The Las Vegas 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 Las Vegas 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.

Las Vegas 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 gross receipts tax whose rate is set by the operator's industry category. Nevada Revised Statutes Chapter 363C does not set one commerce tax rate. It writes a separate section for each NAICS business category and gives each its own rate, applied to Nevada gross revenue after subtracting $4,000,000. Accommodation, NAICS 721, which the statute describes as entities providing lodging or short-term accommodations, is taxed at 0.2 percent. Food services and drinking places, NAICS 722, is taxed at 0.194 percent. Real estate and rental and leasing, NAICS 53, which the statute describes as renting, leasing or otherwise allowing the use of tangible or intangible assets and managing real estate for others, is taxed at 0.25 percent. Other services, NAICS 81, which the statute describes as covering repair of equipment and machinery, dry cleaning and laundry, personal care, pet care and temporary parking, is taxed at 0.142 percent. The Nevada Department of Taxation states on its own commerce tax page that the tax varies by industry with different rates for sectors such as retail, manufacturing and services, and it publishes a NAICS Code Category Change Form for a business that disputes the category it has been assigned. For a feasibility study the consequence is direct. The rate follows the operating business, not the parcel, so two projects on the same street with the same gross revenue can carry different Nevada tax lines, and the category assignment is itself a contestable input rather than a given.

A state payroll tax on wages, with a fixed dollar exemption. The Nevada Department of Taxation describes the modified business tax as a payroll tax. Every employer subject to Nevada Unemployment Compensation Law is also subject to it, on total gross wages less employee health care benefits paid by the employer, measured on the gross wages and reported tips paid for a calendar quarter as reported to the Employment Security Division on form NUCS 4072. The Department states that the rate for most general business employers was reduced to 1.17% from 1.378%, that the first $50,000 of wages remains non-taxable, and that all employers must file a return regardless of tax due. For financial institutions the rate is 1.554% on wages after health benefit deductions with no wage exemption provided. Two things follow for an operating pro forma in this metro. First, the tax base is the wage bill, so a labour-intensive asset class carries it heavily and a passive one barely at all, which is the reverse of how a national template that models a state profits tax behaves. Second, because the shelter is a fixed dollar amount rather than a percentage, its value falls away as the wage bill rises, and the effective rate on a large payroll approaches the headline rate. The health care benefit deduction also ties the benefits line directly to the tax line.

A statutory cutoff date for irrigating nonfunctional turf, and a ban on new septic systems. The Conservation of Colorado River Water Act, Chapter 364 of the Statutes of Nevada 2021 as amended in 2023, applies to water distributed by the Southern Nevada Water Authority, which the Act defines as a political subdivision of the State of Nevada created on July 25, 1991 by cooperative agreement under NRS 277.080 to 277.180. Three provisions bear on a commercial project. Section 39 prohibits the use of that water to irrigate nonfunctional turf, on and after January 1, 2027, on any parcel of property that is not used exclusively as a single-family residence, a class that by its own terms takes in commercial, industrial, lodging and multifamily property alike. The Board of Directors defines functional and nonfunctional turf and promulgates those definitions in the service rules of the member agencies, and the General Manager may grant an extension or a waiver. Section 38.4 prohibits the installation of any new septic system, on and after June 6, 2023, on any parcel that uses or will use that water, subject to a discretionary waiver. Section 39.5 requires the owner of any parcel that is not used exclusively as a single-family residence and consists of 20,000 square feet or more of turf to join an irrigation water efficiency monitoring program. For a study dated in 2026 the turf cutoff is inside the projection window, and the septic ban removes an option a rural-edge site elsewhere would still have.

New private land is released inside a federal disposal boundary. Public Law 105-263, printed by the U.S. Government Publishing Office, is how federal land in this metro becomes private land. It authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to dispose of lands within the boundary of the area under Bureau of Land Management jurisdiction in Clark County, Nevada, as generally depicted on the map entitled Las Vegas Valley, Nevada, Land Disposal Map, dated April 10, 1997, held for public inspection in the offices of the Director and the Las Vegas District of the Bureau of Land Management. The Secretary and the unit of local government in whose jurisdiction the lands sit jointly select what is offered, and the Act requires the Secretary's land disposal activities to be consistent with local land use planning and zoning requirements and recommendations. The lands identified for disposal are withdrawn from location and entry under the mining laws until the withdrawal is terminated or the lands are patented. Of gross sale proceeds, 5 percent goes to the State of Nevada for general education and 10 percent to the Southern Nevada Water Authority for water treatment and transmission infrastructure in Clark County. The Bureau of Land Management describes the Act as allowing it to sell public land within a specific boundary around Las Vegas. A search for new land here is therefore bounded by a federal map and by a joint federal and local selection, which is not an input a national template carries.

A room tax that changes with distance to the convention center and with two corridor boundaries inside one county. Chapter 4.08 of the Clark County Code was adopted to provide local administration of the combined transient lodging tax within unincorporated Clark County. The County's General Information Guide for transient lodging establishments states that the combined rate in the unincorporated county ranges between 10.5% and 13.38%, and it names the three things that move it: the type of establishment, resort or non-resort; the distance of the establishment from the Las Vegas Convention Center; and whether the establishment sits inside or outside the Primary Gaming Corridor and the Stadium District. The County's own rate-increase notice sets out one of those components. From March 1, 2017 establishments in the Stadium District but outside the Primary Gaming Corridor collect an additional 0.5% in room tax, establishments inside the Primary Gaming Corridor collect an additional 0.88%, and establishments outside the Stadium District pay no stadium tax at all. This is a single county, so none of this is a county-line effect. It is a set of drawn corridors and a radius, and a lodging pro forma has to be located against them before the top-line tax rate is known. Note the date limits: the guide is dated July 2021 and the per-property rate listing it points to is as of April 1, 2021, so the current schedule should be confirmed with the County before a study is signed.

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 Las Vegas metro cut below is computed in-house from the SBA 7(a) and 504 FOIA release by county membership across the Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV Metropolitan Statistical Area, never read from an SBA district total.

In fiscal year 2025 the Las Vegas metro recorded 654 7(a) approvals for $291,884,500 and 64 504 approvals for $89,417,000, filed largely through the NEVADA DISTRICT OFFICE. The most active 7(a) lenders in the metro that year, by approval count, were U.S. Bank, National Association (92 loans); Zions Bank, A Division of (85 loans); Northeast Bank (81 loans); Newtek Bank, National Association (48 loans); Wells Fargo Bank National Association (36 loans); America First Federal Credit Union (25 loans); Readycap Lending, LLC (25 loans); JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association (21 loans). The most active 504 Certified Development Companies were Nevada State Development Corporation (27 loans, $30,391,000); Mortgage Capital Development Corporation (25 loans, $39,416,000); California Statewide Certified Development Corporation (6 loans, $9,165,000); Mountain West Small Business Finance (5 loans, $8,797,000); CDC Small Business Finance Corp. (1 loan, $1,648,000).

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 Las Vegas Retail Q2 2026, states that retail vacancy including sublease space compressed 20 bps quarter over quarter and 40 bps year over year to 5.3% in Q2 2026, that net absorption totaled 324,386 square feet, and that average monthly triple-net asking rents increased by $0.06 per square foot QOQ and $0.20 psf YOY to $2.19 psf. The report is Cushman and Wakefield, MarketBeat Las Vegas Retail Q2 2026, covering Q2 2026.

Source: CoStar via Cushman and Wakefield; the report's own lines read "Source: Costar" and "Source: RCA, Costar".

Two qualifications travel with that figure and belong on the page rather than in a footnote. The report prints Source: Costar beneath its rent narrative and Source: RCA, Costar beneath its capital markets panel, so the underlying data is attributed to CoStar and to Real Capital Analytics. Its economic indicators panel is sourced separately to BLS and to BEA and the Census Bureau, which are not CoStar lines and are named here for completeness. 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 rather than on a metro or 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 that has a population of greater than 50,000 inhabitants and any urbanized area contiguous and adjacent to such a city or town. This metro is a single county, Clark County, and its urbanized core is therefore out. Because the test turns on the subject address and on 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. No town in this metro 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 Las Vegas study a lender can check line by line.