Denver Feasibility Studies

Owners who look for a Denver feasibility study company usually need one document that their lender's credit officer will accept. Feasibility Study Company prepares independent, lender-grade feasibility studies for Denver-area projects, whether the money is a conventional bank loan, an SBA 7(a) or 504 loan, a USDA Rural Development guarantee or an EB-5 raise. In this metro the evidence starts with the county payroll, because the five counties this page covers moved in different directions over the year to March 2026.

In the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Colorado county tables for early 2026, Denver County showed 551,034 covered jobs in March 2026, down 1.3% from a year earlier, with an average weekly wage of $2,354, up 4.4% ⁴. Arapahoe County held 339,426 jobs, down 0.5%, at $1,929 a week, up 4.7%. Adams County held 242,964, down 0.8%, at $1,484, up 3.8%, and Jefferson County 240,128, down 1.5%, at $1,753, up 7.6% ⁴. Douglas County went the other way, with 147,131 jobs, up 1.0%, at $1,913 a week, up 5.0% ⁴. The release marks the Denver County count preliminary.

The split matters more to a lender than any metro total. A project whose customers or tenants work in Denver County draws on a county where covered employment fell while pay rose. A project in Castle Rock, Parker or Highlands Ranch sits in Douglas County, where the count grew. Rising pay with falling headcount cuts two ways in a pro forma: payroll cost per worker climbs for a hotel, restaurant or care operator, and the income behind a rent check or a retail ticket rises for the workers who kept their jobs. A study should carry both effects from the county the subject actually draws on, rather than blend the five.

Across the whole Denver-Aurora-Centennial metro area, the Bureau's occupational survey put the mean hourly wage for all occupations at $39.28 in May 2025 ¹². The latest metro output figure the research holds is $311,876.352 million of gross domestic product for 2023, from a FRED series that carries the label discontinued ¹³. It describes 2023 and gives the economy's scale; it is not a reading of growth since.

Visitors are the second leg of the base. Visit Denver counted a record 37.6 million domestic visitors to Denver in 2025, 20.1 million of them overnight and 17.6 million day visitors, and 73,200 tourism-supported jobs across the Denver metro area ⁵. The visitor counts are for Denver and the job count for the wider metro area, as the bureau reports them. The statewide tourism, population and state budget figures sit on our Colorado market overview, which this page does not repeat.

The Census Bureau's American Community Survey reads the household side on the register's geography, the ten-county metro area of Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Clear Creek, Denver, Douglas, Elbert, Gilpin, Jefferson and Park counties. That area is wider than the five counties in the payroll table, so the two tables are read separately and never combined.

CBRE's downtown Denver report for Q3 2026 puts total vacancy at 40.1%, up 150 basis points on the quarter, with direct vacancy at 38.1% ¹. Downtown net absorption was negative 483,000 square feet, and the average direct asking rent was $41.00 per square foot, full service gross, down 2.2% from a year earlier ¹. A single move-out, TIAA leaving 293,000 square feet at 1670 Broadway, made up 61% of that quarter's downtown loss ¹.

CBRE's report for metro Denver shows the suburbs moving the other way in the same quarter: net absorption of more than 320,000 square feet outside downtown, and metro net absorption of negative 161,000 square feet ⁶. The firm put the office construction pipeline at 461,000 square feet, down 36.4%, and placed almost all of it in Cherry Creek ⁶.

Cushman & Wakefield measures the market on its own inventory and submarket lines. Its Q3 2026 MarketBeat puts the overall metro asking rent at $33.80 per square foot, full service gross, and counts 439,100 square feet under construction in Cherry Creek across four projects; it reports no metro-wide construction total ⁹. The two firms' figures are not mixed on this page. Each statement above uses one firm's series and names it, and a study should do the same, since a vacancy rate from one firm and an absorption figure from the other do not describe the same buildings.

For a lender these numbers sort office projects into three kinds. A downtown acquisition or refinance carries a lease-up assumption that has to hold in a district where occupied space was still shrinking in Q3 2026, so the study works from the building's own rent roll, its rollover dates and the tenants actually touring, not from a metro vacancy rate. A downtown conversion to housing leans on the same renter demand as every new apartment building in the metro, so it is tested against the multifamily figures below as well as against its floor plates and code path, as our note on office repurposing sets out. A suburban office or medical office project sits in the part of the market that absorbed space, but one positive quarter is not a trend; the study shows the subject's own submarket over several quarters. In Cherry Creek the first question is new supply rather than old vacancy, because nearly all of the space under construction is there.

Denver's broker reports cut the metro along the lines a site study should use. Downtown is the district where vacancy rose in Q3 2026; Cherry Creek is where nearly all new office space is being built; and the suburbs, where CBRE recorded positive office absorption in the same quarter ⁶, spread south along I-25 through Arapahoe County into Douglas County, west into Jefferson County and north and east into Adams County. A project's competition and its demand both come from the submarket it sits in, so a study names that submarket before it quotes any metro number.

The research holds no Colorado Department of Transportation count for any Denver corridor, so the page prints none. A fuel, convenience store, express car wash or quick-service site on I-25, I-70, I-225, C-470 or E-470 needs the state's count for the station nearest the parcel, with its year and its distance from the site stated. Two features of these roads change how a count reads. E-470 is a toll road, so its mainline volume includes drivers who reach a corner only by exiting and paying. And where the nearest station sits on a different road from the frontage, the study has to explain why the count still describes the site.

The record behind this page does not name the metro's most active SBA lenders or certified development companies, and the Census register carries no SBA loan count for the Denver metro area, so the page prints no lender ranking. A 504 sponsor should ask the development company it plans to use for that company's own Denver production record.

Studies fall under 13 CFR 120.160(b): SBA may require professional appraisals, a survey, or a feasibility study ¹⁸. Under SOP 50 10 8.1, a standard 7(a) loan is tested against a 1.15x debt service coverage floor, and a 504 project by a business two years old or less, or one for a special-purpose building, brings 15% equity ¹⁹. In Denver the coverage test is where the county payroll split shows up: a business whose customers come from a county that lost covered jobs needs its revenue case cut back before coverage is tested. Our SBA 7(a) and 504 practice sets out what an SBA lender asks the study to prove.

Apartment, office and industrial loans above SBA size go to banks, life companies, agencies and debt funds, whose committees test a study's absorption and rent against the broker series on this page (see conventional and institutional lending). An EB-5 raise for a Denver hotel or mixed-use project adds a job count to the study; the method is in counting EB-5 jobs.

Eligibility

The research holds no USDA rural, Opportunity Zone or HUBZone designation for any parcel in the five counties, so the page claims none. Eligibility is read from each agency's own map for the specific parcel at the time of application. Sites at the metro's outer edge, in Elbert or Park counties, fall outside this page's five counties, and the USDA Rural Development questions they raise are read with the Colorado page.

A briefing request needs three things from you: what is being built or bought and at what size, the county or submarket where the site sits, and the lender or program expected to fund it. Our reply sets out the analytical framework, names the deliverable your program expects, and lists what happens after that.

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