The Austin Feasibility Market: SBA, USDA and Its Structural Variables

Data as of June 2026. This companion research post carries the full structural and capital-markets detail behind the Austin feasibility study hub. Every figure traces to a primary source named in the Sources list. MMCG's city briefs use primary and FOIA sources and do not carry commercial rent, vacancy or occupancy figures.

Austin carries its own set of statute and government rooted variables that redefine the underwriting envelope for a commercial real estate, SBA or USDA feasibility study. Each is stated here at the level a primary source supports.

Austin Energy, a city-owned electric utility inside the ERCOT market. Austin Energy describes itself as a community-owned utility and a not-for-profit enterprise of the City of Austin. That ownership is the variable, not a detail of branding: an investor-owned utility's rates are set by a state commission on a rate-case calendar, while a municipal utility's are set by the city council that owns it, and the queue for a service upgrade, a three-phase extension or a large connected load is administered by the same city that issues the site permit. A feasibility study for a project inside the Austin Energy service territory therefore reads the utility and the permitting authority as one counterparty, and treats the energy line and the construction schedule as linked rather than independent.

The Edwards Aquifer recharge and contributing zones, regulated before a shovel moves. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality runs an Edwards Aquifer Protection Program under Chapter 213 of Title 30 of the Texas Administrative Code, and states that anyone planning construction activities, including the clearing of acreage, in the Edwards Aquifer recharge and contributing zones must contact the appropriate TCEQ regional offices for the program's requirements. Whether a given address lies in one of those zones is a map question this brief does not answer, and the study answers it at the address. Where it does, this is a gating condition, not a permit fee: the plan must be approved before regulated activity begins, the best management practices it requires carry capital cost, and the review sits on the critical path ahead of the construction loan. A study that prices an Austin site without establishing whether it lies over the recharge or contributing zone has not priced the site, which is why the determination is made at intake rather than assumed from the side of town.

Nationally, the U.S. Small Business Administration 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 dated September 30, 2025. The Austin metro cut below is computed in-house from the SBA 7(a) and 504 FOIA release by county membership across the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX Metropolitan Statistical Area, never read from an SBA district total.

In fiscal year 2025 the Austin metro recorded 772 7(a) approvals for $478,709,600 and 55 504 approvals for $78,027,000, filed largely through the SAN ANTONIO DISTRICT OFFICE. The most active 7(a) lenders in the metro that year, by approval count, were The Huntington National Bank (100 loans); Northeast Bank (89 loans); Newtek Bank, National Association (49 loans); JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association (44 loans); Wells Fargo Bank National Association (31 loans); Live Oak Banking Company (30 loans); Readycap Lending, LLC (30 loans); Lendistry SBLC, LLC (25 loans). The most active 504 Certified Development Companies were Capital Certified Development Corporation (40 loans, $55,357,000); LiftFund, Inc. (8 loans, $12,133,000); Texas Certified Development Company, Inc. (4 loans, $3,337,000); PeopleFund (1 loan, $2,914,000); North Texas Certified Development Corporation (1 loan, $2,423,000); Greater East Texas Certified Development Company (1 loan, $1,863,000).

USDA Business and Industry credit runs on a statutory geography, not a county line. Under 7 U.S.C. 1991(a)(13)(A) the terms rural and rural area mean any area other than a city or town of more than 50,000 inhabitants and any urbanized area contiguous and adjacent to such a city or town. For Community Facilities direct loans and grants, 7 U.S.C. 1991(a)(13)(C) sets the line at 20,000 inhabitants. The Austin urbanized core is therefore out. What remains in this metro is the outer parts of the five member counties, where towns sit below the statutory population line and outside the urbanized area that runs with Austin and Round Rock. Because the test turns on the subject address and the urbanized-area boundary around it rather than on the name of the 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 on a model's say-so.

An Austin market piece would ordinarily carry submarket rents, vacancy and absorption. Those come from commercial market reports, which MMCG's city briefs do not carry, so they are omitted rather than shown on a weaker source. What remains is the statute, the federal program frame and the SBA record computed from the primary file, which is the part of an Austin study a lender can check.