The Nashville 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 Nashville 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.

Nashville 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.

Two property tax rates inside one county, set by the Metro Council. The Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County is a consolidated city-county, and it levies property tax at two rates rather than one. The Office of the Metropolitan Trustee publishes both: Urban Services District Tax Rate $2.814 and General Services District Tax Rate $2.782 per hundred of assessed value. The Trustee states that the rate for Davidson County is set by the Metro Council based on the amount of monies budgeted to fund the provided services, and that they are not final until certified by the State Board of Equalization. The Assessor of Property adds that Davidson County has two primary tax rate districts, that the Urban Services District tax covers more extensive services such as garbage pick-up, street lights and sidewalks that the General Services District does not receive, and that properties in the satellite cities inside the General Services District, which it names as Ridgetop, Goodlettsville, Belle Meade, Berry Hill, Forest Hills and Oak Hill, pay the General Services District rate plus the satellite city rate, if any. The Trustee also states the assessment ratio set by state law: residential and farm at 25% of appraised value, commercial/industrial at 40% and personalty at 30%. For a feasibility study, the property tax line cannot be taken from a county-level rate table. The subject address has to be placed in the Urban Services District, the General Services District or a named satellite city before a rate is chosen, and a commercial building is assessed on the 40% ratio rather than the 25% a residential comparable carries.

A franchise tax on net worth owed alongside the excise tax on income. An operating entity in Nashville faces two separate state-level business taxes, and only one of them follows profit. The Tennessee Department of Revenue states that if you are a corporation, limited partnership, limited liability company, or business trust chartered, qualified, or registered in Tennessee or doing business in this state, then you must register for and pay franchise and excise taxes. It defines the two bases separately: the franchise tax is based on the taxpayer's net worth, which is the difference between total assets less total liabilities as derived from the taxpayer's books and records, while the excise tax is based on the taxpayer's net earnings or income for the tax year. The Department publishes the rates as 0.25% of Tennessee net worth for the franchise tax and 6.5% of Tennessee taxable income for the excise tax. It also states that the minimum franchise tax is $100 and is payable if you are incorporated, domesticated, qualified, or otherwise registered through the Secretary of State to do business in Tennessee, regardless of whether the company is active or inactive. This matters in the ramp years of an SBA projection. A single-asset borrowing entity that capitalises a building and reports a loss still has Tennessee net worth, so the franchise measure and the $100 floor sit on the projection independently of whether the excise measure produces anything. A template that carries one state tax rate applied to pre-tax income will miss the net worth measure entirely.

A gross receipts business tax charged by class, with a city layer on top of the state layer. Business tax in Tennessee sits on gross receipts, not on margin, and the Department of Revenue describes it as two taxes rather than one. It states that generally, if you conduct business within any county and/or incorporated municipality in Tennessee, and your business grosses $100,000 or more, then you should register for and remit business tax, and that business tax consists of two separate taxes: the state business tax and the city business tax. It adds that if you have a business location in a city that has enacted the business tax, then you are required to pay the city business tax as well, and it publishes a City and County Business Tax Dashboard showing which cities and counties have enacted one. The rate is not a single number. The Department publishes it by classification and by whether the taxpayer is a retailer or a wholesaler, and states that every taxpayer must pay at least a minimum tax of $22. Class 1A is 0.001 retail and 0.00025 wholesale, Class 2 is 0.0015 retail and 0.000375 wholesale, and Class 3 is 0.001875 retail and 0.000375 wholesale. Across a fourteen-county metro this is a site-selection variable rather than a state constant: the state layer follows the taxpayer wherever the door sits, while the city layer depends on whether the municipality at that address has enacted the tax. A feasibility model has to classify the concept before it can price the tax at all.

A local sales tax surcharge that applies in one county of the fourteen. The Tennessee Department of Revenue's Sales and Use Tax Notice #24-11, headed Change of Local Tax Rate: Davidson County, records a change that lands on one county of this fourteen-county metro. It states that voters in Davidson County voted to approve a 0.5% surcharge on the local option sales tax, effectively increasing the local sales tax rate to 2.75%, to fund Metro Nashville's transit improvement program, and that the effective date of the tax surcharge is February 1, 2025. The notice names who must collect it: sellers located in Davidson County and the cities of Belle Meade, Berry Hill, Forest Hills, Goodlettsville, Nashville, Oak Hill and Ridgetop located in Davidson County. It also resets the single article arithmetic in that county. The surcharge is applicable to the first $1,600 of the sales price of any single article of tangible personal property sold, the local tax cap on sales of single articles will be $44, and a state single article tax rate of 2.75% applies from $1,600.01 up to and including $3,200. The Department separately states that any county or incorporated city, by resolution or ordinance, may levy the local sales and use tax, that the local tax rate may not be higher than 2.75% and must be a multiple of .25, and that the state rate is 7% on most tangible personal property and taxable services and 4% on food. A single metro-wide sales tax line does not describe this metro after February 2025, and an equipment budget crossing the single article thresholds has to be priced at the address.

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 Nashville metro cut below is computed in-house from the SBA 7(a) and 504 FOIA release by county membership across the Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, TN Metropolitan Statistical Area, never read from an SBA district total.

In fiscal year 2025 the Nashville metro recorded 455 7(a) approvals for $235,016,100 and 9 504 approvals for $19,676,000, filed largely through the TENNESSEE DISTRICT OFFICE. The most active 7(a) lenders in the metro that year, by approval count, were Northeast Bank (52 loans); U.S. Bank, National Association (44 loans); Newtek Bank, National Association (44 loans); The Huntington National Bank (41 loans); Readycap Lending, LLC (24 loans); United Midwest Savings Bank National Association (18 loans); BayFirst National Bank (18 loans); Pinnacle Bank (16 loans). The most active 504 Certified Development Companies were Brightbridge, Inc. (6 loans, $11,732,000); South Central Tennessee Business Development Corporation (2 loans, $4,012,000); Mortgage Capital Development Corporation (1 loan, $3,932,000).

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 Nashville Industrial Q2 2026, reports a vacancy rate of 5.1%, an asking rent of $9.06 per square foot. The report is Cushman and Wakefield, MarketBeat Nashville 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 rather than on 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 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 is therefore out. What can remain eligible is the outer ground in the member counties, beyond the urbanized area that runs with Nashville and the other cities over that threshold. Because the test turns on the subject address and on the urbanized-area boundary drawn around it, not on the name of the town or on which of the fourteen counties the site sits in, MMCG verifies eligibility at the address on the USDA Rural Development eligibility map at intake, before any work on the study begins. 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 Nashville study a lender can check line by line.