The Kansas City 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 Kansas City 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.

Kansas City 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.

An earnings tax that follows the workplace across the state line. Missouri's earnings tax law defines the base, not just the rate. RSMo 92.111 defines an earnings tax as a tax on salaries, wages, commissions and other compensation earned by residents and, separately, on the same compensation earned by nonresidents of the city for work done or services performed or rendered in the city, together with the net profits of businesses conducted in the city by nonresidents. RSMo 92.120 caps the tax at one percent per annum, and a Missouri legislative fiscal note records the Department of Revenue stating that Kansas City assesses this tax on those working in its city limits at a rate of 1%. The nonresident limb is what matters in a metro shaped like this one. The state line runs through the middle of the labour market, so compensation earned by a worker who lives in Kansas for work done at a site inside Kansas City is within the base the statute describes, while an otherwise identical site a few miles west in Overland Park or Lenexa carries no such line at all. RSMo 92.115 also requires the city to put the tax back to its voters every five years. For a feasibility study the consequence is that the operating budget for a Missouri-side site carries an employment-linked tax its Kansas-side alternative does not, and which side of the line the site sits on is a modelling decision before it is a siting one.

Two property tax assessment regimes inside one metro. Property tax in this metro is not one system with local rate variation, it is two systems. On the Missouri side, RSMo 137.016 places all real property used directly or indirectly for any commercial, mining, industrial, manufacturing, trade, professional, business, or similar purpose in subclass (3), and RSMo 137.115 assesses subclass (3) at thirty-two percent of true value, against nineteen percent for residential subclass (1); the same section assesses all personal property at thirty-three and one-third percent of true value. On the Kansas side, Article 11 Section 1 of the Kansas Constitution assesses real property used for commercial and industrial purposes at 25%, and K.S.A. 79-223 exempts from all property or ad valorem taxes commercial and industrial machinery and equipment acquired by qualified purchase or lease made or entered into after June 30, 2006. A national template that applies one assessment ratio and one personal property assumption to a fourteen-county metro will be wrong on one side of the line, and the error compounds where the project is equipment-heavy, which is most of the SBA 504 asset classes. The mill levies are local and vary by district on both sides; the assessment basis is set by state law and does not.

Two corporate income tax codes in one labour market. The state line that runs through this metro is also a corporate income tax line. RSMo 143.071 imposes, for all tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2020, a tax on the Missouri taxable income of corporations equal to four percent of Missouri taxable income, with no surtax and no bracket. The rate section of the Kansas income tax act, published by the Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes and cited in full in this entry's sources, imposes on every corporation doing business within Kansas or deriving income from Kansas sources a tax consisting of a normal tax equal to 4% of the Kansas taxable income of such corporation plus a surtax equal to 3% of the Kansas taxable income of such corporation in excess of $50,000, so the marginal rate on a profitable Kansas operation steps up once it clears that threshold. That Kansas section is expressly subject to modification under two named rate-adjustment sections of the Kansas Statutes Annotated, so the rate a Kansas borrower actually pays should be confirmed for the filing year rather than assumed from the schedule as printed. For a feasibility study the point is not which state is cheaper in the abstract but that the tax line in a pro forma cannot be copied across the state line inside the same labour shed, and that a multi-site operator in this metro is filing in two states.

Two state sales tax floors under one metro. Sales tax in a bi-state metro has two floors, not one. A Missouri legislative fiscal note dated January 28, 2026 records the Department of Revenue stating that items sold are subject to state and local sales and use tax under Section 144.020 and that the state sales tax is 4.225%. K.S.A. 79-3603 levies the Kansas retailers' sales tax at the rate of 6.5%. Local option taxes then stack on top of both: the Missouri department's own note refers to the local sales and use tax alongside the state tax, and on the Kansas side K.S.A. 12-187 provides that no city shall impose a retailers' sales tax without first submitting the proposition to its electors and receiving the approval of a majority of those voting on it, which is why Kansas local rates move on an election calendar. A feasibility study that models construction materials, furniture, fixtures and equipment, or projected taxable revenue with one metro-wide sales tax rate will be wrong for roughly half the metro. The combined rate is site-specific in both states, so MMCG reads it at the address rather than at the metro.

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

In fiscal year 2025 the Kansas City metro recorded 488 7(a) approvals for $258,376,900 and 28 504 approvals for $22,000,000, filed largely through the KANSAS CITY DISTRICT OFFICE. The most active 7(a) lenders in the metro that year, by approval count, were Northeast Bank (46 loans); U.S. Bank, National Association (45 loans); The Huntington National Bank (31 loans); OakStar Bank (25 loans); Readycap Lending, LLC (24 loans); UMB Bank, National Association (23 loans); CommunityAmerica Federal Credit Union (21 loans); Live Oak Banking Company (19 loans). The most active 504 Certified Development Companies were Rural Missouri, Inc. (11 loans, $8,900,000); Heartland Business Capital, Inc. (11 loans, $7,133,000); Wakarusa Valley Development, Inc. (4 loans, $4,444,000); Clay/Platte Development Corporation (2 loans, $1,523,000).

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 Kansas City Industrial Q2 2026, reports a vacancy rate of 5.3% and an asking rent of $5.97 per square foot. The report is Cushman and Wakefield, MarketBeat Kansas City Industrial Q2 2026, covering Q2 2026.

Two qualifications travel with that figure and belong on the page rather than in a footnote. The asset class is industrial, which is NOT one of the ten asset classes counted in this table. Most of this metro's SBA and USDA borrowers are building restaurants, hotels, day care, self-storage, car washes and the like, not industrial space, so this figure describes a different stock and is carried as metro context only. Cushman and Wakefield publishes no retail MarketBeat for this market, which is why the industrial report is the one used. 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 on a county line or a metro boundary. 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. The urbanized core of this metro, which straddles the Missouri-Kansas line, is therefore out on both sides. What can remain is the outer parts of the member counties in both states, beyond the urbanized area that runs with the core. Because the test turns on the subject address and the urbanized-area boundary around it rather than on the name of the town or the county, 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 50,000 inhabitant test is the statute's general rule, and the statute sets its own different threshold for community facility DIRECT loans and grants, so a borrower pursuing that programme rather than a guaranteed one is tested against the lower figure. MMCG's work here is for guaranteed lenders, and the address is checked against the programme actually being used.

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 a Kansas City study a lender can check line by line.