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

Data as of June 2026. This companion research post carries the full structural, market and capital-markets detail behind the Indianapolis feasibility study hub. Every figure traces to a primary source named in the Sources list. Statutes, ordinances, tax rates, population and the SBA record come from government publishers. The market layer comes from a research report the publisher has put on a public page, named in the sentence that carries it.

Indianapolis 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.

A county income tax that follows the worker home, not the site. Indiana counties levy their own income tax, and the Department of Revenue publishes the rate for each one in Departmental Notice #1. The rule that matters for a staffing model is which county's rate applies. The Department instructs that withholding agents should withhold county tax based on the employee's Indiana county of residence as of Jan. 1 of the tax year, and only where the employee lives out of state does the rate follow the principal place of work. A single site in this metro therefore pays out wages taxed at as many rates as its workforce has home counties. Effective January 1, 2026 the eleven member counties run from Hamilton at 0.011 to Morgan at 0.0272, with Marion, the county holding the consolidated city, at 0.0202 and Tipton at 0.026. The Department publishes these as decimal rates, and the difference between the highest and the lowest of them is 162 basis points of gross wages inside one labour market, which is this firm's arithmetic on the two published figures rather than a figure the Department states. It is not an employer expense line, and a study that treats it as one overstates operating cost. It is a net pay difference: the same offered wage lands differently depending on which county the candidate drives in from, which is a recruitment and wage-setting input rather than a cost ratio.

Marion County taxes a hotel room and a restaurant bill harder than any other county in the metro. Two of the taxes that sit directly on the revenue lines MMCG models are set by county, and in this metro the consolidated city-county sits at the top of both. The Department of Revenue publishes the county innkeeper's tax as 10% for Marion, 8% for Hamilton and 5% for Johnson, and publishes the food and beverage tax as 2% for Marion County against 1% for the collar counties that levy it. For a hotel the innkeeper's tax is charged on the room rate and passed through, so the spread is a rate-competitiveness question between a downtown site and one twenty minutes north, not an expense line. For a restaurant the food and beverage tax sits on the same base as the sale, and the difference between 2% and 1% shows up in the menu price a model has to hold. Neither tax is a metro figure. A study that carries one lodging tax rate or one food and beverage rate across this metro is wrong the moment the site moves across a county line, and the counties are close enough together that sites routinely do.

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

In fiscal year 2025 the Indianapolis metro recorded 604 7(a) approvals for $250,073,400 and 41 504 approvals for $52,675,000, filed largely through the INDIANA DISTRICT OFFICE. The most active 7(a) lenders in the metro that year, by approval count, were The Huntington National Bank (200 loans); Northeast Bank (43 loans); First Merchants Bank (24 loans); Newtek Bank, National Association (22 loans); KeyBank National Association (20 loans); Citizens State Bank of New Castle (18 loans); First Internet Bank of Indiana (17 loans); STAR Financial Bank (16 loans). The most active 504 Certified Development Companies were Indiana Statewide Certified Development Corporation (24 loans, $24,228,000); Premier Capital Corporation (14 loans, $19,960,000); AMPAC Tri-State CDC, Inc. (1 loan, $5,479,000); St. Charles County Economic Development Council (1 loan, $2,485,000); Business Development Corporation (BDC) (1 loan, $523,000).

Where a research publisher has put a market figure on a public page, this brief may carry it, cited to the page that carries the figure, with the publisher named in the sentence and the report's own source line printed below it. Cushman and Wakefield, MarketBeat Indianapolis Retail Q2 2026, states that the overall vacancy rate increased 10 bps YOY to 4.9%, remaining just below the five-year average of 5.0%, and reports trade area totals of 44,931,046 square feet at 4.9% vacancy and $17.29. The report is Cushman and Wakefield, MarketBeat Indianapolis Retail Q2 2026, covering Q2 2026.

Source: CoStar via Cushman and Wakefield; the report's own line reads "Source: CoStar, Cushman & Wakefield Research".

Two qualifications travel with that figure and belong on the page rather than in a footnote. The report prints Source: CoStar, Cushman & Wakefield Research under its market fundamentals. The figure is carried as Cushman and Wakefield's published figure on its own public page, and the underlying attribution is recorded rather than hidden. And a metro-level vacancy or rent figure describes the stock a broker tracks, which is not the asset class a single SBA or USDA borrower is building; it sets context for the file and nothing in the file rests on it.

USDA Business and Industry and Community Facilities 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. The Indianapolis urbanized core is therefore out. What remains in this metro is the outer parts of the member counties, beyond the urbanized area that runs with Indianapolis, Carmel and Greenwood. 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.

The market figures above are one publisher's reading of one asset class in one quarter, and they are carried because that publisher put them on a public page, not because they settle anything. They are not a substitute for the rent and expense evidence a study builds at the subject address, and this post does not extend them to the asset classes the report does not cover. What carries the weight here is the statute, the federal program frame and the SBA record computed from the primary file, which is the part of an Indianapolis study a lender can check line by line.