force estimates the full training center will cost $807 million to complete, after breaking ground in May 2026 on a $74 million academic building. A hotel, extended-stay or workforce housing study for Fort Smith sizes demand to hundreds of allied pilots and dependents rotating through on a multi-year cycle, layered on a phased federal construction program.

Arkansas Constitution Amendment 79 caps how fast a countywide reappraisal can raise a parcel's taxable assessed value: a non-homestead parcel cannot rise more than 10 percent over the prior year's value, against a 5 percent annual cap for an owner-occupied homestead, per the Department of Finance and Administration's own Assessment Coordination Division. The counties behind this page's five metros reappraise on different clocks, Washington in 2023, Benton in 2024 and Sebastian in 2025, so a study prices the parcel's own reappraisal group rather than assuming a single statewide tax event.

An Arkansas study runs to the sections a lender's file expects, each calibrated to the state. The engagement letter and scope name the program of record, the lender, CDC or USDA area office, and whether the county falls under the Little Rock state office directly or one of its six area offices. The site and market area section places the parcel in its county, states the rural-area determination against the 50,000 or 20,000-inhabitant line where USDA is the program, and draws the trade area from the road network. The demand section builds from the public series this page cites: the Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimates for population and migration, the Bureau of Labor Statistics for jobs, the National Park Service for visitation at the state's park units, the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport and Northwest Arkansas National Airport for passenger counts, County Business Patterns for the competitive stock, and the SBA FOIA release for the state's own lending record in the asset class. The competitive set section names the operating properties, their scale and their position. The regulatory section carries the licence and permit sequence with the statute or rule cited: the Permit of Approval for assisted living, the Advertising and Promotion tax rate for lodging, the water permit and usage fee for a car wash, the plan-review standard for an RV park. The financial section runs the stabilized year, the ramp, the operating expenses, the reserves and the discounted cash flow at the lender's coverage, with the property tax line built from the parcel's reappraisal group and the county's millage, the impact or connection fee from the city's own schedule, and the construction cost checked against the Division of Public School Academic Facilities and Transportation's escalated cost factor for the parcel's nearest reference city. The risk section names what could move the numbers, for a REAP-financed project a national stakeholder notice USDA issued on July 15, 2025 stating the agency was using the balance of fiscal year 2025 to disincentivize solar arrays sited on productive farmland ahead of opening fiscal year 2026's first REAP window on October 1, 2025, and says what the sponsor has done about each risk it names. The lender package closes with the comparable-loan evidence from the FOIA release and a statement of the standards the study was prepared under.

Arkansas counted 3,114,791 residents on July 1, 2025 by the Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimates, up from 3,096,080 a year earlier, and the components are migration-driven rather than birth-driven: a natural decrease of 1,224 (35,414 births against 36,638 deaths) was more than offset by international migration of 5,470 and domestic migration of 14,475, for net migration of 19,945. The labor market is steady rather than fast-growing: the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Arkansas Economy at a Glance table reports total nonfarm employment of 1,341.7 thousand for July 2026, seasonally adjusted, an unemployment rate of 4.0 percent, leisure and hospitality employment of 133.1 thousand and education and health services employment of 209.7 thousand. Tourism is a real, measured line in the state's own books: the Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism's 2 percent tourism tax closed fiscal year 2026 at $26.9 million in collections, an all-time high for the tax, up from $26,660,541 in calendar 2024. County Business Patterns for 2023, the latest year published, counts 717 hotels and motels in Arkansas with 10,278 employees and a $250,587,000 annual payroll, the largest of the six asset classes this page measures by every count. The National Park Service's own statewide reporting puts total calendar 2025 recreation visits across Arkansas's seven reporting units at 4,210,100, and Buffalo National River, outside any of this page's five metros, alone carried 1,393,246 of them, evidence that the state's tourism demand is not confined to its cities.

Washington County's 2025 average overall millage is 51.54 mills, and the taxing unit covering the city of Fayetteville, in the Fayetteville School District, carries an Overall Total of 57.3 mills, an effective rate near 1.146 percent of market value; the county reappraised in 2023 and is next due in 2027. Fayetteville levies its own 2 percent Hotel, Motel and Restaurant tax, split evenly between the Advertising and Promotion Commission and the city's Parks and Recreation department, and its own Water and Wastewater Impact Fee runs from $5,670 combined on a standard 5/8-inch meter to $652,090 combined on a 10-inch meter, alongside separate fire and police impact fees keyed to building type, $293 and $388 per 1,000 square feet for commercial or office space and $207 and $274 per room for a hotel or motel. Springdale, in the same metro, enacted its own development impact fee for the first time under Ordinance No. 6023, effective April 1, 2025, charging $4,712 in water and $1,154 in wastewater impact fees on the smallest meter size, rising to $157,041 and $38,460 on a 6-inch meter. Tyson Foods, Inc., headquartered in Springdale within the same metro, reported fiscal 2024 sales of $53,309 million, about $53.3 billion, with approximately 138,000 team members. The University of Arkansas's own 11th Day Enrollment Report puts Fall 2025 total enrollment at 34,161 students, made up of 29,252 undergraduates, 4,508 graduate students and 401 law students. Northwest Arkansas National Airport, the metro's shared airport, carried 2,524,256 total passengers in calendar 2025, a record year and a 10.3 percent increase over 2024. Washington County's own Building Permits Survey data for 2025 shows 1,621 single-family permits worth $558,227,064 and 25 multifamily buildings of 978 units worth $219,539,735. The city's own Building Safety Division publishes a quarterly Permit Issuance Summary that gives the metro's clearest project-level construction record: the quarter ended December 31, 2025 recorded 28 commercial building permits for 577,351 square feet and $83,275,803.49 in valuation, including 2 new-construction permits for 263,908 square feet and $63,973,493.05 and 1 multifamily permit for 52,245 square feet and $8,402,040.90. The Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers metro, at 622,177 residents by the Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimate, grew by 14,744 people over the year, the fastest of any Arkansas metro in both count and rate. Interstate 49 near the Washington County line in neighboring Benton County carried 92,000 vehicles a day by the Federal Highway Administration's 2018 count, the busiest corridor recorded in the metro.

Benton County's 2025 average overall millage is 55.04 mills, and the taxing unit covering the city of Bentonville, in the Bentonville #6 School District, carries an Overall Total of 62.0 mills, an effective rate near 1.24 percent of market value; the county reappraised in 2024 and is next due in 2028. Bentonville's own published Schedule of Impact Fees, effective December 1, 2023, charges a single-family home $532 for fire and EMS, $2,521 for parks, $442 for library and $350 for police, and charges non-residential development per 1,000 square feet by land use, $717 for retail fire and EMS against $436 for retail police, and $121 for industrial fire and EMS against $74 for industrial police; the city's own page states it charges no water or sewer impact fee today, having suspended an earlier version in 2016, while its water utility has published a proposed wastewater development fee of $7,867 per Equivalent Residential Unit that had not been finally adopted as of this study's research date. Walmart Inc.'s own announcement describes its new Bentonville home office as a 350-acre campus of 12 office buildings that opened January 17, 2025. Walmart Inc. reported total revenue of $680,985 million, about $681.0 billion, for fiscal year 2025, and J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc., headquartered in nearby Lowell, reported 2024 revenue of $12.09 billion. Rogers, in the same county, assesses its own Water & Sewer Development Fees effective October 1, 2025: a $2,400 water impact fee and a $4,000 sewer impact fee on a 5/8-inch meter, rising to $121,200 and $201,500 on a 6-inch meter. Bentonville's Vintage 2025 population of 63,057 had already crossed the Business and Industry eligibility threshold by 2020, when the Census Bureau's estimates base already measured it at 54,213. Benton County's own Building Permits Survey data for 2025 shows 4,023 single-family permits worth $1,337,610,371, the largest single-family value of any Arkansas county this page measures, and 99 multifamily buildings of 1,944 units worth $261,333,973, up sharply from 29 buildings of 402 units in 2024. U.S. Highway 71 north of the Bentonville corporate limits carried 52,000 vehicles a day by the Federal Highway Administration's 2018 count.

Ebbing Air National Guard Base, on the edge of the city, is being built into a multinational F-35 pilot training hub; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Little Rock District states the Air Force estimates the full training center will cost $807 million to complete, training pilots from Singapore, Switzerland, Poland, Germany and Finland. A Fort Smith hotel, extended-stay or workforce housing study sizes demand to that multi-year foreign-military rotation. Sebastian County's 2025 average overall millage is 52.18 mills, and the taxing unit covering the city of Fort Smith, in the Fort Smith School District, carries an Overall Total of 57.5 mills, an effective rate near 1.15 percent of market value; the county reappraised in 2025 and is next due in 2029. Fort Smith's own Advertising and Promotions Commission is authorized to administer a three percent city lodging tax. The Fort Smith Regional Airport carried 122,856 total passengers and 62,369 total enplanements in calendar 2025, up 1.56 percent in enplanements over 2024. Fort Smith's own building-permit guidance states that initial review for an apartment of five units or more, a commercial or an industrial permit usually takes between 7 and 10 working days. Sebastian County's Building Permits Survey data for 2025 shows 143 single-family permits worth $41,884,364 and 7 multifamily buildings of 112 units worth $10,002,600, up from 2 buildings of 16 units the year before; Crawford County, the metro's other Arkansas county, added 30 single-family permits worth $11,122,305 and no multifamily buildings in either year. The Fort Smith, AR-OK metro's Arkansas side counted 234,140 residents by the Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimate, the slowest-growing of the state's three metropolitan statistical areas at 1,164 added over the year. Interstate 540 north of its interchange with State Highway 59 in Crawford County carried 51,984 vehicles a day by the Federal Highway Administration's 2016 count, and the same interstate within Sebastian County carried 50,000 vehicles a day in 2018, the two busiest corridors on either side of the Arkansas River. No project-level development-pipeline report was found published by the City of Fort Smith or by the Frontier Metropolitan Planning Organization, the metro's federally designated planning body; the study builds the Fort Smith pipeline case from the Building Permits Survey and the parcel's own site plan rather than a city-published tracker.

Little Rock is the seat of the Arkansas District Office and the state's largest metro by every measure this page tracks. Pulaski County's 2025 average overall millage is 59.56 mills, and the taxing unit covering the city of Little Rock, in the Little Rock School District, carries an Overall Total of 70.0 mills, an effective rate near 1.4 percent of market value once the state's 20 percent assessment ratio is applied; the county's next countywide reappraisal is due in 2026, and its total real estate assessed value rose from $7,246,797,292 to $7,598,221,556 between the two most recent years the Assessment Coordination Division has published, a 4.85 percent increase. The Little Rock Port Authority's own 2022 report puts the Port of Little Rock's dock traffic at 800,759 net tons across 534 barges on the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, a channel the same report describes as moving 12 million tons a year worth $4 billion. The Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport recorded 2,314,000 total passengers and 1,160,227 enplanements in 2025, a 1.2 percent enplanement decline from 2024's 1,174,148. The City of Little Rock's own 2023 Urban Development Report, its latest published edition, recorded 77 Planned Zoning Development cases covering 238 acres, up from 5 cases in 2022, and 514 new multi-family units on 98 permits for $58,891,998, concentrated in the Otter Creek Planning District; the county's Building Permits Survey data for 2025 shows 1,483 single-family permits worth $385,870,986 and 7 multifamily buildings of 113 units worth $11,175,000, against none recorded in this category the year before. Central Arkansas Water and the Little Rock Water Reclamation Authority price service by meter size rather than a single citywide impact fee; the Reclamation Authority's own 2026 fee schedule sets a $920 annual permit fee for a regulated industrial discharger, the category a car wash connecting to the sanitary sewer would carry. Little Rock's Building Codes Division states its own commercial plan review at five working days for new construction and additions. Interstate 30 through Pulaski County near its junction with Interstate 40 carried 126,000 vehicles a day by the Federal Highway Administration's 2020 count, the busiest corridor recorded for any of this page's five metros.

Beyond the public record above, an engagement calibrated to Little Rock documents the submarket's own hotel performance, trailing twelve-month occupancy, average daily rate and revenue per available room for the competitive set the property will face; self-storage street rates and occupancy for climate-controlled and non-climate-controlled units in the submarket; multifamily asking rent, vacancy, and units delivered and underway across the metro's planning districts; and capitalization rates by property type alongside trailing twelve-month sales volume, each measured at the parcel and submarket level rather than asserted at the state level.

Garland County's total real estate assessed value rose from $2,079,283,013 to $2,201,538,340 between the two most recent years the Assessment Coordination Division has published, a 5.88 percent increase, and the county's next countywide reappraisal is due in 2026. The City of Hot Springs levies a three percent Advertising and Promotion tax on hotel, motel and short-term condominium accommodations under an ordinance adopted May 1, 1989, on top of the state's 6.5 percent sales tax and 2.0 percent Parks and Tourism Tax. Hot Springs National Park, inside the metro, recorded 2,494,611 recreation visits in calendar 2025 by the National Park Service's own reporting, up 1.33 percent on the year before; the same park's 2024 visitor spending, measured separately by the Park Service, totaled $189,775,000 and supported 2,125 jobs. USDA Rural Development's own award data names a $10,000,000 Business and Industry guarantee to Trilochan, LLC in Hot Springs National Park, closed January 23, 2025, the largest single named federal credit enhancement this page found tied to the tourism metro. Hot Springs Memorial Field, one of Arkansas's six commercial-service airports, carried 3,303 enplanements in calendar 2024 on Southern Airways' nine-passenger service to Dallas/Fort Worth and Memphis, an order of magnitude below the state's three larger airports. Garland County's Real Property Transfer Tax revenue, a public proxy for deal volume in a county without a published sales index, rose from $2,587,846.80 in the state fiscal year ended June 2025 to $3,362,300.70 in the year ended June 2026.

County Business Patterns for 2023, the latest year published, counts 717 hotels and motels in Arkansas (NAICS 721110), 205 car washes (811192), 168 self-storage operators (531130), 93 assisted living facilities for the elderly (623312), 40 continuing care retirement communities (623311) and 39 RV parks and campgrounds (721211). Read against the SBA record above, hotels stand out on every measure: the largest establishment count, the largest payroll at $250,587,000, and a 7.7 percent charge-off rate below the state's 8.0 percent all-industry average, reinforced by the National Park Service's 2,494,611 recreation visits at Hot Springs National Park alone and by two growing regional airports. Car washes are the second most numerous class by establishment count despite a comparatively modest $40,991,000 payroll, consistent with a low-headcount, high-establishment operating model rather than weak demand. Between the two senior-housing categories, continuing care retirement communities carry a higher annual payroll, $75,688,000 against assisted living's $67,923,000, and lower employment, 2,070 against 2,182, despite fewer than half as many establishments, 40 against 93, pointing to materially larger average facility scale for continuing care. Self-storage, 168 establishments, sits against a state that gained 18,711 residents in the latest year but whose growth is migration-driven rather than birth-driven, so a storage study here is written to household turnover in Northwest Arkansas and central Arkansas rather than to organic population growth. Restaurants and fitness centers, at 12.2 and 12.8 percent charge-off rates, are the two classes an Arkansas lender will underwrite hardest, and the study for either is written to a saturation test in the parcel's own trade area.

Beyond the classes above, MMCG produces SBA, USDA and conventional-grade feasibility studies for the full range of commercial property types financed in Arkansas. Restaurants are the largest count in the FOIA table, 298 7(a) loans for $114,405,200; gas stations and convenience stores, 51 loans for $62,213,300, follow Interstate 40, Interstate 49 and Interstate 30 through the state's three metros. Child day care services, 58 loans for $39,232,600, are eligible for the state's own Daycare Facility Incentive, a sales and use tax refund on construction plus a 3.9 percent income tax credit on childcare-worker payroll, or a flat $5,000 first-year credit. Multifamily files follow the Arkansas Development Finance Authority's Qualified Allocation Plan, which caps a competitively scored nine percent tax-credit unit's total development cost at $210,000 to earn full points and at $300,000 for a bond-financed four percent unit, and follow the Department of Housing and Urban Development's own Fair Market Rents, published county by county for fiscal year 2026 at $1,147 for a two-bedroom unit in the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway HUD Metro FMR Area and $1,347 in the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers, AR MSA. Industrial and logistics files follow the Port of Little Rock's 800,759 net tons and the Arkansas Development Finance Authority's Industrial Development Bond Guaranty Program, reserved for manufacturers. Community Facilities Program files for small-town and nonprofit borrowers are written to the pattern of the eleven Community Facilities awards the state's Rural Development office obligated in fiscal year 2025, from a $1,030,000 grant to North Arkansas Regional Medical Center to a run of smaller Persistent Poverty grants to towns including Marshall and Jasper. A companion Water and Waste Disposal program obligated $1,986,301 across two Arkansas awards that same fiscal year, funding projects such as a $2,267,000 grant paired with a $4,094,000 loan to the City of Rector, the pattern a rural water or sewer authority borrower follows.

Standard delivery is 9 to 16 business days from data receipt, and rush turnaround is available from 5 business days. The seven steps below are what happens in that window, from the project brief to lender review.

MMCG delivers Arkansas feasibility studies in 9 to 16 business days from data receipt, with a complimentary preliminary market overview within one business day of submission. Pricing starts at $4,900 with a 50/50 fee schedule. Reports are formatted for SBA, CDC, USDA and conventional lender file submission and incorporate the analytical layers Arkansas credit committees expect: the Arkansas District Office's statewide roster and the state's own FOIA cohort by asset class, the 50,000 and 20,000-inhabitant rural-area tests on the Census Bureau's own tables, the ADFA, AEDC and SSBCI stack, the Permit of Approval sequence for assisted living, the city's own lodging tax and impact fee schedule, and the permit clock the city states in writing. Sponsor inquiries that involve a Northwest Arkansas project crossing the 50,000 line, an assisted living Permit of Approval, or a Hot Springs seasonal property typically require the upper end of the standard range.

Engagements typically begin with the project address, asset class, capital stack, sponsor experience, and the specific lender, Certified Development Company or USDA area office carrying the deal. From there, MMCG calibrates scope to the program of record, whether SBA 7(a), SBA 504, USDA Business and Industry, REAP, Community Facilities or conventional.

Send the project address. Receive a free Arkansas market overview within one business day. Pricing starts at $4,900 with a 50/50 fee schedule. Delivery in 9 to 16 business days. A senior analyst responds within 12 business hours.

MMCG Invest, LLC is a commercial real estate feasibility consulting firm specializing in SBA and USDA feasibility studies across asset classes including hotels, assisted living, car washes, self-storage, RV parks, gas stations, restaurants and agritourism. Our analyses serve lenders, CDCs, investors and developers seeking institutional-quality market intelligence for underwriting and investment decisions. Engagements are led by Michal Mohelsky, J.D., Practicing Affiliate of the Appraisal Institute. Feasibility studies are prepared under USPAP discipline, aligned with SBA SOP 50 10 8 for 7(a) and 504 loans and with 7 CFR Part 5001 for USDA Business and Industry, REAP and Community Facilities financing. Engagements start at $4,900 with fixed-fee scoping. Standard delivery is 9 to 16 business days, with rush turnaround available from 5 business days. A senior analyst responds to proposal requests within 12 business hours from the firm's San Francisco office.

Every state page MMCG publishes is listed on the state index; the neighbouring states are linked at the end of this page. The Arkansas cities and counties served:

Central Arkansas, around Little Rock: Little Rock, North Little Rock, Conway, Sherwood, Jacksonville, Benton, Cabot, Searcy.

Northwest Arkansas: Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers, Bentonville, Centerton, Bella Vista.

The River Valley, around Fort Smith: Fort Smith, Van Buren, Russellville, Paragould.

The Ouachitas and the spa city: Hot Springs, Pine Bluff, Texarkana.

USDA Rural Development divides the state's 75 counties among six area offices, each serving as a shorthand for the study's own rural-eligibility work at the parcel. Forrest City's Area 3 Office serves Arkansas, Crittenden, Cross, Lee, Lonoke, Monroe, Phillips, Prairie, Pulaski, St. Francis, White and Woodruff counties. Fort Smith's Area 6 Office serves Conway, Crawford, Franklin, Faulkner, Johnson, Logan, Perry, Pope, Sebastian, Scott, Van Buren and Yell counties. Harrison's Area 1 Office serves Baxter, Benton, Boone, Carroll, Fulton, Izard, Madison, Marion, Newton, Searcy, Stone and Washington counties. Hope's Area 5 Office serves Clark, Garland, Hempstead, Hot Spring, Howard, Lafayette, Little River, Miller, Montgomery, Nevada, Pike, Polk, Saline and Sevier counties. Jonesboro's Area 2 Office serves Clay, Cleburne, Craighead, Green, Independence, Jackson, Lawrence, Mississippi, Poinsett, Randolph and Sharp counties. The Monticello office serves Ashley, Bradley, Calhoun, Chicot, Cleveland, Columbia, Dallas, Desha, Drew, Grant, Jefferson, Lincoln, Ouachita and Union counties. The Arkansas District Office in Little Rock serves all 75 counties directly for SBA lending, with no separate area-office split.