The Detroit 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 Detroit 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.

Detroit 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.

Detroit's own municipal income tax, on residents, commuters and corporations. The City of Detroit publishes income tax rates of 2.4 percent for resident individuals, 1.2 percent for non-resident individuals and 2.00 percent for corporations. Three things follow for a feasibility model. The tax is levied on the individual and withheld by the employer rather than charged to the employer, so it does not enter the operating budget as a payroll expense; what it changes is the net pay a given gross wage delivers inside the city, which is a recruitment and wage-setting input rather than an expense line. A corporation operating in the city owes a city-level tax on top of the state's, so the after-tax cash available for debt service is lower than a template built on state rates alone would show. And because the non-resident rate applies to work performed in the city, a project's staffing plan and the location of its payroll change the number. This is the metro's own variable: it is levied by the city, not by Michigan, and it stops at the city line inside a six-county metro.

A city assessor who values every parcel for the city's own levy. The City of Detroit's Office of the Assessor states that its mission is to discover, list and value at current market conditions all real and tangible personal property in the City of Detroit for the purposes of levying the tax lawfully imposed, and to warrant that levy to the Treasurer of the City of Detroit for collection. For an SBA or conventional file the point is procedural and material: the assessed value that drives the largest fixed line in the operating budget is determined by a city office and contested through a city appeal calendar, so a study that adopts a purchase price as the future assessed value without reading the assessor's treatment has guessed at the tax line rather than derived it.

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 Detroit metro cut below is computed in-house from the SBA 7(a) and 504 FOIA release by county membership across the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area, never read from an SBA district total.

In fiscal year 2025 the Detroit metro recorded 1,217 7(a) approvals for $497,621,000 and 67 504 approvals for $77,356,000, filed largely through the MICHIGAN DISTRICT OFFICE. The most active 7(a) lenders in the metro that year, by approval count, were The Huntington National Bank (505 loans); Northeast Bank (84 loans); Newtek Bank, National Association (59 loans); Fifth Third Bank (49 loans); Readycap Lending, LLC (45 loans); Independent Bank (27 loans); Celtic Bank Corporation (27 loans); Live Oak Banking Company (24 loans). The most active 504 Certified Development Companies were Michigan Certified Development Corporation (31 loans, $29,020,000); Great Lakes Commercial Finance (22 loans, $36,291,000); Oakland County Business Finance Corporation (13 loans, $11,429,000); West Central Partnership, Inc. (1 loan, $616,000).

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 Detroit urbanized core is therefore out. What remains in this metro is the outer parts of the six member counties, beyond the urbanized area that runs with Detroit, Warren and Dearborn. 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.

A Detroit 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 a Detroit study a lender can check.