Feasibility Study Consultant in Portland, OR: SBA and USDA

A feasibility study in Portland is read by a lender or a Certified Development Company before it is read by anyone else, and it has to answer the questions that institution asks of a metro whose land supply is set by a regional government rather than by a market. Metro Portland, the Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA Metropolitan Statistical Area, holds 2,537,904 residents on the Census Bureau's 2024 estimate, led by Multnomah County at 795,897, Washington County at 611,272, Clark County at 527,269 and Clackamas County at 425,857, with Yamhill, Columbia and Skamania counties completing the seven. It builds inside an urban growth boundary that Oregon Metro must keep large enough to accommodate 20 years of growth, it layers three local business income taxes, city, county and Metro, on a Portland return and adds a 1 percent surcharge on the retail sales of large retailers, and it crosses the Columbia River into Washington, where two of its counties sit under a different state tax regime. A Portland feasibility study that imports a template written for an unbounded, single-state metro misses each of those, and an underwriter will notice. MMCG Invest, LLC is a feasibility study company serving borrowers, SBA 7(a) lenders, 504 CDCs, USDA Rural Development guaranteed lenders and conventional banks across Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Yamhill and Columbia counties in Oregon and Clark and Skamania counties in Washington. The Portland work covers ten of the asset classes the firm studies, among them hotels and motels, car washes, self-storage, RV parks and campgrounds, assisted living and continuing care, gas stations and convenience stores, restaurants, fitness and recreational sports centers, marinas and child day care. Every metro lending figure on this page is computed from the SBA's own 7(a) and 504 FOIA release by county membership, never read from a district total. Fees start at $4,900. Standard delivery runs 9 to 16 business days, a rush track is available at 5 business days, and every intake request receives a response within 12 business hours.

The Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA metro is home to about 2,537,904 residents per the U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates, led by Multnomah County at 795,897; Washington County at 611,272; Clark County at 527,269; Clackamas County at 425,857.

The urban growth boundary, a hard edge on where development may go. Oregon Metro, the Portland region's elected regional government, states that it is responsible for managing the greater Portland region's urban growth boundary, a boundary that protects farms and forests and helps ensure the efficient use of land, and that the boundary has to have enough land in it to accommodate 20 years of growth. Oregon is not the only state with growth boundaries, and Washington's own Growth Management Act governs the Washington bank of this metro, so the claim is not that the instrument is unique but that it is administered for this region by an elected regional government against a twenty-year land supply test: land supply here is an administered quantity, not a market outcome. For a feasibility study that reframes the site-selection section from the first page. A parcel outside the boundary is not a comparable at all, whatever its price, because it cannot be developed to urban use on the project's timetable, so the competitive set is drawn inside the line and every land comparable is screened for which side of it the parcel sits on. The scarcity that shows up as a land price is a regulatory quantity that a Metro decision can change, so the study says where the boundary runs relative to the subject, whether the parcel is inside it today, and what the land-cost assumption rests on. A study that treats Portland land supply as elastic will misread both the entry price and the competitive set.

A city business tax on net income, with a surcharge on large retailers. The City of Portland Revenue Division states that its Business License Tax is a net income tax on business activity conducted in Portland, and that for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2019 the Clean Energy Surcharge is a 1 percent surcharge on retail sales within the city imposed on large retailers, with a business required to register if it reports total gross income of $1 billion or more and Portland gross income of $500,000 or more. The surcharge rarely touches a single-site SBA borrower directly, but it reaches a franchisee of a large system and the anchor tenants whose presence a retail demand model leans on, so it belongs in the competitive picture. The city net income tax reaches the borrower directly, and it is not alone: the Revenue Division administers three local business income taxes on the same return, the Portland Business License Tax, the Multnomah County Business Income Tax and the Metro Supportive Housing Services Business Income Tax, which Metro states is a 1 percent business income tax on net income for businesses with gross receipts above $5 million. Metro's supportive housing taxes also include a 1 percent marginal personal income tax on taxable income above $125,000 for individuals and $200,000 for joint filers for tax years 2021 through 2025, which enters the household budgets in the demand analysis. A Portland city projection therefore carries three local income-tax layers beneath Oregon's own state income tax, where a national template carries none. The state layer is treated on the Oregon feasibility study page; this page carries the local lines.

The boundary and the city tax are Oregon instruments, and the river is inside the metro. The urban growth boundary is administered by an Oregon regional government and the business income taxes described above are levied by an Oregon city, county and regional government, while the Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro Metropolitan Statistical Area is delineated across Oregon and Washington, with member counties on both banks of the river. The river therefore runs through the middle of one housing and labour market with a different land-use regime and a different tax regime on each side. This is a rare metro: the two questions a feasibility study asks first, can this be built here and what will the operator owe, are both answered differently by a crossing of a few hundred metres. A comparable set assembled without regard to the river is not a comparable set, and a demand argument that treats the two banks as one market has to say why.

An SBA 504 feasibility study in the Portland metro is written for two readers at once: the Certified Development Company that packages the debenture and the third-party lender that holds the first lien. Both underwrite under SBA SOP 50 10 8, and whether a study is required on a given file is their call under that SOP; when one is requested, MMCG writes it to that standard. A 7(a) study follows the same discipline for a single lender. The SBA closed fiscal year 2025 having guaranteed 84,400 7(a) and 504 loans for $44.8 billion, comprising 77,600 7(a) loans for $37 billion and 6,750 504 loans for $7.8 billion, per SBA News Release 25-83 of September 30, 2025, and the Portland cut below is the metro's share of that activity.

The Portland metro record is computed from the SBA's 7(a) and 504 FOIA release, labelled as of June 30, 2026, by summing the seven member counties of the Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA Metropolitan Statistical Area. In fiscal year 2025 the metro recorded 739 7(a) approvals for $339,471,600 and 41 504 approvals for $58,537,000. The most active 7(a) lenders in the metro in fiscal 2025 by approval count were U.S. Bank, National Association (107 loans), Columbia Bank (102), Northeast Bank (72), Newtek Bank, National Association (44), Readycap Lending, LLC (32) and Banc of California (18 loans for $40,240,000, the largest dollar total among the lenders listed). On the 504 side, Mortgage Capital Development Corporation approved 16 loans for $27,374,000, followed by Evergreen Business Capital (13 loans, $17,471,000) and Cascade Capital Funding (9 loans, $9,814,000). Across loans disbursed in fiscal years 2010 to 2026, the ten asset classes in the SBA table account for 902 7(a) loans for $643,823,300 and 83 504 loans for $80,936,000 in the metro. The method behind the computation and the full asset-class table sit in the Portland feasibility market research post.

Under 7 U.S.C. 1991(a)(13)(A), the terms rural and rural area mean any area other than a city or town that has a population of greater than 50,000 inhabitants and any urbanized area contiguous and adjacent to such a city or town, and the USDA Rural Development eligibility map is the authoritative test for any address. USDA credit therefore runs on a statutory geography, not a county line, and not on the urban growth boundary either: the two are separate determinations, and a Portland study documents them separately. The urbanized core that runs with Portland, Vancouver and Hillsboro is out. What remains in this metro is the outer parts of the member counties in both states, beyond that urbanized area. Because the test turns on the subject address rather than on the name of a town, MMCG verifies eligibility at the address on the USDA Rural Development eligibility map at intake, before any work on the study begins, and no town is named on this page as eligible.

When the address qualifies, the study is written to the 7 CFR Part 5001 standard that USDA Rural Development and its guaranteed lenders apply. The cross-river variable weighs most here, because the parts of the metro that can pass the rural test lie in the outer reaches of counties on both sides of the Columbia, so a USDA study for a Skamania County address and one for a Yamhill County address are written under different state regimes.

A hotel feasibility study Portland lenders can underwrite starts from the metro's own SBA record. Across loans disbursed in fiscal years 2010 to 2026, hotels and motels in the Portland MSA drew 52 SBA 7(a) loans for $104,807,900 with a 2.3 percent charge-off rate, and 15 SBA 504 loans for $30,917,000, the largest 504 dollar total among the ten classes but a cohort under 30 loans, so no charge-off rate is shown. Against that lending history the study sets the Portland variables that shape a hotel pro forma: the urban growth boundary, which fixes where a competing property can be built; the City of Portland Business License Tax, a net income tax on business activity conducted in Portland that reaches an operator inside the city and not one across the river in Clark County; and the state line itself, which puts a hotel on the Washington side and a hotel on the Oregon side under different tax regimes.

Each point traces to a regional government, a city revenue page, the United States Code or the SBA's own file rather than to a market report.

An engagement begins with three things: the project address, the asset class and the name of the lender or CDC contact who will read the report. At intake the address is placed relative to the urban growth boundary, checked for which of the three local business income taxes reach it, checked against the state line, and tested on the USDA Rural Development eligibility map under 7 U.S.C. 1991, and MMCG sends a first response within 12 business hours. Fees start at $4,900. Standard delivery runs 9 to 16 business days from engagement, and a rush track at 5 business days is available when a committee date requires it.

The report is formatted for SBA, CDC, USDA and conventional submission in one document: the market and demand analysis, the competitive supply review drawn inside the boundary, the projected operating statement with its tax lines set to the side of the river the site is on, the debt-service coverage test and a sources list that lets an underwriter check every figure against the publisher it came from. The draft goes to the lender or CDC contact named at intake so that questions are answered before the credit memo is written, and the final report is prepared under USPAP and written to SBA SOP 50 10 8 for 7(a) and 504 files and to 7 CFR Part 5001 for USDA files.

MMCG Invest, LLC is a feasibility study consultancy that specializes in SBA and USDA feasibility studies for lenders, Certified Development Companies, USDA Rural Development guaranteed lenders and the borrowers they serve, with Portland and its seven-county, two-state metro among the markets it covers. The practice is led by Michal Mohelsky, J.D., FMVA, Practicing Affiliate of the Appraisal Institute. Reports are prepared under USPAP, written to SBA SOP 50 10 8 for 7(a) and 504 files and to 7 CFR Part 5001 for USDA files, and built on primary sources named in each report: Oregon Metro, the City of Portland Revenue Division, the United States Code, Census Bureau files and the SBA's 7(a) and 504 FOIA release, from which every metro lending figure is computed in-house by county membership. Every figure on this page traces to one of those sources.