Maryland Feasibility Study: Lender-Grade SBA and USDA Studies

MMCG Invest, LLC prepares feasibility studies for Maryland projects where the underwriting questions reach past the national checklist. Maryland is the state where Fort Meade and NSA anchor a defense and intelligence installation base the Maryland Department of Commerce puts at $61,358,748,647 in FY2021 economic output across the state's 14 major military installations, so a hotel, self-storage, child care, multifamily or flex-industrial project in the Fort Meade, Annapolis Junction or National Business Park submarket underwrites against that base and its cleared-contractor tenant improvement costs rather than a generic regional rate; where NIH and FDA anchor a federal biomedical research and regulatory cluster the same Department of Commerce puts at $41.9 billion in 2023 gross state product across 4,992 life sciences establishments, so a laboratory, medical-office or multifamily project along the I-270 corridor from Bethesda through Rockville and Gaithersburg prices the wet-lab tenant improvement costs a standard medical-office underwrite would not capture; where the Key Bridge rebuild, the Maryland Transportation Authority's own $4.3 billion to $5.2 billion cost estimate for the harbor crossing a container ship destroyed on March 26, 2024, keeps every hazmat-placarded truck off a legal route across Baltimore's harbor until at least late 2030, a routing constraint a distribution or truck-service project along Interstate 695, 95 or 895 must underwrite on its own; and where the FBI Greenbelt campus, the 61 acres the U.S. General Services Administration selected over a Springfield, Virginia finalist in November 2023, must be modeled as a contested federal commitment rather than a confirmed occupancy date for a hospitality or multifamily project in Greenbelt or College Park. 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 Maryland market overview within one business day of submission.

The U.S. Small Business Administration serves Maryland through two district offices. The Baltimore District Office at 100 S. Charles St., Suite 1201, Baltimore serves Baltimore City and every Maryland county except Montgomery and Prince George's, which fall under the Washington Metropolitan Area District Office at 13221 Woodland Park Rd, Herndon, Virginia, together with the District of Columbia and the Virginia counties of Arlington, Fairfax and Loudoun. The split matters to a borrower reading a district report: the Washington office's totals mix three jurisdictions and are not a Maryland figure. 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 998 of the fiscal year 2025 7(a) approvals for Maryland projects carried the Baltimore District Office and 480 the Washington District Office, the release's own label for the Herndon office.

On that release, SBA lenders approved 1,481 7(a) loans for Maryland projects in fiscal year 2025 for $528,491,800 in gross approvals, of which 1,081 had been disbursed at the release date, against 1,233 loans for $433,760,400 in fiscal year 2024, a year-over-year rise of a fifth in count. SBA's own 7(a) Lender Activity Report for the fiscal year end, filtered to Maryland projects, gives 1,480 loans and $528,426,800 with $386,987,337 as the guaranteed portion across 106 distinct lenders, and attributes 1,000 loans for $372,491,500 to the Baltimore District Office and 1,218 loans for $471,271,300 to the Washington office across its whole multi-state jurisdiction. The 504 program is small in Maryland: 35 loans for $43,493,000 in fiscal year 2025 through five Certified Development Companies, supporting an estimated $97,859,250 in total project dollars by the 504 CDC Activity Report's label, and 38 loans for $59,041,000 in fiscal year 2024. Through June 30, 2026, fiscal year 2026 stood at 895 7(a) approvals for $366,088,200 and 24 504 approvals for $38,496,000.

Maryland's 7(a) market has one dominant lender. On the FOIA release Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company approved 554 Maryland loans for $65,193,000 in fiscal year 2025, more than triple any other lender's count; Northeast Bank followed with 160 loans for $28,108,300, Newtek Bank, National Association with 80 loans for $30,913,500, Readycap Lending, LLC with 73 loans for $25,086,300, TD Bank, National Association with 66 loans for $10,615,000, The Huntington National Bank with 50 loans for $29,126,200, BayFirst National Bank with 35 loans for $4,948,100, Celtic Bank Corporation with 31 loans for $21,517,700, United Midwest Savings Bank National Association with 31 loans for $11,650,900 and Live Oak Banking Company with 29 loans for $28,193,000, the largest average loan in the ten. The pattern a Maryland borrower should read is a super-regional bank writing many small owner-occupied loans and four national lenders, Newtek, Readycap, Celtic and Live Oak, writing the large real estate files; a hotel or self-storage file over $2 million is written to the second group's credit memo.

On the 504 side, five Certified Development Companies approved Maryland loans in fiscal year 2025 on the release, and only two of them are based in the state: Business Finance Group, Inc. led with 18 loans for $17,124,000, Rappahannock Economic Development Corporation approved 9 loans for $11,045,000, Chesapeake Business Finance Corporation of Bethesda approved 3 loans for $7,885,000, 504 Capital Corporation approved 3 loans for $6,475,000 and Prince George's Financial Services Corporation of Largo approved 2 loans for $964,000. The other three are headquartered in Virginia and also cover the Washington suburbs, so a Maryland 504 file is more often written to a Virginia CDC's project reviewer than to a Maryland one.

The Baltimore District Office's own business guide points Maryland borrowers to 7(a) loans, 504 loans and microloans and to the agency's Lender Match tool, and the office runs SBA Community Office Hours as a monthly series in neighborhood libraries, the nearest at the Baltimore County Public Library in Lansdowne on September 14, 2026. No SBA disaster declaration was listed for Maryland at the access date, and no fiscal year 2024 or 2025 district press release naming the state's top lenders could be found on the agency's site; the lender and CDC names above come from SBA's data releases rather than from a press release.

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 Maryland, 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, Maryland's 11,906 disbursed 7(a) loans for $4,423,746,700 resolved 7,106 with a 10.0 percent charge-off rate, the highest of the first five states MMCG cut from this release, and its 585 disbursed 504 loans for $553,663,000 resolved 240 at 3.3 percent. Hotels and motels are the exception to that record: 90 7(a) loans for $264,849,400, the largest average loan in the table, resolved 48 with none charged off, and 29 504 loans for $75,076,000. Restaurants, the largest count at 838 7(a) loans, resolved 411 at 12.7 percent; fitness and recreational sports centers, 205 loans, resolved 126 at 11.9 percent; child day care services, 204 loans for $166,329,200, resolved 97 at 7.2 percent. Car washes, 44 loans for $53,768,200, assisted living, 39 loans for $28,313,000, and gas stations and convenience stores, 41 loans, each resolved fewer than 30 and carry no rate. 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.

USDA Rural Development serves Maryland from the Delaware-Maryland State Office at 1221 College Park Drive, Suite 200, Dover, Delaware, under State Director Paul Ellington and Deputy State Director Letitia Nichols by the office's own contacts page as captured on April 15, 2026, with one Maryland area office, the Hagerstown Area Office at 1260 Maryland Avenue, Suite 100, Hagerstown. Business Programs, Community Facilities Programs and Water and Environmental Programs are run from Dover.

The program parameters a lender models come from the OneRD Annual Notice for fiscal year 2025, published in the Federal Register on June 25, 2024 at 89 FR 53041 and signed by Under Secretary Basil I. Gooden: for Business and Industry loans a 3.00% guarantee fee, a 0.55% periodic retention fee and an 80% guarantee; for Community Facilities a 1.25% fee, 0.50% retention and 80%; for REAP guaranteed loans a 1.00% fee, 0.25% retention and 80%; and for Water and Waste Disposal a 1.00% fee and a 90% guarantee. The Delaware-Maryland Business and Industry page adds the fiscal year 2026 change: applications requesting less than $5,000,000 receive an 85 percent guarantee and applications of $5,000,000 or more receive 80 percent, with the 3 percent initial fee, the 0.55 percent retention fee and a maximum term of 40 years.

Maryland's Rural Development volume by program, by place of performance, from the USASpending.gov data the Treasury publishes under the DATA Act: one Business and Industry guarantee in fiscal year 2025 with a face value of $2,950,000, and one in fiscal year 2024 for $10,000,000, the $10,000,000 guarantee to Platform Systems, Inc. that USDA announced on May 10, 2024 inside a $23.4 million Northeast regional round, refinancing the company's debt and funding $3.2 million of equipment to double its unmanned aerial vehicle output from six to twelve a year; 21 Rural Energy for America Program awards obligating $2,960,562 in fiscal year 2025, against 57 awards and $7,482,008 in fiscal year 2024; nine Community Facilities awards obligating $5,738,000 in fiscal year 2025, against 11 and $1,972,071 the year before; and six Water and Waste Disposal awards obligating $8,047,382 in fiscal year 2025. The REAP list USDA published on October 18, 2024, one round of fiscal year 2024's several, names eighteen Maryland awards summing $2,169,455, the largest $448,095 to Catoctin Mountain Growers Inc. of Keymar for a 609.4-kilowatt roof-mounted solar system, $251,932 to Somerset Grain Inc. of Princess Anne, $237,600 to Seema Hospitality LLC, a hotel in Grasonville, for a 172.8-kilowatt solar system, $131,628 to Turner Farms Inc. of Federalsburg and $107,100 to Talley Metal Products Inc. of Hagerstown. A national stakeholder notice of July 15, 2025 stated that USDA would open fiscal year 2026's first REAP window on October 1, 2025 and was using the rest of fiscal year 2025 to disincentivize solar on productive farmland, a policy that bears directly on a Maryland REAP pipeline built on farm-sited arrays.

The eligibility shape is set by the 50,000 line and Maryland's own population tables. Applying the rural-area test to the Maryland Department of Planning's July 1, 2024 municipal populations, Baltimore City at 568,271, Frederick City at 89,537, Gaithersburg at 70,686, Rockville at 68,417 and Bowie at 58,421 are ineligible in their own right, while Hagerstown at 43,909 and Salisbury at 33,616 fall under the line as incorporated places. The Department of Planning's 2020 Census urban and rural table shows where the eligible territory concentrates: Garrett County is 84.2% rural and Allegany 35.0% in Western Maryland; Caroline 85.0%, Kent 69.6% and Queen Anne's 59.0% on the Upper Eastern Shore; Somerset 59.7%, Dorchester 54.0% and Worcester 41.0% on the Lower Shore; Calvert 61.9% and St. Mary's 56.7% in Southern Maryland; against Baltimore City at 100.0% urban, Montgomery County at 97.3% and Prince George's at 97.6%. The study documents eligibility at the parcel against the statute rather than the county share.

The state economic development authority is the Maryland Department of Commerce at 401 E. Pratt Street, Baltimore, and its programs reach a commercial real estate borrower at three points. Advantage Maryland, the Maryland Economic Development Assistance Authority and Fund, makes conditional grants, loans and investments for business attraction and retention, infrastructure, brownfield redevelopment and daycare, each project requiring a County Resolution and a site inside a Priority Funding Area. The Maryland Industrial Development Financing Authority insures a lender's obligation and issues bonds: under its Conventional Program it insures up to 80 percent of a transaction not to exceed $2.5 million, and under its Bond Program it insures taxable or tax-exempt bonds up to 100 percent not to exceed $7.5 million, for commercial and industrial businesses in a Priority Funding Area, excluding retail, manufacturers, nonprofits and day care providers, on land, buildings, construction, equipment and eligible soft costs. The Maryland Small Business Development Financing Authority, run for Commerce by Meridian Management Group, Inc., carries the Contract Financing Program, the Equity Participation Program, the Long Term Guaranty Program, the State Small Business Credit Initiative and the Surety Bonding Program, with real estate acquisition and leasehold improvements among its uses.

Two tax credits sit beside them. The Enterprise Zone Tax Credit, under Tax - Property Article Section 9-103 and Tax - General Article Section 10-702, applies in 31 Enterprise Zones across 19 jurisdictions and 6 Focus Areas: a Real Property Tax Credit of 80 percent of the eligible assessment for each of the first 5 years, then 70, 60, 50, 40 and 30 percent over the next five, or 80 percent for the full ten in a focus area, plus a $1,000 credit per qualified new employee ($1,500 in a focus area) and $3,000, $2,000 and $1,000 over three years for an economically disadvantaged employee. The One Maryland Tax Credit, under Tax-General Section 10-714 and Economic Development Sections 6-401 to 6-405, pays up to $1 million for 10 to 24 qualified positions, $2.5 million for 25 to 49 and $5 million for 50 or more to a business that locates in a Priority Funding Area in a Tier 1 county, creates at least 10 jobs in 24 months at 120 percent of the State minimum wage of $18.00 an hour and spends at least $500,000 on the project; the Tier 1 counties as of December 2025 are Allegany, Baltimore City, Caroline, Dorchester, Garrett, Kent, Somerset, Washington and Wicomico, with Worcester eligible through September 2026. The Maryland Economic Development Corporation, a public instrumentality, has financed 338 projects over 40 years and issued $8.89 billion in bonds, including $10 million for the National Park Service's C&O Canal headquarters and a 1,274-bed student housing project at Morgan State University.

Maryland's State Small Business Credit Initiative allocation is $198.4 million across eight programs at three agencies. The Department of Housing and Community Development administers the Maryland Neighborhood Business Works Loan Participation Program with $86.4 million, companion loans up to 50 percent of a transaction with at least a 1:1 private match, loans of $800,000 to $20 million and participations up to $5 million, and loans to Community Development Financial Institutions targeting loans up to $350,000 with SSBCI funding up to 30 percent, and the Neighborhood Business Works Venture Debt program with $17.0 million on term loans up to 7 years of $500,000 to $2.5 million. Commerce, through Meridian Management Group, administers the MSBDFA Equity Participation Investment Program Loan with $33.0 million, companion loans up to 50 percent of a lender's package capped at $2 million for working capital, equipment, real property, construction or renovation and leasehold improvements, and its Equity side with $12.0 million on investments up to $1,000,000; the Maryland Technology Development Corporation administers four venture programs, the Maryland Venture Capital Limited Partnership Equity program with $10.0 million, the Maryland Venture Equity Fund with $13.0 million, the Maryland Social Impact Funds with $12.0 million and the Maryland Seed Funds program with $15.0 million. Commerce's own page confirms $45 million of the allocation went to MSBDFA. The Department of Housing and Community Development's Business Lending page now names its offerings Small Business Direct Loans, up to $2 million at a fixed 4 percent for up to 30 years, Small Business Companion Loans, up to $5 million at a fixed 4 percent for up to 30 years with a 1:1 private match, and Own Your Future, a companion loan for a small business to buy the property it operates in, for Maryland businesses of fewer than 500 employees.

Assisted living is licensed by the Office of Health Care Quality of the Maryland Department of Health under the Assisted Living Program License, with the regulation at COMAR 10.07.14 effective April 28, 2025 and the statutory basis at Health-General Article Section 19-1802, which makes the Department the lead agency for the statewide system regulating assisted living programs. Maryland's certificate of need statute, Health-General Section 19-120, requires a certificate before a person develops, relocates or changes the bed capacity of a regulated health care facility; assisted living is not among its regulated services, and its only reference to assisted living treats it as a residential component beside a relocated comprehensive care bed. A stand-alone Maryland assisted living program is licensed, not certificate-of-need gated.

No statewide hotel operating licence was found; the instrument a Maryland lender asks about is the county hotel rental tax. Local Government Article Section 20-405 authorizes each county to set its own rate by resolution, from 3 percent in most code counties up to 8 percent in Garrett County, and Chapter 638 of 2025, effective July 1, 2027, will require a county changing its rate to make the change effective July 1 with written notice to the Comptroller by the preceding January 1.

A car wash answers to two permits of the Maryland Department of the Environment under the Environment Article: Section 5-502 requires a water appropriation permit before a person appropriates or uses waters of the State, with exemptions for groundwater use of 5,000 gallons a day or less outside a water management strategy area, and Section 9-323 requires a discharge permit before a person constructs or operates a commercial facility that could increase the discharge of a pollutant to waters of the State. An RV park or campground is licensed by the local health department under COMAR 10.16.03, Camps (Campgrounds), with fees under COMAR 10.01.17, under the oversight of the Department of Health's Center for Recreation and Community Environmental Health Services; Somerset County's 2026 campground licence application is the form the regime produces at the county level.

A Maryland 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, the stabilized-year cash flow at the required coverage, and the equity and collateral mechanics stated, including where a MIDFA insurance of up to 80 percent to $2.5 million or a Neighborhood Business Works companion loan of up to 50 percent sits beside the bank. For a Business and Industry or Community Facilities file the Dover office reviews, it wants the rural-area determination at the address, the 85 percent or 80 percent guarantee with its 3 percent fee and 0.55 percent retention, and a market study to the standard in 7 CFR Part 5001. For every Maryland file it wants the state layer set out above in the lender's own vocabulary: the OHCQ licence and the absence of a certificate of need, the county hotel rental tax the operation collects, the appropriation and discharge permits a car wash carries, the county campground licence, the phased triennial assessment and the county rate the parcel will carry, the impact fee or excise tax the county schedules, and the permit clock the county's own page states. A study that carries each of those with the source named in the sentence is the study a Maryland underwriter can lift into the memo without a second round.

Maryland's underwriting map is drawn by the federal government more than by the real estate cycle: two federal installations, a federal health agency cluster and a single collapsed bridge move more deal economics here than any impact fee schedule or reassessment calendar, and a study that treats Maryland as a generic Mid-Atlantic state misses all four before it reaches the FOIA record.

First, Fort Meade and NSA. The installation in Anne Arundel County that hosts the headquarters of the National Security Agency and United States Cyber Command anchors a base the Maryland Department of Commerce puts at $61,358,748,647 in FY2021 economic output across the state's 14 major military installations, with Fort Meade itself accounting for just over 29 percent of that total on 61,495 on-site workers. A hotel, self-storage, multifamily or flex-industrial project in the Fort Meade or Annapolis Junction submarket underwrites against that worker base rather than a generic regional absorption rate, and the study prices the above-market tenant improvement costs a cleared-contractor build-out carries.

Second, NIH and FDA. The National Institutes of Health's campuses in Bethesda, Rockville, Frederick and Baltimore and the Food and Drug Administration's White Oak campus in Silver Spring anchor a biomedical research cluster the Maryland Department of Commerce puts at $41.9 billion in 2023 gross state product across 4,992 life sciences establishments. A laboratory, medical-office or multifamily project along the I-270 corridor from Bethesda through Rockville and Gaithersburg underwrites against that establishment count rather than a generic absorption rate, and the study prices the above-market tenant improvement costs a wet-lab build-out carries.

Third, the Key Bridge rebuild. The Francis Scott Key Bridge carried Interstate 695 across the only Baltimore harbor crossing a hazmat-placarded truck could legally use before a container ship destroyed it on March 26, 2024, and the Maryland Transportation Authority's November 2025 estimate puts the replacement at $4.3 billion to $5.2 billion with no traffic before late 2030. A truck stop, gas station, industrial or distribution project along Interstate 695, 95 or 895, or a hospitality project that depends on port-linked trucking, underwrites that routing constraint as a multi-year cost a generic interstate traffic count would not surface.

Fourth, the FBI Greenbelt campus. The U.S. General Services Administration selected 61 acres in Greenbelt over a Springfield, Virginia finalist in November 2023 for a new Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters, the lowest-cost of the three finalists at an estimated $26.2 million against $64.1 million for the Virginia site, and by September 2025 GSA had proposed redirecting $843,769,886 in existing appropriations plus $555 million more to a Washington renovation instead. A hospitality, multifamily or child care project in Greenbelt or College Park underwrites the campus as a federal commitment under active contest rather than a confirmed near-term absorption event, since a project sized to a multi-thousand-employee federal anchor tenant cannot carry a fixed occupancy date the way a signed private lease could.

A Maryland 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 district office the county falls under and, for a USDA file, the Dover office and the Hagerstown Area Office where Western Maryland applies. The site and market area section places the parcel in its county, its Priority Funding Area status and its rate, states the rural-area determination where USDA is the program, and draws the trade area from the road network rather than a radius. The demand section builds from the public series this page cites: the Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimates for population and its components, the Bureau of Labor Statistics for jobs, the Maryland Aviation Administration for BWI Marshall's passengers, the Maryland Port Administration for the Port of Baltimore, 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 and regulation cited, and the county hotel rental tax for a lodging property. 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 phased assessment and the county rate, the impact fee from the county schedule, and the construction cost checked against the Interagency Commission on School Construction's $416.00 per square foot for calendar 2025 and the Department of Housing and Community Development's multifamily limits of $227 to $271 per square foot. The risk section names what could move the numbers, the negative domestic migration, BWI Marshall's passenger decline, the triennial reassessment in the parcel's group, the county's fee and the REAP solar policy, and says what the sponsor has done about each. The lender package closes with the comparable-loan evidence from the FOIA release and a statement of the standards the study was prepared under.

Maryland counted 6,265,347 residents on July 1, 2025 by the Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimates, up from 6,245,314 a year earlier, an increase of 20,033, and the components are the story: natural increase added 11,444 (65,090 births against 53,646 deaths), international migration added 20,503 and domestic migration subtracted 12,127, for net migration of 8,376. The state replaces the residents it loses to other states from abroad and from births, which is a demand case for senior housing, the visitor economy and household turnover rather than for a growth pro forma.

The labor market is federal and health-heavy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Maryland Economy at a Glance table reports total nonfarm employment of 2,815.9 thousand for July 2026, seasonally adjusted, an unemployment rate of 4.2 percent, leisure and hospitality employment of 273.6 thousand and education and health services employment of 518.9 thousand. County Business Patterns for 2023 records 679 hotels and motels with 18,373 employees and an annual payroll of $766.5 million, 351 assisted living facilities with 8,413 employees and $307.7 million in payroll, and 157 continuing care retirement communities with 15,178 employees and $612.96 million, which together make senior housing the state's largest payroll among the six classes measured.

Two public demand engines carry the lodging and logistics files. The Maryland Aviation Administration's own monthly report put BWI Marshall Airport's commercial passengers at 2,344,589 in May 2025 and 26,170,847 for the twelve months ended May 2025, down 2.3 percent from the prior twelve months. The Maryland Port Administration's 2025 Foreign Commerce Statistical Report put the Port of Baltimore's public and private terminals at 49,983,622 tons of foreign cargo worth $65.6 billion in calendar 2025, 1.1 million TEUs of containers, 728,225 auto units and 848,628 tons of roll-on roll-off farm and construction machinery, first among United States ports in that category, and 11th in foreign cargo tonnage and 10th in dollar value overall.

Fort Meade and the National Security Agency headquarters sit in Anne Arundel County inside this region; the Maryland Department of Commerce puts the installation's own FY2021 output at $17,844,417,434 on 61,495 on-site workers, the largest single driver behind the $61,358,748,647 the state's 14 installations produced that year, and a hotel, self-storage, multifamily or flex-industrial project in the Fort Meade or Annapolis Junction submarket underwrites against that worker base rather than the metro's general absorption rate. The Key Bridge that carried Interstate 695 across the harbor has been gone since a container ship destroyed it on March 26, 2024, and the Maryland Transportation Authority's $4.3 billion to $5.2 billion rebuild estimate carries no traffic before late 2030, so a distribution or industrial project along Interstate 95, 695 or 895 underwrites the Port of Baltimore's $65.6 billion in foreign cargo net of that missing crossing. Baltimore is also the market with the highest rate and the largest reassessment: the Department of Legislative Services' county table puts Baltimore City's fiscal 2026 real property rate at $2.2480 per $100 of assessed value on an assessable base of $45,559,177,744, against a constant yield rate of $2.1569, and Baltimore County's at $1.1000; the group of city properties reassessed effective January 2025 rose 17.4 percent in full cash value. The Baltimore District Office at 100 S. Charles St. carries 998 of the state's fiscal year 2025 7(a) approvals, Manufacturers and Traders Trust Company's 554 loans are largely the region's, and the Census Building Permits Survey's 2025 file records 3,606 single-family permits worth $858,077,000 and 46 buildings of five units or more with 2,169 units worth $602,105,000 in the Baltimore-Columbia-Towson metropolitan area. Baltimore City is 100.0% urban by the Department of Planning's 2020 table and a Tier 1 county for the One Maryland Tax Credit, and 31 Enterprise Zones across 19 jurisdictions give a city or county project the 80 percent Real Property Tax Credit for five years. BWI Marshall's 26,170,847 passengers add to the demand for the lodging files along the same corridors.

NIH's main campus in Bethesda and the FDA's White Oak campus in Silver Spring anchor the federal biomedical cluster the Maryland Department of Commerce puts at $41.9 billion in 2023 gross state product across 4,992 life sciences establishments, and a laboratory, medical-office or multifamily project along the I-270 corridor through Rockville and Gaithersburg underwrites against that establishment count rather than a generic absorption rate. In Prince George's County, the U.S. General Services Administration selected 61 acres in Greenbelt over a Springfield, Virginia finalist in November 2023, the lowest-cost of the three sites GSA compared, then by September 2025 had proposed redirecting $843,769,886 in existing appropriations plus $555 million more to a Washington renovation instead, so a hospitality or multifamily project in Greenbelt or College Park underwrites the campus as a contested federal commitment rather than a fixed occupancy date. The Washington suburbs are also Maryland's largest pipeline and its most expensive fee regime, and they are written to a different SBA office. Montgomery County's fiscal 2026 rate is $1.0392 per $100 on an assessable base of $229,177,779,579, the largest in the state, against a constant yield rate of $0.9988, with its group reassessed in January 2025 up 17.7 percent, and Prince George's is $1.3740, up 16.1 percent. Montgomery's Impact Tax reaches $56,274 per single-family detached home and $27.60 per square foot of office in its Yellow and Green policy areas, and Prince George's Surcharge reaches $30,180 per residential unit outside the Beltway. The Building Permits Survey's 2025 file records 10,168 single-family permits worth $3,189,886,000 and 131 buildings of five units or more with 7,392 units worth $1,008,322,000 across the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria metropolitan area, which spans four jurisdictions, and Montgomery Planning's own Development Pipeline found in September 2025 that more than 10,600 approved but unbuilt housing units, 36 percent of the tracked total, were approved more than a decade earlier, that 87 percent of unbuilt units are in large multifamily rental buildings and that only 50 percent of projects approved in 2018 had been built six years later. Against that calendar, the Department of Permitting Services' Commercial Fast Track completes an eligible commercial plan review within 3 business days. Gaithersburg, Rockville and Bowie are over the 50,000 line and the counties are 97.3% and 97.6% urban, so a USDA file here is rare; the SBA file goes to the Washington Metropolitan Area District Office in Herndon and to Chesapeake Business Finance Corporation of Bethesda or Prince George's Financial Services Corporation of Largo on the 504 side.

The rest of the state is where Maryland's USDA work and its lowest rates sit. Frederick County's fiscal 2026 rate is $1.1100 per $100 and its January 2025 reassessment group rose 28.6 percent, the steepest in the state, with a county Impact Fee of $18,851 per single-family home under Local Government Section 20-703; Anne Arundel's rate is $0.9770 with its revenue growth capped at the lesser of 4.5 percent or the Consumer Price Index and an Impact Fee of $16,636 per single-family home and $10,485 per 1,000 square feet of smaller office. The Hagerstown Area Office at 1260 Maryland Avenue works Western Maryland, where Garrett County is 84.2% rural and Allegany 35.0%, and the Department of Legislative Services' impact fee report names Washington County among the fifteen levying a charge. On the Eastern Shore, Caroline County is 85.0% rural, Kent 69.6%, Queen Anne's 59.0%, Somerset 59.7%, Dorchester 54.0% and Worcester 41.0%, Salisbury sits under the 50,000 line at 33,616, and the 2025 Building Permits Survey recorded 164 single-family permits worth $40,396,000 in the Salisbury metropolitan area. This is where the state's REAP and Water and Waste Disposal awards land: Catoctin Mountain Growers' $448,095 solar system in Keymar, Somerset Grain's $251,932 dryer in Princess Anne, Seema Hospitality's $237,600 hotel solar system in Grasonville, the Commissioners of Vienna's $1,529,000 water treatment plant, Pocomoke City's $463,000 tank equipment and Talbot County's $344,000 St. Michaels wastewater project. A Shore hotel, marina, campground or assisted living file is written to the Dover office's 85 percent guarantee, the county's hotel rental tax under Local Government 20-405 and the local health department's campground licence under COMAR 10.16.03.

Calvert, Charles and St. Mary's counties are the third market a Maryland lender reads, and the Department of Planning's 2020 table puts Calvert at 61.9% rural and St. Mary's at 56.7%, eligible territory for the Dover office's programs at 85 percent below $5,000,000 for fiscal year 2026 approvals. All three are among the fifteen counties the Department of Legislative Services' May 2025 report names as levying a development impact fee, excise tax or surcharge, so a Prince Frederick, Lexington Park or Leonardtown project carries a county charge the study schedules from the report. Southern Maryland falls under the Baltimore District Office and its CDCs, and its marinas on the Patuxent and the bay are the state's marina class, eight 7(a) loans for $9,613,000 on the FOIA release, written to the water and the season. Across the bay, Talbot County's $344,000 Water and Waste Disposal award for the St. Michaels wastewater system and Vienna's $1,529,000 water treatment plant in Dorchester County are the pattern of the nine Community Facilities and six Water and Waste Disposal awards the Dover office obligated in fiscal year 2025, and a Chesapeake lodging, campground or assisted living file is written to the county's hotel rental tax under Local Government 20-405, the local health department's campground licence under COMAR 10.16.03 and the Office of Health Care Quality's licence.

Census County Business Patterns for 2023, the latest year published, counts 679 hotels and motels in Maryland (NAICS 721110), 351 assisted living facilities for the elderly (623312), 314 self-storage operators (531130), 288 car washes (811192), 157 continuing care retirement communities (623311) and 28 RV parks and campgrounds (721211). Read against the SBA record above, two classes stand out and one is a warning. Hotels pair 679 establishments and an $766.5 million payroll with the state's cleanest cohort, 48 resolved 7(a) loans with none charged off and $264,849,400 across 90 loans, and with BWI Marshall's 26,170,847 passengers and the Port of Baltimore's $65.6 billion in cargo. Senior housing pairs 351 assisted living facilities and 157 continuing care communities, roughly $920.7 million of combined payroll, with 518.9 thousand education and health services jobs and a licensing regime with no certificate of need. Self-storage, 314 establishments, is the mixed signal: the state gained 20,033 residents but lost 12,127 to other states, and a storage study is written to household turnover in the Baltimore and Washington suburbs rather than to growth. Restaurants and fitness centers, at 12.7 percent and 11.9 percent charge-off rates, are the classes a Maryland lender will underwrite hardest, and the study for either is written to a saturation test. RV parks, at 28 establishments and fewer than five SBA loans, are a Shore and Western Maryland class written to the season and the county licence.

Beyond the classes above, MMCG produces SBA, USDA and conventional-grade feasibility studies for the full range of commercial property types financed in Maryland. Restaurants are the largest count in the table, 838 7(a) loans for $342,042,500 and 33 504 loans for $26,730,000, at the state's highest charge-off rate. Child day care services, 204 loans for $166,329,200 at 7.2 percent, follow the federal workforce of Montgomery, Prince George's and Anne Arundel. Gas stations and convenience stores, 41 loans for $20,270,300, follow Interstate 95, Interstate 70 and U.S. 50 to the Shore. Industrial and logistics files follow the Port of Baltimore's 1.1 million TEUs and 728,225 auto units and Anne Arundel's $6,375 per 1,000 square feet industrial impact fee; medical office files follow the 518.9 thousand education and health services jobs; retail and multifamily files follow the Enterprise Zone credit and the Department of Housing and Community Development's $227 to $271 per square foot multifamily cost limits; glamping and short-term rental files carry the county hotel rental tax and the campground licence; marinas on the Chesapeake, eight 7(a) loans for $9,613,000, are written to the bay and the season; and Community Facilities Program files for nonprofit and public borrowers are written to the Dover office's standard, on the pattern of the nine awards it obligated in fiscal year 2025.

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 Maryland 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 Maryland credit committees expect: the Baltimore or Washington district roster and the state's own FOIA cohort by asset class, the 50,000-inhabitant rural-area test on the Department of Planning's tables and the Dover office's guarantee terms, the Commerce, MEDCO and Department of Housing and Community Development stack, the OHCQ licence with no certificate of need, the county hotel rental tax, the appropriation and discharge permits on a car wash, the county campground licence, the triennial assessment and the county rate, the county impact fee schedule and the permit clock the county states. Sponsor inquiries that involve a Montgomery or Prince George's County project, an Enterprise Zone or One Maryland credit or a Shore 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 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 Maryland 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 Maryland cities and counties served:

Baltimore and central Maryland, under the Baltimore District Office: Baltimore, Towson, Columbia, Ellicott City, Owings Mills, Glen Burnie, Annapolis, Severna Park, Odenton, Laurel, Westminster, Bel Air, Aberdeen, Havre de Grace, Frederick, Hagerstown, Cumberland, Oakland.

The Washington suburbs, under the Washington Metropolitan Area District Office: Bethesda, Silver Spring, Rockville, Gaithersburg, Germantown, Wheaton, Takoma Park, College Park, Hyattsville, Greenbelt, Bowie, Largo, Upper Marlboro, Clinton, Waldorf, La Plata.

Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore: Prince Frederick, Lexington Park, Leonardtown, Annapolis, Chestertown, Centreville, Easton, St. Michaels, Cambridge, Denton, Salisbury, Princess Anne, Ocean City, Berlin, Pocomoke City, Vienna, Elkton.

Counties: Allegany, Anne Arundel, Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Calvert, Caroline, Carroll, Cecil, Charles, Dorchester, Frederick, Garrett, Harford, Howard, Kent, Montgomery, Prince George's, Queen Anne's, St. Mary's, Somerset, Talbot, Washington, Wicomico, Worcester.