Mississippi Feasibility Study: Lender-Grade SBA and USDA Studies

MMCG Invest, LLC prepares feasibility studies for Mississippi projects where the underwriting questions reach past the national checklist. Mississippi is the state where Amazon's data center wave, a total statewide planned investment Amazon's own newsroom puts at $25 billion with 2,000 high-skilled jobs planned across Madison, Hinds and Warren counties, ties multifamily and select-service hotel demand near those three counties to the company's own construction and hiring cadence rather than a countywide population trend; where Ingalls Shipbuilding's Navy backlog, a $9.6 billion multi-ship contract HII's own newsroom states the company was awarded on September 24, 2024, on top of more than 11,000 employees per HII at the Pascagoula yard, the largest manufacturing employer in Mississippi, anchors Gulf Coast industrial, flex and workforce-housing demand to the yard's own hiring and production cadence; where the coastal wind pool, the Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association's own site states the Legislature created it by House Bill 274 of the 1987 session as the wind and hail insurer of last resort for six coastal counties, sets a coastal insurance line a lender must model explicitly rather than assume at a generic Gulf Coast rate; and where Grand Gulf Nuclear Station, at 1,443 megawatts the largest single-unit nuclear power plant in the country and licensed through Nov. 1, 2044, per Entergy, concentrates Claiborne County's tax base and workforce around one federally licensed facility. Every engagement is calibrated to the project address, the program of record, and the specific lender, CDC or USDA office carrying the deal: the Mississippi District Office in Jackson or the Gulfport Branch Office on the coast for an SBA file, and the Mississippi State Office in Jackson or its Decatur, Grenada or Hattiesburg area office for a USDA file.

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

The U.S. Small Business Administration serves Mississippi through the Mississippi District Office at 210 E. Capitol Street, Suite 900, Jackson, MS 39201 (phone 601-965-4378), and the Gulfport Branch Office at Hancock Bank Plaza, 2510 14th Street, Suite 103, Gulfport. The District Office serves the state's northern 70 counties, and the Gulfport Branch serves the 12 southernmost counties. On SBA's own fiscal year 2025 FOIA release, restricted to Mississippi projects, 346 of the year's 7(a) approvals carried the Mississippi District Office and 1 carried the South Florida District Office, a reflection of the servicing lender's own district rather than the project's location. Mississippi's 7(a) approvals ran to 358 loans for $166,146,600 in fiscal year 2024, 347 loans for $192,268,200 in fiscal year 2025, and 222 loans for $179,813,900 in fiscal year 2026 through June 30; on the 504 side, 10 loans for $19,037,000 in fiscal year 2024, 8 loans for $14,411,000 in fiscal year 2025, and 4 loans for $9,082,000 in fiscal year 2026 through June 30. The count has eased year over year even as the average loan has grown, a pattern this page reports as published, from each fiscal year's own approvals and dollars, rather than annualized from a partial year. Nationally, SBA's own fiscal year 2025 activity report shows a record 78,078 7(a) loans for $37.3 billion and about 6,750 504 loans for $7.8 billion, a combined $45.1 billion, the highest on record; Mississippi's own 347 7(a) and 8 504 approvals that year sit against that national backdrop. A decade-cumulative total sometimes cited for Mississippi, 3,638 loans for about $1.62 billion supporting 34,140 jobs, spans multiple fiscal years rather than any single one, and this page uses only the single fiscal year figures above rather than restating that cumulative total as an annual figure.

On SBA's fiscal year 2025 FOIA release, restricted to Mississippi projects, the ten most active 7(a) lenders by count were Northeast Bank with 38 loans for $4,611,700, Peoples Bank with 37 loans for $9,320,500, Community Bank of Mississippi with 33 loans for $11,548,600, Newtek Bank, National Association with 28 loans for $8,357,000, Live Oak Banking Company with 22 loans for $30,617,400, the largest average loan in the ten, Trustmark Bank with 20 loans for $2,556,200, The Huntington National Bank with 19 loans for $23,205,900, The Citizens National Bank of Meridian with 19 loans for $4,428,700, Readycap Lending, LLC with 11 loans for $1,394,500, and First Bank of the Lake with 10 loans for $7,577,000. The pattern a Mississippi borrower should read is a cluster of Mississippi-headquartered community and regional banks writing many smaller loans, Peoples Bank, Community Bank of Mississippi and Trustmark Bank among them, alongside national lenders, Live Oak, Newtek, Huntington and Readycap, writing fewer but larger files.

On the 504 side, Three Rivers Local Development Company, Inc. led Mississippi's fiscal year 2025 approvals with 6 loans for $12,232,000, followed by Central Mississippi Development Company, Inc. with 1 loan for $1,318,000 and JEDCO Development Corporation with 1 loan for $861,000, the three Certified Development Companies with Mississippi projects on our own cut of that year's release. Mississippi Business Finance Corporation is a statewide 504 conduit alongside First South CDC and Gulf Coast Business Finance, and the 504 program's maximum debenture is $5 million ($5.5 million for small manufacturers and certain energy projects).

The table below is our own cut of SBA's 7(a) and 504 FOIA release, restricted to loans whose project state is Mississippi, 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, Mississippi's 6,137 disbursed 7(a) loans for $2,500,520,800 resolved 4,340 at an 8.6 percent charge-off rate, and its 79 disbursed 504 loans for $94,478,000 resolved 39 at 10.3 percent, though no asset class in the table clears the 30-loan threshold on the 504 side of Mississippi's own record. Hotels and motels carry the largest average loan of the ten classes in the table, 171 7(a) loans for $338,174,200, and the cleanest rated outcome, resolving 90 at a 3.3 percent charge-off rate; its 17 504 loans for $40,236,000 resolved only 9, too few to rate. Restaurants carry the largest count, 324 7(a) loans for $133,107,300, resolving 172 at 5.2 percent, with 15 504 loans for $12,117,000 resolving only 3. Gas stations and convenience stores and fitness and recreational sports centers share the sharpest warning in the table, each resolving at a 9.2 percent charge-off rate, on 101 loans for $75,982,200 and 87 loans for $20,935,600. Child day care services, 86 loans for $24,713,100, resolved 53 at 3.8 percent. Car washes, 19 loans for $12,762,600, self-storage, 21 loans for $18,457,200, RV parks and campgrounds, 8 loans for $13,455,700, assisted living and continuing care, 9 loans for $13,634,800, and marinas, fewer than 5 loans on either program, each resolved too few loans in Mississippi's own record to carry a rated cohort. 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 Mississippi from the Mississippi State Office at 100 W. Capitol St., Suite 831, Jackson, MS 39269 (phone 601-965-4316), with area offices in Decatur, Grenada and Hattiesburg carrying the state office's programs into the counties around each. The office runs Single-Family Housing, Multifamily Housing, Business and Industry and Community Facilities programs statewide, the same four program families the state's own obligation record below is organized around. About 1.7 percent of Mississippi's land area is ineligible for USDA housing programs, meaning roughly 98 percent qualifies, essentially everything outside the immediate Jackson, Gulfport, Hattiesburg and Meridian urban cores; the eligible population threshold differs by program, generally up to 35,000 for a Single-Family suburban carve-out and 10,000 automatically, under 50,000 for Business and Industry and the Rural Energy for America Program, and up to 20,000 for Community Facilities. DeSoto County, the Southaven area, is only about 62 percent eligible by area, narrower than the statewide figure, so a project's own address, not a county-wide assumption, decides the question there. With only about 1.7 percent of the state's land area ineligible statewide, the question a study most often answers is not whether a county qualifies at all, but which parcel inside it does and under which program's own population threshold.

By the Treasury's own USASpending.gov record of place of performance obligations, Mississippi carried 4 Business and Industry guarantees in fiscal year 2025 for $77,808 in obligated subsidy cost on $38,904,000 of guaranteed loan face value, against 2 guarantees for $211,825 in subsidy cost on $9,250,000 of face value in fiscal year 2024. The Rural Energy for America Program obligated 28 awards for $5,959,986 in fiscal year 2025, down from 63 awards for $15,299,857 in fiscal year 2024. Community Facilities Loans and Grants obligated 11 awards for $3,717,903 in fiscal year 2025, against 15 awards for $12,578,752 in fiscal year 2024. Water and Waste Disposal obligated 4 awards for $564,078 in fiscal year 2025, against 3 awards for $1,169,764 in fiscal year 2024.

The state's economic development authority is the Mississippi Development Authority, which runs the ACE Fund, a deal-closing grant program that has awarded more than $62 million supporting about $2.5 billion of investment, the Advantage Jobs Rebate, a cash payroll rebate of up to 4 percent for up to 10 years, the Development Infrastructure Program, and a sales and use tax exemption for a data center investing at least $50 million and creating at least 50 jobs at 150 percent of the average wage. The Major Economic Impact Act has backed four projects as of fiscal year 2025: Steel Dynamics, with more than $246 million in bonding, Amplify Cell Technologies at $482 million, Continental Tire at $263 million, and Amazon's data center wave at $260 million, together about $15.85 billion of investment and roughly 6,500 jobs. The Mississippi Development Authority closed more than 219 projects between January 2020 and January 2026, and 2025 alone brought more than $21 billion in new capital investment to the state, a total Amazon's data center wave and the Golden Triangle's Aluminum Dynamics mill each contributed to without accounting for the whole of it. The data center sales and use tax exemption in particular is the instrument behind AWS's own $260 million share of the Major Economic Impact Act total, and a sponsor's own project must clear its $50 million and 50-job threshold, at 150 percent of the average wage, before the exemption applies.

Coastal insurance is Mississippi's clearest statutory gate. The Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association, created by House Bill 274 of the 1987 session of the Mississippi Legislature, is the wind and hail insurer of last resort for six counties: George, Hancock, Harrison, Jackson, Pearl River and Stone. Assessments on the association are capped at $250 million a year or 6 percent of the prior year's insured limits, whichever is less, under the 2007 Mississippi Economic Growth and Redevelopment Act, and the association covered approximately 13,936 policies as of April 2024, with percentage deductibles of 2 to 5 percent or more of the dwelling value standard on the coverage it writes. Rates rose 16 percent effective January 1, 2026, per Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, on top of more than $400 million the state has directed toward reinsurance subsidies since 2005, a strategy Chaney has called unsustainable, and the Legislature shut down the state's Strengthen Mississippi Homes home-hardening grant program in July 2025, removing the Insurance Department's own spending authority for it.

Mississippi's 2004 tort reform, House Bill 13, effective September 1, 2004, caps non-economic damages in a general civil case at $1,000,000, caps medical malpractice non-economic damages at $500,000, sets a graduated punitive damages cap that runs as low as 2 percent of net worth for a smaller defendant, abolished joint and several liability statewide, and enacted venue reform, reversing what the state's own research calls its pre-reform judicial hellhole reputation centered on the 22nd Judicial Circuit. The caps remain in force and bear on every Mississippi engagement's own liability and insurance assumptions, coastal or inland, whatever asset class the study covers.

A Mississippi 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 which SBA office the county reports to, the Mississippi District Office's northern 70 counties or the Gulfport Branch's southern 12. For a Business and Industry, Rural Energy for America Program or Community Facilities file the Mississippi State Office reviews, it wants the rural area determination at the address against the program's own population threshold, and a market study to the standard in 7 CFR Part 5001. For a coastal file it wants the Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association's coverage position and rate trajectory quantified in the insurance line, not assumed. Where the sponsor is layering a Mississippi Development Authority incentive onto the capital stack, the committee wants the award's own status, applied for, approved or closed, distinguished from a confirmed source of funds, and the Major Economic Impact Act's own $15.85 billion four-project record read as context rather than as security for this file. A study that carries each of those with the source named in the sentence is the study a Mississippi underwriter can lift into the memo without a second round.

Mississippi's underwriting file runs past the standard district office and reassessment checklist. A confirmed multibillion-dollar data center investment program, the state's largest private employer's Navy shipbuilding backlog, a state-created insurer of last resort for six coastal counties, and the country's largest single-unit nuclear power plant each move a Mississippi deal in a way no national template accounts for, ranked below by the size of the investment, contract or asset each one attaches to the deal.

Amazon's own newsroom states that its total statewide planned investment in Mississippi data centers has reached $25 billion, with plans to create 2,000 high-skilled jobs across its Mississippi data center operations, layered from an $11 billion expansion in Madison County, a $1 billion project in Hinds County retrofitting the former Delphi plant in Clinton, and a $3 billion campus in Warren County near Vicksburg. A lender underwriting workforce housing, select-service hospitality, retail or industrial and flex product in any of those three counties should tie demand, wage and workforce-housing assumptions to Amazon's own construction and hiring cadence rather than to a countywide population trend, since the state's own population has stayed essentially flat for a decade.

HII's own Ingalls Shipbuilding page states the Pascagoula yard employs more than 11,000 people, calling it the largest manufacturing employer in Mississippi, and HII's own newsroom states the yard was awarded a $9.6 billion multi-ship procurement contract on September 24, 2024, covering three San Antonio-class amphibious ships and a modification for the next America-class large-deck amphibious ship. A lender underwriting industrial, flex, hospitality or workforce-housing product on the Gulf Coast, and especially in the Pascagoula submarket, should tie demand, wage and workforce-housing assumptions to Ingalls' own hiring and production cadence rather than to a generic Gulf Coast manufacturing trend.

The Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association's own site states it was established by House Bill 274 of the 1987 session of the Mississippi Legislature to provide an adequate market for windstorm and hail insurance in the coastal area of Mississippi, and its own frequently asked questions page states it insures properties in six counties: George, Hancock, Harrison, Jackson, Pearl River and Stone. A lender underwriting any commercial asset in those six counties must confirm whether the property can obtain wind and hail coverage in the private market or must rely on this state-created insurer of last resort, and where the association is the only available carrier, its coverage terms and rate trajectory belong in the pro forma's insurance line and debt service coverage calculation rather than a generic Gulf Coast assumption.

Entergy's own site states that Grand Gulf Nuclear Station, in Port Gibson, became the first and only nuclear power plant to produce electricity in Mississippi and, after a 2012 power upgrade, reached 1,443 megawatts, making it the largest single-unit nuclear power plant in the country, licensed through Nov. 1, 2044 and staffed by approximately 774 employees. A lender underwriting industrial, manufacturing or data center product anywhere on the Entergy Mississippi grid, and especially any project sited in Claiborne County itself, should treat this single largest-in-the-country generating asset as a locational factor in power availability and recognize that Claiborne County's tax base and workforce concentrate around one federally licensed facility rather than a diversified local economy.

A Mississippi 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, and whether the county falls under the Mississippi District Office or the Gulfport Branch Office, or, for a USDA file, the area office nearest the project, Decatur, Grenada or Hattiesburg. The site and market area section places the parcel in its county, states the rural area determination where USDA is the program, and draws the trade area from the road network rather than a radius, naming the interstate corridor the site sits on, I-10, I-20, I-22, I-55 or I-59. The demand section builds from the public series this page cites: Census Bureau population and migration data, our own cut of the SBA FOIA release, USDA Rural Development's own place of performance obligation data, Mississippi Development Authority program figures for the named investment and incentive projects behind a submarket, and, on the coast, Coastal Mississippi's own visitor series. The competitive set section names the operating properties, their scale and their position. The regulatory section carries the licence and statute sequence with the source cited, the Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association's coverage terms for a coastal property foremost among them, alongside the House Bill 13 tort reform caps where liability exposure bears on the file. The financial section runs the stabilized year, the ramp, operating expenses, reserves and discounted cash flow at the lender's coverage, with the insurance line quantified against the association's own rate trajectory where the asset sits in the six wind pool counties and the state's own income tax trajectory noted where it bears on a sponsor-level projection. The risk section names what could move the numbers, the SBA office the county reports to, the USDA population threshold, and the tort reform caps that bear on liability assumptions, 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.

Mississippi's Vintage 2024 population estimate stood at about 2,943,045, essentially flat for the past decade and down roughly 45,000 from its 2014 peak; the state ranks 49th in population change over the decade, ahead of only West Virginia. Median household income is $56,447, about 30 percent below the national median of $80,734 and the lowest of any state, and the state's gross domestic product ran to about $158.2 billion in 2024. Mississippi carries 82 counties, and its underwriting demand case leans less on organic population growth than on named employer and investment anchors: Amazon's data center wave, Ingalls Shipbuilding's Navy backlog, and Grand Gulf Nuclear Station chief among them. Away from those anchors, several Delta counties are losing population outright: Sharkey County fell 18.2 percent and Quitman County fell 14.1 percent over the same period, the sharpest declines in the state, a reminder that a Mississippi demand case has to be built county by county rather than assumed from the state total.

Grand Gulf Nuclear Station, Entergy's 1,443 megawatt plant at Port Gibson in Claiborne County, is the largest single-unit nuclear power plant in the country, licensed through Nov. 1, 2044, staffed by approximately 774 employees, and owned 90 percent by System Energy Resources, Inc. and 10 percent by Cooperative Energy. Entergy Mississippi serves about 459,000 customers across 45 counties on the grid the plant anchors, while Mississippi Power, a Southern Company utility headquartered in Gulfport, serves about 188,000 customers across 23 southeastern counties. A lender underwriting industrial, manufacturing or data center product anywhere on the Entergy Mississippi grid, and especially in Claiborne County itself, should read the plant's licensed output as a locational factor in power availability rather than assume a generic regional power supply.

USDA Rural Development eligibility reaches nearly all of the state: only about 1.7 percent of Mississippi's land area is ineligible for USDA housing programs, essentially everything outside the immediate Jackson, Gulfport, Hattiesburg and Meridian urban cores. Business and Industry guarantees and the Rural Energy for America Program reach towns under 50,000 population; Community Facilities reaches rural areas up to 20,000 population; and Single-Family and Guaranteed Housing programs use Census rural definitions, generally up to about 35,000 for a suburban carve-out and 10,000 automatically. The 2022 Census of Agriculture recorded 31,290 farms across about 10.2 million acres of Mississippi farmland, averaging 328 acres each, with the farm count down 11 percent since 2017, the rural land base against which the state's USDA business programs are measured. Beyond the four metros below, Mississippi carries further federal and institutional demand anchors a study can name directly: Columbus Air Force Base's 14th Flying Training Wing in the Golden Triangle, staffed at about 2,500 to 2,750 personnel, Naval Air Station Meridian's strike-pilot training mission, and the Port of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, which the state's own research places at about 14 million tons of cargo a year, alongside the smaller Mississippi River ports at Natchez, Greenville and Rosedale and the 234-mile Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway serving Port Bienville and the Yellow Creek terminal in the northeast. Mississippi's major federal installations together, Keesler, Columbus, NAS Meridian, Camp Shelby and NCBC Gulfport chief among them, support the state's own research estimates at roughly 25,000 personnel and more than $3 billion a year, a base a study should confirm against each installation's own current published figures rather than this page's own secondary estimate.

The 2025 Build Up Mississippi Act, House Bill 1, signed March 27, 2025, puts the state's individual income tax on a path toward zero: a flat 4.4 percent rate in 2025 on income over $10,000, stepping to 3 percent by 2030, with revenue-triggered cuts toward zero potentially by 2040. The same act cut the state's grocery sales tax from 7 percent to 5 percent effective July 1, 2025, and raised the gasoline tax from 18 cents to 27 cents a gallon by 2027, while the general sales tax stays at 7 percent, among the highest in the nation, and retirement income is already exempt statewide. Government, manufacturing and retail each carry more weight in Mississippi's own economy than they do nationally, a structural pattern a Mississippi study reads against the named employer anchors above rather than against a diversified metro economy.

Mississippi's automotive and advanced manufacturing base clusters outside the four metros above. Nissan Canton, in Madison County, carries about 5,000 direct employees and nearly $4 billion invested since 2003, including a $500 million EV retooling program upskilling about 2,000 workers toward electric vehicle production across a 4.7 million square foot facility producing the Altima, Frontier and Titan, and Toyota Mississippi in Blue Springs carries about 2,000 to 2,250 employees and more than $1 billion invested since 2007, building the Corolla at a capacity of about 170,000 vehicles a year. In the Golden Triangle, Columbus, Starkville and West Point, Steel Dynamics has operated since 2014 and its Aluminum Dynamics mill, a $2.5 billion investment backed by a $247 million incentive package in 2022, ranks as the largest economic-development project in Mississippi's history and carries about 1,000 jobs at an average wage near $93,000; Kloeckner Metals broke ground in October 2025 on a further $90 million aluminum processing facility carrying 40 jobs, the first tenant of the mill's own Customer Park. Golden Triangle Development LINK, the region's own development authority, reports more than $10 billion of investment and more than 10,000 jobs brought to the area over 20 years, and the cluster's own manufacturing base also includes a PACCAR engine plant, Yokohama Tire and Airbus Helicopters alongside Steel Dynamics and Aluminum Dynamics. Tupelo, in Lee County, anchors a furniture-manufacturing cluster around North Mississippi Medical Center and Renasant Bank's own headquarters, while Meridian, home to Naval Air Station Meridian, carries a city median household income of about $36,562 against a poverty rate of about 34.3 percent, among the lowest in the state.

Jackson, the state capital, anchors Mississippi's largest metropolitan statistical area, spanning Hinds, Madison and Rankin counties, and is anchored in turn by state government and the University of Mississippi Medical Center, the state's only academic medical center and its largest single employer, a distinction that sets Jackson apart from Gulfport's single-employer manufacturing base and Southaven's logistics base alike. Nissan Canton and Continental Tire anchor the metro's manufacturing base, and Amazon's data center wave runs directly through it: an $11 billion expansion of Amazon's existing Madison County data center operations and a $1 billion project retrofitting the former Delphi manufacturing plant in Clinton, Hinds County, sit alongside a further $3 billion Amazon campus in Warren County near Vicksburg, together carrying most of the $25 billion, 2,000-job statewide program Amazon announced, on top of the original Madison County campus that ranked as the largest capital investment in Mississippi's history when it broke ground.

Hinds County itself lost 7.6 percent of its population over the period Harrison and DeSoto counties grew, a divergence a Jackson-area feasibility study should read as an employer-anchor story rather than a countywide growth story: demand for workforce housing, select-service hospitality and retail near the Madison and Clinton data center sites should be tied to Amazon's own construction and hiring schedule rather than to Hinds County's own population trend. Continental Tire's Hinds County plant was itself backed by a $263 million Major Economic Impact Act package, one of the four projects behind the incentive act's $15.85 billion combined total named above, and Nissan Canton's own $500 million electric vehicle retooling program layers a second manufacturing capital cycle onto the same Madison County submarket the AWS data centers sit in. Nissan's own economic footprint is said to support about 25,000 jobs statewide once its supplier network is counted, a separate figure from the roughly 25,000 personnel the state's federal installations support and not one this page adds to it.

Gulfport anchors the Gulfport-Biloxi-Pascagoula metropolitan statistical area, home to about 426,800 residents in 2024, and carries two of this page's four thesis conditions at once. Harrison County alone, the metro's core, carries about 211,000 residents, among the fastest-growing counties in the state alongside DeSoto. Ingalls Shipbuilding's 800-acre Pascagoula yard, the largest manufacturing employer in the state at more than 11,000 employees and part of a parent company carrying a shipbuilding backlog past $45 billion, runs a Navy backlog reinforced by the $9.6 billion multi-ship contract HII was awarded on September 24, 2024, and its own trade school, the schoolhouse, enrolls about 700 students training into the yard's workforce. The same six coastal counties, Hancock, Harrison, Jackson, Pearl River, Stone and George, sit inside the Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association's territory, where rates rose 16 percent effective January 1, 2026, per Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, on top of more than $400 million the state has directed toward reinsurance subsidies since 2005; the Legislature shut down the state's Strengthen Mississippi Homes home-hardening grant program in July 2025, leaving Mississippi the only coastal state without an active one.

Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi carries about 6,725 active-duty and civilian personnel and trains more than 28,000 students a year across 400 courses in 37 career fields, and Naval Construction Battalion Center Gulfport carries about 5,000 active-duty and civilian personnel. Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, one of the same six wind pool counties, is NASA's largest rocket-engine test facility and carries a workforce the state's own research estimates at more than 5,100. Singing River Health System, with about 3,000 employees and 701 beds across three hospitals, anchors coastal healthcare, and the Port of Gulfport, the state-owned deepwater port, runs 250 acres with 6,000 feet of berthing and 400,000 square feet of covered warehouse, recently adding a $20 million ship-to-shore gantry crane and pursuing channel dredging. Coastal Mississippi, the region's own tourism organization, reports that 15.7 million visitors explored the coast in 2024, fueling more than $2.2 billion in economic impact and adding over 3,000 new jobs, with overnight travelers spending an average of $231 per visit for nearly $1.5 billion and 9.2 million day visitors contributing more than $700 million more.

Wind and hail policies in the six counties commonly carry percentage deductibles of 2 to 5 percent or more of the dwelling value, and the association covered approximately 13,936 policies as of April 2024. A Gulfport-area or Pascagoula-area study documents whichever of the three policies, homeowners coverage excluding wind, the association's own wind and hail coverage, and National Flood Insurance Program coverage, applies to a given asset, since a coastal property routinely carries all three at once.

Southaven anchors the Mississippi side of the Memphis logistics corridor, alongside Olive Branch, Horn Lake and Hernando in DeSoto County, Mississippi's fastest-growing county at about 197,000 residents, up 6.1 percent. About 62 percent of DeSoto County is USDA Rural Development eligible by area, narrower than the roughly 98 percent that holds statewide, so a DeSoto County project's own address, not a county-wide assumption, determines whether a Business and Industry guarantee or a Rural Energy for America Program loan applies. Amazon's Legacy Park fulfillment center in the county totals 1 million square feet and 500 jobs, per the Mississippi Development Authority, one of more than 150 fulfillment centers the tri-state Memphis logistics region carries behind roughly 64 major logistics investments since 2020. Other named logistics tenants in the corridor include Milwaukee Tool and AWG, alongside multiple additional Amazon facilities beyond Legacy Park itself, and DeSoto County's own submarkets, Southaven, Olive Branch, Horn Lake and Hernando, each carry a share of that investment rather than concentrating it in one city. The Mississippi Development Authority's own data center sales and use tax exemption, alongside city and county fee-in-lieu agreements, is the incentive instrument a qualifying data center investment in the Southaven area would apply through, the same instrument behind Amazon's own data center wave around Jackson.

Hattiesburg is home to the University of Southern Mississippi, Forrest General Hospital and Camp Shelby, the largest state-owned National Guard training site in the country at about 134,000 acres, and it is where USDA Rural Development locates its Area 4 office, one of three area offices, alongside Decatur's Area 2 and Grenada's Area 3, that carry the Mississippi State Office's programs to the rest of the state. Hattiesburg sits on Interstate 59, the corridor running between Meridian and the Louisiana line, and the city's own logistics position ties its industrial and workforce-housing demand to that corridor rather than to any single anchor employer. A Hattiesburg-area feasibility study reads the metro against that federal, institutional and highway base rather than against a single dominant private employer the way a Pascagoula or Madison County study does, and a Camp Shelby-adjacent site in particular should be underwritten against the installation's own training calendar rather than a civilian population trend.

Read against the FOIA record above, and against the named employer anchors this page carries, hotels and motels carry both the largest average loan size of the ten classes in the Mississippi record and, at a 3.3 percent charge-off rate, the cleanest of the state's five rated classes. The state's aging population, about 528,800 residents 65 and older, 18 percent of the state, supports the case for assisted living and continuing care even though that class resolved only 3 loans in the FOIA record, too few to carry a rated cohort; self-storage and car washes are unrated for the same reason, their resolved cohorts of 12 and 14 loans each falling under the 30-loan threshold this page's own methodology sets, though neither shows an elevated pattern in the loans that did resolve. Gas stations and convenience stores and fitness and recreational sports centers are Mississippi's two highest rated 7(a) classes, each at a 9.2 percent charge-off rate against the state's own 8.6 percent average across all industries, and a Mississippi gas station or convenience store study is written to a saturation test against the interstate corridor it sits on: I-10 on the coast, I-20 between Jackson, Meridian and Vicksburg, I-22 toward Tupelo and Memphis, I-55 the length of the state, or I-59 between Meridian and Hattiesburg. Restaurants carry the largest count in the state's own record, 324 loans, and resolve at 5.2 percent, and child day care services, tied closely to USDA Community Facilities financing in rural counties, resolve close behind at 3.8 percent. Camp Shelby's roughly 134,000 acres and the Natchez Trace corridor support RV park, campground and agritourism feasibility beyond the FOIA record's own thin 8-loan cohort, and Grand Gulf Nuclear Station's approximately 774 employees anchor Claiborne County's own workforce-housing case independent of the coastal or Jackson-area employer clusters this page names elsewhere.

Beyond the classes above, MMCG produces SBA, USDA and conventional-grade feasibility studies across the asset types Mississippi's own record and public data support. Marinas cleared fewer than 5 loans in the FOIA record on both the 7(a) and 504 sides, and RV parks and campgrounds resolved 6 of 8 loans, both too thin a cohort to rate, though the Coast, the Natchez Trace and the state's reservoirs anchor demand. Industrial and logistics files follow Port of Pascagoula, the state's largest port by tonnage at about 32 million tons a year, and Chevron's Pascagoula refinery, whose own annual report lists operable capacity at 369,000 barrels a day on a site of about 3,000 acres employing about 1,500 people and refining nearly 7 million gallons of products a day; a study in the northeast instead follows the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway's Port Bienville and Yellow Creek terminals. Medical office files follow the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson and Singing River Health System's three coastal hospitals. Retail and multifamily files are written to the same employer anchors as the realities above, Amazon's data center wave and Ingalls Shipbuilding chief among them, and to the income-tax-elimination trajectory the 2025 Build Up Mississippi Act set in motion, which strengthens a retention and household-formation case even as it shifts fiscal weight toward the sales and property tax lines a study must still model. Community Facilities Program files for hospital, water system and public borrowers follow the Mississippi State Office's own obligation record: 11 awards for $3,717,903 in fiscal year 2025 and 15 awards for $12,578,752 in fiscal year 2024, alongside the Water and Waste Disposal program's own 4 awards for $564,078 in fiscal year 2025.

Mississippi's own public records carry a market layer a lender reads alongside the SBA charge-off table above. The U.S. Census Bureau's Building Permits Survey recorded 8,405 new housing units authorized statewide in 2025, 7,318 of them single-family. The Mississippi Department of Revenue reports casino gross gaming revenue of $2,431,793,990 for calendar year 2024, the state's most recent complete year and the demand base behind Gulf Coast and Mississippi River lodging. The Census Bureau's County Business Patterns count 1,981 manufacturing establishments statewide in 2023, the industrial base the Pascagoula shipyards and the Madison and Warren county data center wave sit within. The Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimate puts the state's resident population at 2,954,160 as of July 1, 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 Mississippi 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 a Mississippi credit committee expects: the Mississippi District Office's or Gulfport Branch Office's own roster and the state's own FOIA cohort by asset class, the USDA population threshold by program, the Mississippi Development Authority's incentive stack, the Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association's coverage and rate trajectory for a coastal asset, and the 2004 tort reform caps that bear on liability assumptions statewide. Sponsor inquiries that involve a coastal asset inside the wind pool's six counties, a USDA file near a population threshold, or a site near one of the state's named employer anchors, Amazon's data center wave, Ingalls Shipbuilding, Nissan Canton, Toyota Mississippi or the Golden Triangle's Aluminum Dynamics mill, typically require the upper end of the standard range, since each carries its own layer of public record the study must reconcile.

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 Mississippi 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, whether the project sits in the Mississippi District Office's territory, the Gulfport Branch Office's twelve coastal counties, or a USDA area office's own footprint. 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 Mississippi cities and counties served, grouped by the SBA and USDA office whose territory each falls under:

Jackson and the central counties, under the Mississippi District Office: Jackson, Pearl, Madison, Ridgeland, Brandon, Clinton, Canton, Vicksburg, along Interstate 20 and Interstate 55.

Gulfport, Biloxi and the coast, under the Gulfport Branch Office: Gulfport, Biloxi, Pascagoula, Ocean Springs, Bay St. Louis, inside or adjoining the Mississippi Windstorm Underwriting Association's six counties.

Southaven and the DeSoto County corridor, along Interstate 55 and Interstate 22 into the Memphis logistics region: Southaven, Olive Branch, Horn Lake, Hernando.

Hattiesburg, the Golden Triangle and the north: Hattiesburg, Tupelo, Meridian, Columbus, Starkville, Oxford, Corinth, Greenville, Laurel, Natchez, served by the Mississippi State Office's Decatur, Grenada and Hattiesburg area offices.

Counties this page's research names: Hinds, Madison, Rankin, Warren, Hancock, Harrison, Jackson, Pearl River, Stone, George, DeSoto, Forrest, Claiborne, Lee, Lauderdale, Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay.