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

Data as of June 2026. This companion research post carries the full structural and capital-markets detail behind the Tampa feasibility study hub. Every figure traces to a primary source named in the Sources list. MMCG's city briefs use primary and FOIA sources and do not carry commercial rent, vacancy or occupancy figures.

Tampa 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.

Tampa Bay Water, a regional wholesale supplier created by interlocal agreement. Tampa Bay Water states that it supplies wholesale drinking water to Hillsborough County, Pasco County, Pinellas County, New Port Richey, St. Petersburg and Tampa, serving more than 2.6 million people through the governments it serves; that it is a non-profit special district of the State of Florida created to plan, develop and deliver a drinking water supply; that it was created by interlocal agreement among its member governments and is funded through the sale of water to them; and that its members share the cost of developing new supplies and pay the same wholesale water rates. The uniform wholesale rate is the part a feasibility study can use. It means the wholesale component of water cost does not vary between member jurisdictions, so a site comparison across the three counties turns on the retail utility's own charges and on connection cost, not on the underlying supply price, and a study that attributes a water-cost advantage to one member county has almost certainly mislocated it.

A single statewide building code, adopted and amended at the state level. The Florida Building Commission publishes the Florida Building Code and states that the effective date for the Florida Building Code, 8th Edition (2023), is December 31, 2023. In a coastal metro that is the schedule that governs wind design, opening protection and inspection, and it moves on the state's edition cycle rather than the host city's. A construction budget carried in a feasibility study should therefore be stated against the edition in force at permit, and a study that prices a Tampa project on a national template without naming the code edition has not priced the structure.

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

In fiscal year 2025 the Tampa metro recorded 872 7(a) approvals for $434,860,200 and 114 504 approvals for $124,454,000, filed largely through the SOUTH FLORIDA DISTRICT OFFICE. The most active 7(a) lenders in the metro that year, by approval count, were Newtek Bank, National Association (90 loans); Northeast Bank (80 loans); The Huntington National Bank (69 loans); TD Bank, National Association (68 loans); BayFirst National Bank (47 loans); Live Oak Banking Company (32 loans); JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association (31 loans); Readycap Lending, LLC (30 loans). The most active 504 Certified Development Companies were Florida Business Development Corporation (68 loans, $59,050,000); Florida First Capital Finance Corporation, Inc. (33 loans, $50,012,000); Sunshine State Economic Development Corporation (13 loans, $15,392,000).

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 Tampa urbanized core is therefore out. What remains in this metro is the outer parts of the four member counties, beyond the urbanized area that runs with Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater. 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.

A Tampa market piece would ordinarily carry submarket rents, vacancy and absorption. Those come from commercial market reports, which MMCG's city briefs do not carry, so they are omitted rather than shown on a weaker source. What remains is the statute, the federal program frame and the SBA record computed from the primary file, which is the part of a Tampa study a lender can check.