Washington Feasibility Study: Lender-Grade SBA and USDA Studies

MMCG Invest, LLC prepares feasibility studies for Washington State projects where the underwriting questions reach past the national checklist. Washington taxes nearly every business's gross revenue directly through its B&O gross receipts tax rather than a corporate or personal income tax, tiering the service and other activities classification most commercial borrowers use at 1.5 to 2.1 percent of gross receipts with zero deduction for expenses, by the Washington State Department of Revenue, so the tax prices as its own fixed line against revenue. Aerospace employment here runs to 14.3 percent of the nation's total, 73,852 workers at 234 establishments by the Washington State Legislature's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee, a Boeing-centered concentration that ties housing and hotel demand near Everett and Renton to that company's delivery cycle. The Hanford cleanup, the federal government's largest nuclear cleanup, draws $3.2 billion in federal funding for fiscal year 2026 by the Washington State Department of Ecology, the largest income stream reaching the Tri-Cities. Joint Base Lewis-McChord anchors approximately 110,000 people in South Puget Sound by the U.S. Army's Joint Base Lewis-McChord Garrison, a federally paid population whose housing allowance sets lodging and retail demand from Lakewood to DuPont. And a new 2028 income tax reaches personal income for the first time in state history, 9.9 percent on a household's adjusted gross income over $1 million beginning January 1, 2028, by the Washington State Department of Revenue, a threshold a lender should test against a sponsor's exit or refinance. Every engagement is calibrated to the project address, the program of record, and the specific lender, CDC or USDA area 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 Washington market overview within one business day of submission.

The U.S. Small Business Administration serves Washington State through the Seattle District Office at 2401 4th Ave., Suite 450, Seattle, with a branch office at 801 W. Riverside Ave., Suite 444, Spokane, under District Director Melanie Norton. The agency's own district page states that the Seattle District Office serves all of Washington State except Clark, Cowlitz, Wahkiakum and Skamania counties, which fall under the Portland District Office at 419 SW 11th Avenue, Suite 310, Portland, and that the Seattle territory also takes in ten counties of northern Idaho. That boundary matters to a borrower reading a district press release: a Seattle District total is not a Washington total. 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 2,025 of the FY2025 7(a) approvals in Washington were processed by the Seattle District Office and 191 by the Portland District Office.

On that same release, SBA lenders approved 2,217 7(a) loans in Washington State in fiscal year 2025 for $1,125,701,900 in gross approvals, of which 1,780 had been disbursed at the release date, against 1,869 loans for $964,657,100 in fiscal year 2024. The 504 program approved 116 loans for $127,335,000 in fiscal year 2025 and 106 loans for $129,788,000 in fiscal year 2024. Through June 30, 2026, fiscal year 2026 stood at 1,349 7(a) approvals for $711,229,000 and 70 504 approvals for $84,755,000. Nationally, SBA reported in its news release of September 30, 2025 that it guaranteed 77,600 loans totaling $37 billion in the 7(a) program and 6,750 loans totaling $7.8 billion in the 504 program in fiscal year 2025, a combined 84,400 loans and $44.8 billion and the agency's highest volume on record; Washington's 7(a) count in the release is a little under 3 percent of that national count.

The most active 7(a) lenders in Washington by FY2025 approval count on the FOIA release are Columbia Bank with 252 loans for $26,807,400, U.S. Bank, National Association with 193 loans for $67,335,800, Northeast Bank with 180 loans for $28,439,100, KeyBank National Association with 137 loans for $42,657,900, Banner Bank with 133 loans for $32,005,900, and Readycap Lending, LLC with 102 loans for $109,524,500, the largest dollar volume of any lender in the state. Newtek Bank, National Association, Washington Trust Bank, Sound Credit Union and BayFirst National Bank complete the ten. The pattern a Washington borrower should read from that list is the split between the community banks that write many smaller loans and the national non-bank lenders that write fewer, larger ones: a hotel or car wash file over $2 million is more likely to sit with the second group, and the study is written to the credit memo that group's underwriters expect.

On the 504 side, the most active Certified Development Companies in Washington by FY2025 approval count are Evergreen Business Capital with 46 loans for $49,245,000, Northwest Business Development Association with 37 loans for $36,819,000, and Ameritrust CDC with 25 loans for $33,160,000. Evergreen Business Capital, headquartered at 13925 Interurban Ave. S., Suite 100, Seattle, describes itself on its own site as a Certified Development Company authorized by the SBA since 1980 that has facilitated over $800 million in SBA 504 loans, serving lenders in Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Northern Idaho. SBA's own list of Certified Development Companies also names Ameritrust CDC at 111 Main St. Suite 102, Edmonds.

Three Washington-specific SBA notices from the last two fiscal years bear on a file in underwriting now. SBA's state-level analysis of October 21, 2025 reported that Washington State was losing an estimated 45 SBA loans per week and $24,098,402 in weekly loan proceeds while the 7(a) and 504 programs were frozen during the federal shutdown, a reminder that an approval date is a variable in a Washington closing calendar. On March 12, 2025 the agency reported more than $12 million in disaster loans approved after the November 2024 bomb cyclone, $3 million to businesses and $9 million to residents, under declaration WA 20932-05. And on February 26, 2026 SBA's Office of Disaster Recovery & Resilience opened disaster loan assistance under declaration WA-20025-01 for the 2025 Severe Winter Storms in Chelan, Cowlitz, Grays Harbor, Island, King, Kitsap, Kittitas, Lewis, Okanogan, Pacific, Pierce, San Juan, Skagit, Skamania, Snohomish, Thurston, Wahkiakum, Whatcom and Yakima counties, at rates as low as 4 percent for businesses, 3.625 percent for private nonprofits and 2.875 percent for homeowners and renters. A project in one of those nineteen counties carries a physical-damage history the lender will ask the study to address.

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 Washington, 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, and is shown only where that resolved cohort holds at least 30 loans. Across all industries, Washington's 21,645 disbursed 7(a) loans for $11,020,100,400 resolved 13,657 with a 5.5 percent charge-off rate, and its 2,147 disbursed 504 loans for $1,849,458,000 resolved 955 at 1.3 percent. Hotels and motels stand out: 491 7(a) loans for $1,114,045,700 with a 0.9 percent charge-off rate on 348 resolved, and 118 504 loans for $270,723,000 with none charged off among 55 resolved. Restaurants, the largest count at 1,994 7(a) loans, resolved 1,197 at 6.0 percent; gas stations and convenience stores, 783 loans for $1,375,814,200, resolved 460 at 0.9 percent; assisted living and continuing care, 250 loans for $217,838,600, resolved 110 at 0.9 percent. One caution travels with every rate: the June 2026 release collapses every open loan, current or stressed, into the single status EXEMPT, so a stressed-but-open loan cannot be told from a current one in this vintage, and the rate reads the resolved cohort only.

USDA Rural Development's Washington Rural Development State Office sits at 1835 Black Lake Blvd. SW, Suite B, Olympia, under State Director Kirk Pearson and Deputy State Director Peter McMillin, with Brandon Hoffman as Director of Rural Business & Cooperative Programs and Koni Reynolds as Director of Community Programs, by the agency's Washington Contacts page as captured on October 15, 2025. Area offices sit in Olympia and Mount Vernon for western Washington and in Wenatchee, Spokane Valley and Yakima for eastern Washington. For the Business and Industry Guaranteed Loan program the state is worked in four contact regions rather than by office: Northwest Washington (Island, King, San Juan, Skagit, Snohomish and Whatcom counties), Southwest Washington (Clallam, Clark, Cowlitz, Grays Harbor, Jefferson, Kitsap, Lewis, Mason, Pacific, Pierce, Skamania, Thurston and Wahkiakum), Northeastern Washington (Chelan, Douglas, Ferry, Lincoln, Okanogan, Pend Oreille, Stevens and Spokane) and Southeastern Washington (Adams, Asotin, Benton, Columbia, Franklin, Garfield, Grant, Kittitas, Klickitat, Walla Walla and Yakima), by the program's Washington page as captured on September 29, 2025.

The state office published these program parameters for fiscal year 2025. Business and Industry, Rural Energy for America Program and Community Facilities guaranteed loans approved in fiscal year 2025 carry an 80 percent guarantee, the Community Facilities guaranteed loan is capped at $100 million, and the rural-area test for all three is a city or town of no more than 50,000 residents outside the urbanized area contiguous to a larger one. The Community Facilities Direct Loan program's Washington page listed rates of 4.500 percent at the poverty tier, 4.875 percent at the intermediate tier and 5.25 percent at the market tier for July 1 to September 30, 2025, with every loan in that quarter obligated at the lower market rate.

Washington's Rural Development volume by program, by place of performance, from the USASpending.gov data the Treasury publishes under the DATA Act, the same award submissions that feed USDA's Rural Data Gateway: six Business and Industry guarantees in fiscal year 2025 with a guaranteed loan face value of $36,278,625, against five in fiscal year 2024 for $9,010,000; 52 Rural Energy for America Program awards obligating $5,271,647 in fiscal year 2025, against 104 awards and $10,804,602 in fiscal year 2024; 14 Community Facilities awards obligating $5,729,818 in fiscal year 2025, against 12 and $9,043,991 the year before; and nine Water and Waste Disposal awards obligating $19,905,900 in fiscal year 2025. USDA's own Washington releases put dated faces on the REAP figures: $744,365 across seven Washington projects on January 22, 2024, over $2.3 million across 18 projects in 13 counties on April 23, 2024, and 19 Washington projects for over $2 million on October 3, 2024, the first month of fiscal year 2025, inside a $104 million national round.

The eligibility shape a lender checks first is the 50,000 line. USDA's 2020-census review of the state's rural housing maps, effective October 1, 2023, found no changes in either direction, and the eligibility boundary a Washington B&I or Community Facilities file is tested against is the same statutory test applied to the project address, which the study documents parcel by parcel rather than by county name.

The state's economic development authority is the Washington State Department of Commerce, and its Access to Capital page names the programs a commercial real estate borrower can stack with an SBA or USDA loan. Washington received a $163.4 million allocation of federal State Small Business Credit Initiative funding, announced March 2, 2023, and Commerce runs it through named administrators. The Owner-Occupied Commercial Real-Estate Loan Program (CRE), administered by Heritage Bank Community Development Entity (HBCDE), LLC, offers subsidized loans up to $5 million with 10-year terms for tenant improvements, construction, purchase or refinancing of owner-occupied real estate. The Collateral Support Program (CSP), administered by Evergreen Business Capital Community Finance (EBCCF), is built around the SBA 504 program: it covers a second mortgage during the interim loan period up to a maximum of 40 percent of the interim loan amount on certificate of deposit terms of 6 to 24 months. The Revenue-Based Financing Fund (RBF), administered by Grow America CILF and Denkyem Co-op, makes micro business investments of $10,000 to $100,000 and business growth investments of $101,000 to $500,000, repaid as a share of earnings at fixed pricing of 1.1x to 1.5x. The Venture Capital Fund carries a $49 million allocation invested through Flying Fish Partners, Pier 70 Ventures and VertueLab, and a Technical Assistance Program (SSBCI TA) offers free legal, accounting and financial advisory work to applicants.

Commerce also seats the Community Economic Revitalization Board (CERB) under Chapter 43.160 RCW, which funds public infrastructure that supports private business growth, through the CERB Committed Private Partner Program (CPP), the CERB Planning Program (PP), the CERB Prospective Development Program (PD), CERB Rural Broadband (RB) and the CERB Rural Ports Program; its own page reports $7,250,000 approved on November 20, 2025, $9,605,000 on January 15, 2026, $3,360,000 in low interest loans and grants on May 21, 2026 and $240,000 in grants on July 16, 2026. The Rural Washington Loan Fund under Chapter 43.168 RCW, the Brownfields Revolving Loan Fund, the Bond Cap Allocation Program for tax-exempt private activity bonds, the Hanford Area Economic Investment Fund (HAEIF) and the Equitable Access to Credit Program complete the state layer, and Commerce is running the Washington Opportunity Zones nomination round for the new federal designation cycle.

Assisted living is licensed by the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services under Chapter 18.20 RCW, with the licensing rules at Chapter 388-78A WAC; WAC 388-78A-2030 requires the licence whenever a non-family party provides housing, one or more basic services and general responsibility for resident safety. Memory care is gated separately: RCW 18.20.540 requires DSHS certification to operate a memory care unit, effective July 1, 2026, on top of a valid assisted living licence, with dementia-specific infrastructure including elopement prevention, 24-hour awake staff coverage, at least six hours of annual dementia-related continuing education for staff and a secured outdoor area. The smaller adult family home, licensed for up to six residents, sits under Chapter 70.128 RCW and Chapter 388-76 WAC. Washington's certificate of need statute, Chapter 70.38 RCW, defines a health care facility at RCW 70.38.025 as hospices, hospice care centers, hospitals, behavioral health hospitals, nursing homes, kidney disease treatment centers, ambulatory surgical facilities and home health agencies, a list that does not name assisted living, so the certificate of need that gates a nursing home does not, on the statute's own words, gate an assisted living or memory care licence.

Hotels, motels, bed and breakfasts, resorts and hostels are transient accommodations licensed annually by the Washington State Department of Health under Chapter 70.62 RCW and Chapter 246-360 WAC, a licence required for any facility offering three or more lodging units for stays of less than thirty days. Lodging tax is separate: RCW 67.28.180 authorizes a basic hotel-motel tax of up to 2 percent on stays under one month, including private campgrounds and RV parks, credited against the state's 6.5 percent retail sales tax, and RCW 67.28.181 authorizes an additional special lodging tax of up to 2 percent that is not credited.

No car-wash-specific licensing statute exists in Washington; the gate is water. Under Chapter 90.48 RCW, RCW 90.48.160 requires a Washington State Department of Ecology permit before a commercial operation disposes of liquid waste into the waters of the state, RCW 90.48.260 gives Ecology the point-source permit program, and Chapter 173-216 WAC, the State Waste Discharge Program, governs discharge to state waters or a municipal sewer. Ecology's Vehicle and Equipment Washwater Discharges Best Management Practices Manual states that untreated washwater may not be discharged to storm drainage and names zero discharge through closed-loop recycling as the preferred method, with discharge to a sanitary sewer second, which is why a Washington car wash study carries a water-reclaim line in its capital budget.

RV parks and campgrounds answer to two regimes: health and sanitation under the local health jurisdictions of Chapter 70.05 RCW and the State Board of Health's Chapter 246-376 WAC, and, for any park that sells memberships, the Washington State Department of Licensing's camping resort rules under Chapter 19.105 RCW and Chapter 308-420 WAC.

The questions a Washington credit committee puts to a feasibility study follow from the programs above, and the study answers them in the order the underwriter reads them. For a 7(a) or 504 file written under SOP 50 10 8, the memo wants the market area drawn to the parcel and the competitive set named, the demand case built from public data the underwriter can check, the stabilized-year cash flow at the coverage the lender requires, and the equity injection and collateral mechanics stated, including the Collateral Support Program's coverage of up to 40 percent of a 504 interim loan where the sponsor qualifies. For a Business and Industry or Community Facilities file the state office reviews, the memo wants the rural-area determination at the address, the 80 percent guarantee and its fee stated, and a market study that meets the standard in 7 CFR Part 5001. For every Washington file the memo also wants the state layer the pages above set out: the licence the asset needs and who issues it, the certificate of need position, the lodging or use tax the operation collects, the washwater permit a car wash carries, the impact fees the city schedules, the design review or permit calendar the city's own report supports, and the property tax the parcel's levy code produces. A study that carries each of those in the lender's own vocabulary, with the source named in the sentence, is the study a Washington underwriter can lift into the memo without a second round.

Washington's underwriting differs from a national template because of how the state raises money and drives demand: it taxes business activity directly rather than income, its largest demand generators are a single aerospace manufacturer, a federal cleanup program and a single military installation, and it is about to tax high earners for the first time in its history. The realities below are what a Washington credit memo asks the study to settle, in the order the money moves.

First, the B&O gross receipts tax reaches nearly every Washington business's gross revenue directly, with the service and other activities classification most commercial borrowers fall into tiered at 1.5 to 2.1 percent of gross receipts and zero deduction for labor, materials or any other cost of doing business, by the Washington State Department of Revenue's own classification schedule. Because the tax is indifferent to profitability, a car wash, gas station or hotel can owe a real B&O liability in a year it books a net loss, so the study prices B&O as its own fixed line against gross revenue rather than folding it into the generic tax allowance a national template would use.

Second, aerospace employment concentrates here more than in all but one other state: Washington's aerospace industry employed 73,852 workers at 234 establishments in 2022, 14.3 percent of the nation's aerospace employment and the second-largest state total behind California, at an average wage of about $128,000, by the Washington State Legislature's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee, and Boeing itself reported 66,797 Washington employees in December 2023, an 11 percent increase over the prior year. Because Boeing represents most of that cluster's employment, a project near the Everett or Renton commute sheds should tie its workforce housing, hotel and retail absorption to Boeing's own delivery and headcount trend rather than to generic regional population growth.

Third, the Hanford cleanup, the federal government's largest nuclear cleanup, drew $3.2 billion in federal funding for fiscal year 2026, an increase of more than $200 million over the prior two years, against the Washington State Department of Ecology's own estimate that a compliant budget would need $6.15 billion. That federal appropriation, not the private economy, is the largest concentrated income stream reaching south central Washington, so a hotel, assisted living, retail or multifamily study for the Tri-Cities should treat the cleanup's funding cycle, and its recurring shortfall against Ecology's own estimate, as a leading demand and risk indicator rather than a footnote.

Fourth, Joint Base Lewis-McChord anchors approximately 110,000 people in Pierce County, 40,000 active duty, 60,000 family members and 15,000 civilian and contract employees, by the U.S. Army's Joint Base Lewis-McChord Garrison. That is a stable, federally paid population whose off post housing follows the Basic Allowance for Housing schedule rather than local wage growth, so a lodging, storage or retail study near Lakewood, DuPont or the Interstate 5 corridor should treat troop strength and the housing allowance, not the county's general population trend, as the leading indicator, and should carry a base realignment decision as a concentration risk most Washington submarkets do not.

Fifth, the 2028 income tax reaches personal income in Washington for the first time in the state's history, a 9.9 percent rate beginning January 1, 2028 on a household's adjusted gross income over $1 million, under Senate Bill 6346 and the Washington State Department of Revenue's own income tax page. The charge sits on the sponsor rather than the project entity, which makes it the line a lender tests on a sponsor-level guarantee: a large disposition, a refinance-driven distribution or simply a strong operating year can carry a household's adjusted gross income over the new threshold on top of whatever the entity already paid in B&O tax, and a lender underwriting a hold period that now reaches 2028 should size the sponsor's guarantee to after-tax exit or refinance proceeds, not the pre-tax figure.

A Washington 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 and, for a USDA file, the area office and B&I contact region. The site and market area section places the parcel in its county, its city and its levy code, 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 and the Office of Financial Management's April 1 series for population, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Employment Security Department for jobs, State of Washington Tourism for visitors, 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, certification and permit sequence with the statute cited, the lodging or use tax collected, and the impact fee schedule where a Growth Management Act city applies one. 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, insurance and fee lines built from the parcel and the city rather than from a national ratio. The risk section names what could move the numbers, the design review calendar, the memory care certification date, the international visitor decline, the shutdown exposure SBA itself measured, and the disaster declaration the county sits under, 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.

Washington State counted 8,001,020 residents on July 1, 2025 by the Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimates, up 73,062 from 7,927,958 a year earlier. Natural change added 17,230 (83,368 births against 66,138 deaths), net international migration added 46,202 and net domestic migration added 9,238, for total net migration of 55,440: three quarters of the state's growth now arrives through migration. The state's own Office of Financial Management, on its April 1 vintage, put the population at 8,176,300 on April 1, 2026, an increase of 61,200 or 0.8 percent in a year, with net migration accounting for 43,870 people or 72 percent of the increase and natural increase for 17,330 or 28 percent.

The labor market is large and slow. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Washington Economy at a Glance table reports total nonfarm employment of 3,652.5 thousand for July 2026, seasonally adjusted, a 12-month change of 0.5 percent, an unemployment rate of 5.0 percent, leisure and hospitality employment of 348.7 thousand, up 1.4 percent over the year, and education and health services employment of 574.2 thousand, up 1.5 percent. The Employment Security Department's July 2026 release adds that health services alone added 4,800 jobs from June to July 2026 and leisure and hospitality added 2,700, inside a month that added 21,100 jobs and a year that added 16,100, a 0.4 percent increase. That combination, a health sector adding jobs faster than the state and a hospitality sector growing at three times the state rate, is the demand backdrop for the two asset classes Washington's SBA record already favors.

Tourism is a $25.3 billion economy that has stopped growing in volume. State of Washington Tourism reported 110.8 million visits in calendar 2024, up 2.7 percent, with visitor expenditures of $25.1 billion, up 5.3 percent, and direct state and local tax revenue of $2.6 billion, up 4.1 percent. For calendar 2025 the same office reported 111 million visits, up 0.1 percent, expenditures of $25.3 billion, up 0.9 percent, and direct tax revenue of $3.5 billion, up 2.3 percent, and it reported that international arrivals to the state, combining overseas and Canadian markets, fell 16.5 percent in 2025 against a 5.5 percent decline for the United States as a whole. A Washington hotel study written in 2026 models a domestic drive market and a shrinking Canadian one, and it says so.

The Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue metro carries the state's commercial pipeline, and its public numbers are the ones a lender will recognize. Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Pierce County reports a population of approximately 110,000, 40,000 active duty, 60,000 family members and 15,000 civilian and contract employees, by the garrison's own page, the demand base for the lodging, storage, car wash and quick-service files along the Interstate 5 corridor from Lakewood to Olympia. The Northwest Seaport Alliance, the marine cargo partnership of the Port of Seattle and the Port of Tacoma, handled 3.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units in calendar 2025 (3,156,598 by its own annual report), down 5.5 percent from 3.3 million in 2024, and 22,540,331 metric tons of containerized cargo, the throughput that sets the industrial and truck-service demand around the Kent Valley and the Tacoma tideflats.

Aerospace is the other anchor of this metro's pipeline. Washington's aerospace industry employed 73,852 workers at 234 establishments in 2022, 14.3 percent of the nation's aerospace employment, at an average wage of about $128,000, by the Washington State Legislature's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee, and Boeing itself reported 66,797 Washington employees in December 2023. The cluster concentrates in the Everett and Renton commute sheds, and because Boeing represents most of that employment, a project sited near either plant should tie its absorption model to Boeing's own delivery and headcount trend rather than to the metro's general population growth.

The cost side of a Puget Sound file is public too. The King County Assessor reports that 2026 property taxes across all county taxing districts total $8.4 billion, up approximately $770 million or 10 percent from $7.7 billion in 2025, as total assessed value rose from $873 billion to $920 billion; the City of Seattle's own regular levy produced $315,353,614 on an assessed value of $297,933,809,008, with a further $483,511,926 in voter-approved bond and special levies, for $798,865,540 in city-levied taxes due in 2025. The Department of Revenue's ratio study puts King County's assessment ratio at 92.5 percent and Pierce County's at 90.9 percent. The Mortenson Construction Cost Index for Seattle recorded non-residential construction costs up 1.71 percent in the third quarter of 2026 and 3.48 percent over the preceding twelve months, and the state's School Construction Assistance Program raised its Construction Cost Allocation to $399.38 per square foot on July 1, 2026 from $386.66 in 2025, $375.00 in 2024 and $258.92 in 2023, the clearest public series of what a square foot of institutional construction costs in this state.

Redmond's 2026 Impact Fees Schedule is the worked example of what a Growth Management Act city charges the assets on this site: fire fees of $208.06 per 1,000 square feet of office and $239.84 of retail, parks fees of $1,873.06 per 1,000 square feet of office and $830.96 of retail, transportation fees of $6,344.07 per hotel room and $3,870.96 per motel room outside the city's centers (falling to $4,813.50 and $2,937.06 inside the Overlake, Downtown and Marymoor centers), $1,935.48 per congregate care or assisted living unit, $1,201.34 per 1,000 square feet of self-storage and $33,379.61 per self-serve car wash stall, and school fees of $7,277.00 per single-family and $170.00 per multi-family unit collected for the Lake Washington School District. Seattle's design review clock is the other Puget Sound constant: 739 days on average for Full Design Review, of which 490 days, or 66 percent, sat with the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections; 641 days for Administrative Design Review, 408 of them with the department; 465 days for Streamlined Design Review, 285 with the department; and 155 to 652 days for Master Use Permits that need no design review, the most complex of them 613 to 652 days.

Hanford anchors the Tri-Cities end of this region more than any private industry does. The Hanford Site drew $3.2 billion in federal cleanup funding for fiscal year 2026, against the Washington State Department of Ecology's own estimate that a compliant budget would need $6.15 billion. That federal appropriation is the largest income stream reaching Richland, Kennewick and Pasco, so a study for the Tri-Cities should treat the cleanup's funding cycle as a leading demand indicator rather than a footnote.

Benton, Franklin, Yakima, Grant, Adams, Kittitas, Klickitat and Walla Walla counties form the Southeastern Washington B&I contact region, served by the Yakima Area Office at 1606 Perry Street and worked by USDA's Wenatchee and Spokane Valley offices to the north, and they are where the state's REAP awards concentrate: the 18 projects in 13 counties USDA announced on April 23, 2024 and the 19 projects it announced on October 3, 2024 were agricultural and rural small business awards, most of them in the irrigated basin. Kittitas and Yakima counties are also in the 2025 winter storm declaration. For a Richland, Kennewick, Pasco or Yakima project the study carries the Department of Revenue's assessment structure and the county's own levy code, the Chapter 70.62 RCW licence for a lodging property, the Chapter 173-216 WAC discharge permit for a car wash on a septic or ground-discharge site, and the Community Facilities standard with its 4.500 percent to 5.25 percent direct-loan rates for a nonprofit or public borrower; the competitive set is drawn from the 186 RV parks, 428 car washes and 1,211 hotels and motels County Business Patterns counts statewide, cut to the county.

East of the Cascades the numbers turn in the borrower's favor on cost and against on volume. The City of Spokane's regular levy rate is $2.00679 per $1,000 on an assessed value of $35,246,740,817, producing $70,732,863 in regular levy revenue and $88,655,307 with bond and special levies, and the Spokane County Board of County Commissioners voted to forgo the 1 percent regular levy increase permitted under RCW 84.55 for 2026, holding the county's rate at its 2025 level; the county's assessment ratio is 95.09 percent. The City of Spokane's own commercial permit guidance sets a 30-day turnaround goal for full-route permits on new commercial buildings and reports the city at or below that goal over the trailing nine months, a fraction of the Seattle design review calendar. The City of Tacoma's regular levy, for comparison, is $1.68659 per $1,000 on $44,791,567,761 of assessed value, producing $75,545,096.

Eastern Washington is also where USDA Rural Development's programs land. The Wenatchee Area Office, the Spokane Satellite Office in Spokane Valley and the Yakima Area Office serve the Northeastern and Southeastern B&I contact regions, and the REAP rounds USDA announced for Washington in 2024, seven projects for $744,365 in January, 18 projects in 13 counties for over $2.3 million in April and 19 projects for over $2 million in October, are agricultural and rural small business awards concentrated in the Columbia Basin, the Yakima Valley and the Palouse. An RV park, a rural lodging property, a small assisted living home or a grain-belt convenience store in one of those counties is written to the state office's Community Facilities or B&I standard and to the Seattle District's Spokane branch office at 801 W. Riverside Ave.

The northwest corner of the state is where the international visitor decline lands first. Whatcom, Skagit, Island and San Juan counties sit in the Northwest Washington B&I contact region alongside King and Snohomish, are served by the Mount Vernon Area Office at 2005 E. College Way, and all four are named in the 2025 Severe Winter Storms declaration WA-20025-01. State of Washington Tourism's 2025 report put international arrivals to the state, combining overseas and Canadian markets, down 16.5 percent in a year, three times the 5.5 percent decline for the United States as a whole, and a Bellingham or Blaine lodging, fuel or retail study is written to that Canadian day-trip market rather than to the statewide 111 million visits. USDA's rural-eligibility review kept Anacortes, Ferndale, Lynden, Oak Harbor and Sedro-Woolley on the eligible side of the housing map in 2018 and moved Mount Vernon and Lake Stevens off it; a lender reads that history as the shape of the 50,000 line, and the study tests the B&I address against the statute rather than the map.

Census County Business Patterns for 2023, the latest year published, counts 1,824 assisted living facilities for the elderly in Washington (NAICS 623312) and 205 continuing care retirement communities (623311), 1,211 hotels and motels (721110), 535 self-storage operators (531130), 428 car washes (811192) and 186 RV parks and recreational camps (721211). Read against the SBA record above, three classes stand out. Assisted living pairs the largest establishment count with a 0.9 percent charge-off rate on 110 resolved 7(a) loans and a health sector adding 4,800 jobs in a single month. Hotels pair 1,211 establishments with 491 7(a) loans for $1,114,045,700 at a 0.9 percent charge-off rate and 118 504 loans with none charged off, inside a visitor economy that spent $25.3 billion in 2025 even as international arrivals fell 16.5 percent. Self-storage and car washes are smaller classes by count, 535 and 428 establishments, with no charge-off among their resolved 7(a) cohorts of 38 and 43 loans; the study for either is written to the population growth that drives them, 73,062 residents added in the Census year and 61,200 in the state's own, and to the water rules that gate the car wash. RV parks are the thinnest class, 186 establishments and 16 7(a) loans, and a Washington RV park study leans on the tourism and lodging-tax record rather than on an SBA cohort that is too small to read.

Beyond the classes above, MMCG produces SBA, USDA and conventional-grade feasibility studies for the full range of commercial property types financed in Washington State. Gas stations and convenience stores carry the state's largest 7(a) dollar volume in the table, $1,375,814,200 across 783 loans, along the Interstate 5, Interstate 90 and U.S. 2 corridors and the Columbia River crossings. Restaurants are the largest count, 1,994 loans, with a 6.0 percent charge-off rate, which is why a Washington restaurant study is written to a saturation test rather than a traffic count. Fitness and recreational sports centers, 355 loans for $166,956,400 at 6.6 percent, and child day care services, 208 loans for $211,940,100 at 3.6 percent, follow the population growth in the Puget Sound suburbs and the Tri-Cities. Industrial and logistics files follow the Northwest Seaport Alliance's 3.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units and the Kent Valley; medical office and outpatient files follow a health sector that added 4,800 jobs in July 2026; retail and multifamily files follow the 8,176,300 residents the state counted on April 1, 2026; glamping and short-term rental files sit inside the same Chapter 70.62 RCW transient accommodations licence and the same lodging tax as a hotel; marinas on Puget Sound, Lake Washington, Lake Chelan and the Columbia are a small SBA class, eight 7(a) loans for $4,625,500, written to the Department of Natural Resources aquatic lands lease the site sits on; and Community Facilities Program files for nonprofit and public borrowers are written to the state office's 80 percent guaranteed loan standard and its $100 million cap.

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 Washington 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 Washington credit committees expect: the Seattle or Portland district roster and the state's own FOIA cohort by asset class, the 50,000-resident rural-area test and the 80 percent OneRD guarantee, the Commerce SSBCI stack, the Chapter 18.20 RCW licence and the July 1, 2026 memory care certification, the Chapter 70.62 RCW transient accommodations licence and the lodging tax, the Ecology washwater rules, the one percent levy cap and the parcel's levy code, the Growth Management Act impact fee schedule, and the design review calendar Seattle's own report measures. Sponsor inquiries that involve a Full Design Review project, a memory care unit or a project in one of the nineteen 2025 winter storm counties typically require the upper end of the standard range.

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

Send the project address. Receive a free Washington 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 Washington cities and counties served:

Puget Sound: Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Renton, Kent, Auburn, Federal Way, Tacoma, Lakewood, Puyallup, Everett, Lynnwood, Marysville, Bothell, Issaquah, Sammamish, Olympia, Lacey, Tumwater, Bremerton, Silverdale, Mount Vernon, Burlington, Anacortes, Bellingham, Oak Harbor, Port Angeles, Sequim, Shelton.

Southwest Washington and the Columbia River, served through the Portland District Office: Vancouver, Camas, Washougal, Battle Ground, Longview, Kelso, Kalama, Stevenson, Cathlamet.

Central and eastern Washington: Spokane, Spokane Valley, Cheney, Wenatchee, East Wenatchee, Leavenworth, Chelan, Moses Lake, Ephrata, Ellensburg, Yakima, Sunnyside, Grandview, Toppenish, Richland, Kennewick, Pasco, West Richland, Walla Walla, Pullman, Clarkston, Colville, Omak, Okanogan.

Counties: Adams, Asotin, Benton, Chelan, Clallam, Clark, Columbia, Cowlitz, Douglas, Ferry, Franklin, Garfield, Grant, Grays Harbor, Island, Jefferson, King, Kitsap, Kittitas, Klickitat, Lewis, Lincoln, Mason, Okanogan, Pacific, Pend Oreille, Pierce, San Juan, Skagit, Skamania, Snohomish, Spokane, Stevens, Thurston, Wahkiakum, Walla Walla, Whatcom, Whitman, Yakima.