The Raleigh 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 Raleigh 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.

Raleigh 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 state stormwater rulebooks meet inside the same three counties. North Carolina runs two nutrient stormwater rules across this metro, and the line between them is a watershed boundary rather than a county line. 15A NCAC 02B .0277 governs new development in the Falls watershed. It requires a local stormwater plan at 12,000 square feet or more for commercial, industrial, institutional, multifamily residential or local government property, holds nitrogen and phosphorus to unit-area mass loading rates of 2.2 and 0.33 pounds per acre per year, and requires a project disturbing at least 12,000 but less than one acre to achieve 30 percent or more of the needed load reduction onsite, rising to 50 percent or more once one acre of land or more is disturbed, before any offsite offset may be used. 15A NCAC 02B .0711 governs the rest of the Neuse basin. It excludes projects disturbing less than one-half acre for the same commercial and institutional uses, and sets a single nitrogen loading rate target of 3.6 pounds per acre per year. The rules name their own jurisdictions: .0275 lists Raleigh and Wake Forest among the Falls municipalities and Franklin and Wake among the Falls counties, while .0711 lists Cary, Garner, Raleigh, Smithfield, Johnston County and Wake County. For a feasibility study this decides which threshold, which pollutants and which onsite reduction percentage the site work is engineered and priced to, and it has to be settled from the watershed boundary before a stormwater budget means anything.

A 50-foot riparian buffer triggered by a published map. 15A NCAC 02B .0714 protects riparian buffers throughout the Neuse River Basin, including the Falls of the Neuse Reservoir watershed, the same basin the two stormwater rules above operate in. The rule applies to activities within 50-foot wide riparian buffers directly adjacent to surface waters, and it defines those surface waters by reference to published maps: a feature is subject to the rule if it is approximately shown on the most recent published manuscript of the NRCS soil survey map that shows stream layers, or on the United States Geologic Survey National Map. The buffer has two zones. Zone 1 runs 30 feet from the top of bank or the rooted herbaceous vegetation and is undisturbed except for listed uses. Zone 2 runs a further 20 feet, so the combined width of Zones 1 and 2 shall be 50 feet on all sides of the surface water. The rule states that no new clearing, grading or development shall take place, nor shall any new building permits be issued, in violation of it. In a feasibility study this is a buildable-area question rather than a permitting formality, because the constraint attaches to what a map shows rather than to what a walkover finds. The rule provides for an on-site determination where a landowner believes the maps have inaccurately depicted a surface water or a stream's origination point.

The state publishes the price of the offset, and it changes at the watershed line. The stormwater rules above let a developer meet part of a nutrient load target by buying offsite offset credit, and the state itself runs the in-lieu fee program that sells it. The Division of Mitigation Services publishes the rate schedule, and the schedule is not one number for the state. For riparian buffer mitigation, Standard Rate Areas are priced at $1.35 per credit in square feet, while the premium service area named Neuse- Upper or Lower Falls is priced at $4.10. For nutrient offset the rate is quoted per pound: Neuse- Falls Lake Watershed is $3.79 for nitrogen and $632.25 for phosphorus, Neuse 03020201 Outside the Falls Lake Watershed is $28.04 for nitrogen, and the Neuse Program areas 03020202, 03020203 and 03020204 are $19.45 for nitrogen. DMS states that a customer's total payment is based on the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus specified in the verification letter issued by local governments reviewing and approving the development project, which is the same local approval the stormwater rules require. The rates carry an effective window of 7/1/2026 to 9/30/2026, and DMS states that both the buffer and the nutrient offset schedules are evaluated quarterly. A study that fixes an offset price across a multi-year build period is fixing a number the publisher re-prices four times a year.

A transit half-cent that stops at the Wake County line. The North Carolina Department of Revenue publishes sales and use tax rates county by county, and states that the total is the 4.75% state rate plus applicable local and transit rates. Across the three counties of this metro the table does not give one number. Wake is listed at 7.25% with an asterisk, and the publisher's own note says an asterisk indicates a rate that includes the 0.50% transit tax rate. Johnston is listed at 6.75% and Franklin at 6.75%, and neither carries the asterisk. So the half point sits on a county line inside one metropolitan statistical area, and the extra increment the publisher labels a transit tax is levied in one of the three counties only. For an SBA 7(a) or 504 file the consequence is narrow and concrete: a study that carries a single North Carolina rate across this metro has quietly chosen one of its counties, and a taxable-purchase line stated at 6.75% is not the same line stated at 7.25%. The rate is a county attribute in the publisher's own table, so the county of the subject site has to be named before the number is used. NCDOR republishes the table as rates change, so the version a study relies on should be dated to the fetch.

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

In fiscal year 2025 the Raleigh metro recorded 348 7(a) approvals for $199,100,800 and 12 504 approvals for $13,323,000, filed largely through the NORTH CAROLINA DISTRICT OFFICE. The most active 7(a) lenders in the metro that year, by approval count, were The Huntington National Bank (42 loans); Northeast Bank (42 loans); Newtek Bank, National Association (21 loans); Wells Fargo Bank National Association (18 loans); Live Oak Banking Company (16 loans); United Midwest Savings Bank National Association (12 loans); Readycap Lending, LLC (11 loans); The Fidelity Bank (9 loans). The most active 504 Certified Development Companies were Business Expansion Funding Corporation (9 loans, $8,156,000); Carolina Business Capital, Inc. (2 loans, $2,238,000); 504 Capital Corporation (1 loan, $2,929,000).

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 Raleigh Industrial Q2 2026, reports a vacancy rate of 9.4% and an asking rent of $11.00 per square foot. The report is Cushman and Wakefield, MarketBeat Raleigh 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 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 is therefore out. What can remain is the outer parts of Franklin, Johnston and Wake counties, where the statutory test turns on the subject address and the urbanized-area boundary around it rather than on the name of the town. Because that boundary does not follow county or municipal lines, 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. 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 Raleigh study a lender can check line by line.