Hawaii Feasibility Study: Lender-Grade SBA and USDA Studies

MMCG Invest, LLC prepares feasibility studies for Hawaii projects where the underwriting questions reach past the national checklist. Hawaii is the state of general excise tax pyramiding, a combined 4.5 percent rate on gross receipts and rents (4.712 percent where passed through to the customer) under HRS Chapter 237 that a lender must model against gross rental income rather than net operating income on every office, retail, industrial, multifamily or hotel deal, because Hawaii taxes a business's receipts at every stage of activity rather than a single retail sale the way a mainland state sales tax does; where the U.S. Energy Information Administration ranks the nation's highest electricity cost, the highest average monthly residential bill of any state at $213 in 2024 despite the lowest grid delivered consumption, a fixed operating expense line every asset class in the state carries; where a five percent urban land cap, the Hawaii Office of Planning and Sustainable Development's own classification of only about 5 percent of the state's approximately 4,112,388 acres as Urban, means a parcel outside that district generally needs a state Land Use Commission district boundary amendment, with the Office of Planning a required party, before county entitlement can even begin; where a transient accommodations tax increase, Act 96's rise from 10.25 percent to 11.00 percent effective January 1, 2026, extends to cruise ship fares for the first time, per the Hawaii Department of Taxation, adding to the guest facing tax stack on every hotel, resort, timeshare or short term rental study; and where a lava zone lending restriction has barred FHA mortgage insurance in USGS hazard Zones 1 and 2 on the Island of Hawaii since 1971, a restriction the 2018 Kilauea eruption's toll of more than 700 structures destroyed made concrete, leaving a project in those zones to cash purchase, portfolio lending or specialty insurance at a materially higher down payment. 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 Hawaii market overview within one business day of submission.

The U.S. Small Business Administration serves Hawaii through a single Hawaii District Office. MMCG's own cut of SBA's 7(a) and 504 FOIA release, as of June 30, 2026, restricted to Hawaii project state loans, attributes 230 of the state's 231 fiscal year 2025 7(a) approvals to the Hawaii District Office and 1 to the San Francisco District Office. Hawaii's 7(a) approvals ran 220 loans for $54,809,400 in fiscal year 2024 and 231 loans for $53,419,300 in fiscal year 2025, of which 193 and 182 loans respectively had disbursed by the release's June 30, 2026 cutoff; the 504 side approved 13 loans for $16,522,000 in fiscal year 2024 and 23 loans for $27,620,000 in fiscal year 2025, disbursing 9 and 8. Through the first three quarters of fiscal year 2026, ending June 30, Hawaii carried 77 further 7(a) approvals for $17,101,300 and 13 further 504 approvals for $9,278,000.

On SBA's FY2025 FOIA release, restricted to Hawaii projects, the ten most active 7(a) lenders by count were Central Pacific Bank with 89 loans for $4,720,800, Northeast Bank with 33 loans for $5,855,200, Newtek Bank, National Association with 23 loans for $12,996,000, Readycap Lending, LLC with 19 loans for $4,627,900, BayFirst National Bank with 9 loans for $1,089,200, First Hawaiian Bank with 9 loans for $630,000, Live Oak Banking Company with 7 loans for $5,952,000, Celtic Bank Corporation with 6 loans for $1,076,000, Lendistry SBLC, LLC with 6 loans for $994,700 and Hawaii National Bank with 5 loans for $1,316,000. First Hawaiian Bank, Central Pacific Bank and Hawaii National Bank were named Hawaii's SBA Lenders of the Year for fiscal year 2025, Central Pacific Bank's seventeenth such recognition since 2004.

On the 504 side, Mortgage Capital Development Corporation led Hawaii's fiscal year 2025 approvals with 12 loans for $17,504,000, HEDCO Local Development Corporation followed with 10 loans for $9,407,000, and Business Finance Capital approved 1 loan for $709,000. HEDCO Local Development Corporation is Hawaii's own SBA certified 504 Certified Development Company, serving Hawaii, Guam and parts of the South Pacific. TMC Financing has also expanded into Hawaii to compete for 504 business, while Lokahi Pacific, though active in Hawaii community lending, is not itself an SBA certified 504 Certified Development Company, a distinction worth keeping straight when a borrower compares Hawaii CDCs.

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 Hawaii, disbursed, approved in fiscal years 2010 through 2026, and grouped by the NAICS codes of the asset classes this firm studies. Across all industries, Hawaii's 3,525 disbursed 7(a) loans for $497,266,600 resolved 2,815 with a 7.6 percent charge-off rate, and its 448 disbursed 504 loans for $261,630,000 resolved 184 at a 0.0 percent charge-off rate. Restaurants carry by far the largest count in the table at 324 7(a) loans for $59,503,100, resolving 247 at a 10.9 percent charge-off rate, and 21 504 loans for $16,774,000; fitness and recreational sports centers follow at 38 7(a) loans for $5,989,500; child day care services carried 9 loans for $1,120,000; car washes carried 6 loans for $1,492,000. Hotels and motels, self-storage, RV parks and campgrounds, assisted living and continuing care, gas stations and convenience stores and marinas each carried fewer than five Hawaii loans on both the 7(a) and the 504 side across the full fiscal year 2010 to 2026 window, too few for the release to publish a dollar total or a charge-off rate for any of them. The caution that travels with every rate: the June 2026 release collapses every open loan, current or stressed, into the single status EXEMPT, so the rate reads the resolved cohort only.

By the Treasury's own USASpending.gov record of place of performance obligations, Hawaii carried no Business and Industry guarantees in fiscal year 2025, against 3 guarantees for $176,796 in obligated subsidy cost on $7,720,340 of guaranteed loan face value in fiscal year 2024. The Rural Energy for America Program obligated 3 awards for $554,375 in fiscal year 2025, down from 14 awards for $1,855,126 in fiscal year 2024. Community Facilities Loans and Grants obligated 5 awards for $5,488,000 in fiscal year 2025, up from 6 awards for $151,123 in fiscal year 2024. Water and Waste Disposal obligated 7 awards for $7,168,977 in fiscal year 2025, against 6 awards for $13,507,485 in fiscal year 2024.

The four-program trend cuts in different directions: REAP's award count and dollars both fell from fiscal year 2024 to fiscal year 2025, while Community Facilities carried more awards for far more in dollars in fiscal year 2025 than in fiscal year 2024, and Water and Waste Disposal carried one more award in fiscal year 2025 on fewer total dollars than the year before. A USDA file in Hawaii is written to the program's own current-year record rather than to a multi-year average, since a single large award can move a small state's annual total by a wide margin. Three of the four programs active in Hawaii, REAP, Community Facilities and Water and Waste Disposal, also mix grant and loan-guarantee dollars under one obligation figure in the federal data, so the study states the obligation total rather than implying every dollar is a loan guarantee a lender could structure around.

This firm's research did not confirm a current street address for USDA Rural Development's own Hawaii state office. A Hawaii USDA file is written to the program guarantee terms and the obligation record above, and the area office nearest the project is confirmed at engagement.

Hawaii's General Excise Tax is codified at HRS Chapter 237 and administered by the Hawaii Department of Taxation. The Department's own guidance states that GET is a tax on a business's gross receipts rather than a sales tax on the customer, at a base 4.5 percent combined rate, made up of a 4 percent state rate plus a county surcharge of up to 0.5 percent, passed through to a customer at a maximum visible rate of 4.712 percent. Honolulu, Kauai and Hawaii County have levied the 0.5 percent surcharge since 2019 or 2020, and Maui County since January 1, 2024, so all four counties now carry the same 4.712 percent combined pass through rate. The Department's own consumer guidance puts the distinction from a mainland sales tax plainly: unlike a sales tax, which is a tax on the customer, GET is a tax on the business itself, assessed on activities including retail sales, renting, leasing real property and construction contracting alike. GET generated $4.6 billion in fiscal year 2025, a 3.3 percent increase over the prior year and 40.1 percent of the state's $11.46 billion in total tax collections, per the Hawaii Department of Taxation's own Annual Report 2024-2025. Because GET is due on gross rent regardless of expenses, a lender models it against the top line of every lease, not against net operating income. The county surcharge itself is not permanent: HRS §237-8.6 currently sets the surcharge to repeal December 31, 2030, a sunset a lender underwriting a loan that outlives 2030 should note, even though the base 4 percent state GET rate is not affected by that sunset.

All land in Hawaii is classified into one of four state land use districts, Urban, Rural, Agricultural and Conservation, by the Land Use Commission under HRS Chapter 205, and the Hawaii Office of Planning and Sustainable Development's own Land Use Division states that only about 5 percent of the state's approximately 4,112,388 acres sits in the Urban district. A parcel outside that district generally needs a Land Use Commission district boundary amendment before county entitlement can begin, with the county and the Office of Planning as required parties to that proceeding.

Act 96, signed in 2025, raises Hawaii's transient accommodations tax from 10.25 percent to 11.00 percent effective January 1, 2026 and, per the Hawaii Department of Taxation's own announcement, extends the tax to cruise ship operators' gross rental proceeds for the first time, prorated to a ship's days docked in state ports. A federal court declined to enjoin the cruise ship provision in December 2025, so a hospitality, resort, timeshare or short term rental study now models the 11.00 percent state rate as part of the guest facing tax stack alongside the county's own transient accommodations tax and GET.

On the Island of Hawaii specifically, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has barred FHA mortgage insurance in the U.S. Geological Survey's lava flow hazard Zones 1 and 2 since a 1971 policy that remains in force, so a project's financing gate on that island starts with the parcel's zone rather than with a licence or a permit.

Together, these four state level layers, the General Excise Tax, the Land Use Commission entitlement path, the transient accommodations tax and, on the Island of Hawaii, the lava flow hazard zone, are what a mainland licence-and-permit checklist alone will not surface on a Hawaii file.

A Hawaii credit committee reads the study against a thinner comparable record than a mainland file carries: on MMCG's own FOIA cut, only restaurants, fitness and recreational sports centers, child day care services and car washes clear five loans statewide across sixteen fiscal years, so a hotel, self-storage, RV park, assisted living, gas station or marina file is underwritten with fewer directly comparable Hawaii SBA loans to point to, which is exactly the case a lender-grade feasibility study is written to make. For a 7(a) or 504 file under SOP 50 10 8 it wants the market area drawn to the parcel, the General Excise Tax modeled against gross rent rather than net operating income, and which SBA office, Hawaii or San Francisco, the loan is carried under. For a USDA file it wants the guarantee percentage and obligation record the current USASpending.gov figures establish, the rural eligibility of the address, and which of the four programs, Business and Industry, REAP, Community Facilities or Water and Waste Disposal, the deal is structured under. For every Hawaii file it wants the state layer set out above in the lender's own vocabulary: the 4.712 percent GET pass through rate, the Land Use Commission district the parcel sits in, the transient accommodations tax stack for a hospitality file, and, on the Island of Hawaii, the USGS lava flow hazard zone the parcel sits in. It also wants the study to state plainly where a figure the state itself does not publish would otherwise appear, rather than importing a mainland benchmark or a modeled estimate in its place, since a credit committee that catches an imported figure on a Hawaii file discounts the rest of the report with it. Where the state's own record runs thin, on six of the ten asset classes this page tracks, the study says so in the same sentence that would otherwise carry a rated charge-off figure, rather than silently omitting the class or borrowing a mainland rate. A study that carries each of those with the source named in the sentence is the study a Hawaii underwriter can lift into the memo without a second round.

Hawaii's underwriting file runs past the standard district office and reassessment checklist a mainland study leans on. A tax that pyramids on gross rent, the nation's most expensive electricity, a state land use system that keeps roughly one acre in twenty open to development, a rising guest tax and a federally barred lending zone on one island each move a Hawaii deal in a way no national template accounts for, ranked below by the size of the cost or the constraint each one attaches to the deal. Four of the five conditions apply everywhere in the state; the fifth applies only on the Island of Hawaii, so a Kona or Hilo file carries one more layer than an Oahu, Maui or Kauai file does. Each is ranked by the scale of the cost or the constraint it attaches to a deal, largest and broadest first, and each fails a direct swap with the neighbouring states the underlying source itself names.

Hawaii's General Excise Tax pyramids at a combined 4.712 percent rate that a business may visibly pass through on a sale, a rental or a service, per the Hawaii Department of Taxation's own Tax Facts 37-1. Because GET taxes gross business receipts rather than a final retail sale, it applies at every level of a transaction chain, including commercial and residential rents, and it generated $4.6 billion for the state in fiscal year 2025, 40.1 percent of total tax collections, per the Department's own Annual Report 2024-2025. A lender underwriting any income producing Hawaii property, office, retail, industrial, multifamily or hotel, must model the 4.712 percent rate against gross rental income rather than net operating income, since the tax is owed on the full receipt regardless of expenses; where a landlord passes GET through in the stated rent it becomes a permanent feature of the achievable rent roll, and where a landlord absorbs it instead it is a recurring charge against NOI that a mainland pro forma built around a state sales tax will not capture.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration's own account of 2024 data found that Hawaii customers carried the highest average monthly electric bill of any state, $213, despite consuming the least grid delivered electricity on average, and EIA's separate Hawaii Electricity Profile puts the state's 2024 average retail price at 38.00 cents per kilowatt hour, first among all states. By March 2025 Hawaii's residential rate had reached 41.11 cents per kilowatt hour against a 17.01 cent United States average, 2.4 times the national rate, per EIA's own March 2025 data. A lender underwriting a hotel, a multifamily property or an industrial or cold storage facility in Hawaii must model electricity as an operating expense line at the level EIA itself ranks highest in the nation, not at a mainland benchmark rate, and because the state's high bill coexists with its low consumption, the pressure sits on price per kilowatt hour rather than on usage volume, so efficiency measures that control costs elsewhere in the country have a smaller ceiling on savings here.

The Hawaii Office of Planning and Sustainable Development's own Land Use Division states that all land in the state is divided into four state land use districts, urban, rural, agricultural and conservation, and that approximately 5 percent of the state's approximately 4,112,388 acres is designated Urban, the district generally open to development. A landowner's first entitlement on a parcel outside that district is generally a Land Use Commission district boundary amendment under HRS Chapter 205, a state level proceeding in which the county and the Office of Planning are required parties, adding an approval layer and a timeline a mainland project on already urban zoned land does not carry. The Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corporation's 2024 Hawaii Housing Planning Study puts the shortfall this scarcity feeds at 64,490 additional housing units needed statewide by 2027, and a lender should underwrite land inside the Urban district as carrying a structural, not a cyclical, scarcity premium.

Act 96, per the Hawaii Department of Taxation's own announcement, raises the state transient accommodations tax from 10.25 percent to 11.00 percent effective January 1, 2026 on gross rental proceeds from transient accommodations and resort timeshare units, and for the first time extends the tax to cruise ship operators' fares, prorated to a ship's days docked in state ports; a federal court declined to enjoin the cruise ship provision in December 2025. Layered on top of a county's own transient accommodations tax and the 4.712 percent GET pass through, the combined guest facing tax on a Hawaii hotel room now runs to roughly 18.712 percent. A lender underwriting a Hawaii hotel, resort, timeshare or short term rental study must model the 11.00 percent state rate, not the pre-2026 10.25 percent rate, as the state layer of that stack, and a study that also touches cruise linked demand must account for the same statute now reaching cruise operators' fares.

On the Island of Hawaii, the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory maps lava flow hazard Zones 1 and 2 around the summits and rift zones of Kilauea and Mauna Loa, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has barred FHA mortgage insurance in those two zones since a 1971 policy that remains in force. The 2018 Kilauea Lower East Rift Zone eruption destroyed more than 700 structures and covered more than 8,700 acres and 30 miles of roads, concentrated in Zone 1's Leilani Estates subdivision, the loss experience that keeps conventional and federally backed capital cautious there. A lender underwriting a project on the Island of Hawaii must screen the parcel against the USGS zone map before assuming standard federal mortgage insurance applies; a project inside Zones 1 or 2 is effectively limited to cash purchase, portfolio lending or specialty insurance at a materially higher down payment, while this restriction has no counterpart on Oahu, Maui or Kauai.

Read together, the five conditions above turn a Hawaii feasibility study into a tax, land use and hazard reconciliation as much as a demand study: a lender who reads only the national SBA or USDA checklist will miss the General Excise Tax's pass through mechanics, the state's own land use gate, the rising guest tax and, on one island, a federal insurance bar that has stood since 1971.

A Hawaii 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 or CDC, the SBA office the file is carried under, Hawaii or San Francisco, and, for a USDA file, the program and the guarantee terms current USASpending.gov figures establish. The site and market area section places the parcel in its county and its Land Use Commission district, states the rural area determination where USDA is the program, and draws the trade area from the road network and the island's own geography rather than a mainland radius. The demand section builds from the public series this page cites: Census population estimates, the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism's own military and demographic figures, the Hawaii Department of Transportation's own port and visitor figures, and the SBA FOIA release for the state's own lending record. The competitive set section names the operating properties, their scale and their position, reading against a Hawaii SBA record that clears five loans in only four of the ten asset classes this page tracks, restaurants, fitness and recreational sports centers, child day care services and car washes. The regulatory section carries the GET pass through rate, the Land Use Commission district and entitlement path, and, for a hospitality property, the transient accommodations tax stack, each with the statute or the announcement cited. The financial section runs the stabilized year, the ramp, operating expenses built up with electricity modeled at Hawaii's own EIA-ranked rate, reserves and discounted cash flow at the lender's coverage, with GET built into the rent roll or the expense line as the deal structures it. The risk section names what could move the numbers, the SBA office the file is carried under, the entitlement path outside the Urban district, and, on the Island of Hawaii, the USGS lava flow hazard zone, and says what the sponsor has done about each. The lender package closes with the comparable loan evidence the FOIA release supports and a statement of the standards the study was prepared under. Every section states its own basis in the sentence that carries a figure, the Hawaii Department of Taxation, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the Hawaii Office of Planning and Sustainable Development, USASpending.gov or SBA's own FOIA release, so a credit committee can trace each number to its publisher without a separate source list.

Urban Honolulu, the only subcounty area in Hawaii with its own annual Census estimate, carried 344,967 residents as of July 1, 2024. Hawaii's population aged 65 and older rose from 19.3 percent to 21.5 percent of the state between 2020 and 2024, with the median age rising from 40.2 to 41.4 over the same years, per the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, a structural driver of demand for assisted living and skilled nursing product in a state where roughly one acre in twenty is even open to new construction.

Defense spending flowed $10.2 billion into Hawaii in 2023, an estimated 9 percent of state GDP and $17.4 billion in total statewide economic contribution once indirect and induced activity is counted, supporting 73,072 total military connected personnel including 43,118 active duty, per the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism's own Military and Community Relations Office factbook. Personnel spending alone reached $6.2 billion, $5.6 billion of it in Honolulu County, an anchor demand base for lodging, self-storage and workforce housing product near the state's installations that a countywide population trend would miss. Small businesses received $1.3 billion of that defense spending in Department of Defense contracts, per the same factbook, a contracting base this study reads alongside the state's own SBA lending record.

About 80 percent of the goods consumed by Hawaii's 1.4 million residents and 8.6 million annual visitors are imported, and 98 percent of those goods move over water, per the Hawaii Department of Transportation's own Port Hawaii figures; the $555 million Kapalama Container Terminal at Honolulu Harbor, adding roughly 80 percent more cargo yard capacity and about 40 percent more cargo handling capacity at the state's largest port, is the public infrastructure project behind the state's own industrial and logistics demand case.

Hawaiian Electric reported a 36 percent consolidated renewable portfolio standard in 2024, up from 33 percent in 2023, on pace for the 40 percent by 2030 milestone under HRS §269-92's own trajectory of 30 percent by 2020, 40 percent by 2030, 70 percent by 2040 and 100 percent by 2045, after retiring the roughly 180 megawatt AES Hawaii coal plant, about 10 percent of Oahu's generation, on September 1, 2022; roughly 43 percent of the single-family homes Hawaiian Electric serves already carry rooftop solar. Hawaiian Electric's own reporting shows 2025 average prices decreasing across its Oahu, Hawaii Island, Maui, Molokai and Lanai divisions alike, even as the state's overall rate remains the nation's highest; the state's own electricity cost sits on a set of isolated island grids rather than a regional interconnection a mainland utility can lean on in a shortfall.

Hawaii's population declined by roughly 0.1 percent a year from 2020 to 2024, with the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism attributing the pattern to continued net domestic out-migration it assumes at roughly 1,500 to 2,000 residents a year, even as the 65-and-older share climbs; the Department projects that share reaching about one in four residents by 2030 and 23.8 percent by 2045. A demand case for workforce housing, assisted living or skilled nursing product in Hawaii is built on that aging-in-place trend rather than on net population growth. Each of these public figures, population, military spending, cargo capacity and the renewable portfolio standard, sits upstream of the five conditions this page's thesis names, and a Hawaii study reads them together rather than importing a single national benchmark for each.

Honolulu carries the largest share of Hawaii's underwriting file on its own. Urban Honolulu's 344,967 residents anchor the state's SBA and USDA lending record, and Honolulu County received $5.6 billion of the state's $6.2 billion in military personnel spending, the concentration behind the Oahu lodging, self-storage and workforce housing demand this study models against installation specific figures rather than a general population trend. Honolulu, Kauai and Hawaii County have levied the 0.5 percent GET county surcharge since 2019 or 2020, so an Oahu lease already carries the full 4.712 percent combined pass through rate this page's General Excise Tax finding describes.

The $555 million Kapalama Container Terminal at Honolulu Harbor, a Hawaii Department of Transportation project adding 1,800 linear feet of new berth and an 84-acre cargo yard raised 3 feet for sea level rise, is nearing completion after its $174 million first phase finished in 2021, and is the public capital project behind Oahu's own industrial and logistics feasibility case; the completed terminal is expected to open to Pasha Hawaii around 2026, freeing Matson to consolidate its own operations at Sand Island, per the Hawaii Department of Transportation's own project account. Oahu itself added AES West Oahu, a 12.5 megawatt, 50 megawatt hour solar and storage project that reached commercial operation in March 2024, and Kupono Solar, a 42 megawatt, 168 megawatt hour project that followed in June 2024, both part of the same isolated-grid system this page's electricity finding describes. The Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corporation's 2024 Hawaii Housing Planning Study attributes 25,710 of the state's 64,490 unit statewide housing shortfall to Honolulu County, the largest single share, a direct consequence of the roughly 5 percent Urban land use district this page's land cap finding describes. The City and County of Honolulu's own judicial districts, Honolulu, Ewa, Waialua, Waianae, Koolaupoko and Koolauloa, span the island's urban core and its North Shore and Windward communities alike, and a Honolulu study is calibrated to the judicial district and neighborhood the parcel sits in rather than to a single islandwide figure.

Hawaii Island carries the one condition in this study with no counterpart anywhere else in the state: the U.S. Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory maps lava flow hazard Zones 1 and 2 around Kilauea and Mauna Loa, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has barred FHA mortgage insurance there since 1971. The 2018 Kilauea Lower East Rift Zone eruption destroyed more than 700 structures and covered more than 8,700 acres and 30 miles of roads in and around the Leilani Estates subdivision in the Puna District, and a Kona or Hilo project's financing gate starts with the parcel's zone on the USGS map before a lender assumes standard federal insurance is available.

Hawaii County carries 18,879 of the state's 64,490 unit housing shortfall the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corporation's 2024 study identifies, the second largest county share after Honolulu, and has levied the 0.5 percent GET county surcharge since 2019 or 2020 alongside Honolulu and Kauai. The Kona district anchors Hawaii's coffee industry: the 2023 to 2024 season produced 19.2 million pounds of coffee cherry, down 17 percent, from 7,400 bearing acres, for a crop value of $48.2 million, down 11 percent, at an average $2.51 a pound, per the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, an agribusiness and agritourism base this study models alongside the island's hospitality and self-storage demand. Parker Ranch anchors the island's cattle industry, and macadamia nuts remain a significant Hawaii Island crop alongside coffee. Hawaii Island's own judicial districts, South Hilo, North Hilo, Puna, Kau, North Kona, South Kona, North Kohala, South Kohala and Hamakua, span from Hilo's wetter windward side to Kona's drier leeward coffee belt, and the 2018 eruption's Leilani Estates loss sat in the Puna district specifically, not in the Kona district a hospitality study more often reaches.

Maui County was the last of Hawaii's four counties to adopt the GET surcharge, levying its own 0.5 percent county surcharge since January 1, 2024, completing the 4.712 percent combined pass through rate statewide. The Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corporation's 2024 Hawaii Housing Planning Study put Maui County's own housing shortfall at 14,987 additional units needed by 2027, a figure the study itself dates to before the 2023 wildfires, so a current Maui housing file should treat it as a floor rather than a ceiling on need.

Maui carries the state's largest single solar-plus-storage project: AES Kuihelani, 60 megawatts and 240 megawatt hours, reached commercial operation in May 2024, part of the Hawaiian Electric system serving Oahu, Hawaii Island, Maui, Molokai and Lanai alike under the isolated-grid cost structure this page's electricity finding describes. A Maui hospitality or short term rental file carries the same 11.00 percent transient accommodations tax and cruise linked provisions of Act 96 as the rest of the state. Maui County's own judicial districts, Wailuku, Makawao, Lahaina, Hana, Molokai and Lanai, reach across all four inhabited islands of the county, and a Maui study is written to the specific island and district a parcel sits in rather than to one countywide figure.

Kauai is the one county in this study's set not served by Hawaiian Electric: the Kauai Island Utility Cooperative, a member owned cooperative, serves the island instead, a distinct governance structure within the same isolated-grid electricity cost condition that ranks Hawaii's average price highest in the nation. Kauai has levied its own 0.5 percent GET county surcharge since 2019 or 2020, alongside Honolulu and Hawaii County, and the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corporation's 2024 study puts Kauai's own housing shortfall at 4,914 additional units needed by 2027, the smallest of the four counties but measured against the smallest population base. Kauai's own judicial districts, Lihue, Koloa, Waimea, Hanalei and Kawaihau, ring the island from the county seat at Lihue to the North Shore at Hanalei, and Niihau, privately held by the Robinson family, sits outside this study's scope.

MMCG's own cut of SBA's FOIA release shows restaurants carrying by far the deepest comparable record among the ten asset classes this page tracks in Hawaii: 324 7(a) loans for $59,503,100, resolving 247 at a 10.9 percent charge-off rate, and 21 504 loans for $16,774,000. Fitness and recreational sports centers follow at 38 7(a) loans for $5,989,500, resolving 23; child day care services carried 9 loans for $1,120,000, resolving 6; and car washes carried 6 loans for $1,492,000, resolving 3. Read against this page's other findings, restaurants and fitness centers carry a GET pass through on every dollar of gross receipts and an electricity line at the nation's highest rate, while child day care sits against a population where the 65-and-older share is rising rather than the school-age share. The other six classes this firm studies in Hawaii, hotels and motels, self-storage, RV parks and campgrounds, assisted living and continuing care, gas stations and convenience stores and marinas, each carried fewer than five loans on both the 7(a) and the 504 side across sixteen fiscal years, too few for SBA's own release to publish a dollar total or a charge-off rate for any of them; a Hawaii study for one of those six is written without a deep local comparable set to lean on, which is precisely the gap a lender-grade feasibility study is engaged to close. Hotels and motels themselves carry too few Hawaii SBA loans for the FOIA release to rate individually, even though the transient accommodations tax finding above shows hospitality carrying the heaviest state tax layer of any asset class in this study; the two facts together are why a Hawaii hotel feasibility study leans more heavily on the public demand case than on a local SBA comparable set. The 504 side's 0.0 percent statewide charge-off rate across 184 resolved loans is itself a program-level result rather than an asset-class-specific one, since the release does not resolve enough 504 loans in any single Hawaii asset class to rate one on its own.

Beyond the classes above, MMCG produces SBA, USDA and conventional grade feasibility studies for the full range of commercial property types financed in Hawaii. Industrial and logistics files follow the Kapalama Container Terminal's added capacity at Honolulu Harbor and the 80 percent of consumed goods the Hawaii Department of Transportation's own figures show arriving by water. Multifamily and retail files carry the same 4.712 percent General Excise Tax pass through this page's tax finding describes on every dollar of gross rent, layered onto a state where the Hawaii Housing Finance and Development Corporation counts a 64,490 unit statewide housing shortfall against a land base roughly 5 percent of which sits in the Urban district. Glamping and short term rental files carry Act 96's transient accommodations tax stack, now reaching 11.00 percent at the state level and, for the first time, cruise linked fares. Community Facilities Program files for hospital, water system and public borrowers are written to the guarantee record USASpending.gov's own figures establish: 5 awards for $5,488,000 in fiscal year 2025 and 6 awards for $151,123 in fiscal year 2024. A Kona or Hilo file in any of these classes carries the added USGS lava flow hazard zone screen this page's lava zone finding describes. Child day care files are written against the same aging population and roughly flat childbearing-age cohort the demographic finding above describes, a smaller but steady segment of Hawaii's own FOIA record.

Hawaii's visitor industry is measured in the state's own reporting rather than a private subscription. The Hawaii Tourism Authority's July 2026 Hawaii Hotel Performance Report puts statewide hotel occupancy at 76.7 percent year to date through July 2026, on an average daily rate of $377.06 and revenue per available room of $289.38, each the state agency's own published statewide figure. The Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism reported 5,921,068 total visitor arrivals and $13.63 billion in total visitor spending statewide over the first seven months of 2026. The Hawaii Department of Taxation's Annual Report 2024 to 2025 records $816.2 million in transient accommodations tax collections for fiscal year 2025. A Hawaii lodging or resort feasibility study places the subject property in the specific island and submarket the same state reports break out, rather than a single statewide average.

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 Hawaii 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 Hawaii credit committees expect: the Hawaii District Office roster and the state's own FOIA cohort by asset class, the General Excise Tax's 4.712 percent pass through rate built into the rent roll, the Land Use Commission district and entitlement path outside the roughly 5 percent Urban share of the state, the transient accommodations tax stack Act 96 sets from January 1, 2026, and, on the Island of Hawaii, the USGS lava flow hazard zone screen. Sponsor inquiries that involve a project inside USGS lava flow hazard Zones 1 or 2, a parcel outside the Urban land use district, or a hospitality file reaching cruise linked demand typically require the upper end of the standard range. A Hawaii engagement also flags at the outset which of the ten asset classes this page tracks clear enough Hawaii SBA loans for the FOIA release to rate on its own, since four do and six do not.

Engagements typically begin with the project address, asset class, capital stack, sponsor experience, and the specific lender, Certified Development Company or USDA 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 Hawaii 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 Hawaii cities and counties served:

Oahu, under the City and County of Honolulu: Urban Honolulu, Kapolei, Kaneohe, Kailua, Pearl City, Waipahu, Mililani, Ewa Beach, Wahiawa, Waianae, Waimanalo, Haleiwa, Aiea, Hawaii Kai.

Hawaii Island, under Hawaii County: Hilo, Kailua-Kona, Waimea, Kealakekua, Captain Cook, Pahoa, Volcano, Honokaa, Pepeekeo, Naalehu, Ocean View, Keaau, Mountain View.

Maui County: Kahului, Wailuku, Lahaina, Kihei, Makawao, Paia, Hana and Kula on Maui, Kaunakakai on Molokai, and Lanai City on Lanai.

Kauai County: Lihue, Kapaa, Princeville, Hanalei, Waimea, Koloa, Hanapepe and Kalaheo on Kauai, and Niihau, privately held by the Robinson family.

Counties this page's research names: Honolulu, Hawaii, Maui, Kauai.