Feasibility Study Company Independent Feasibility Analysis

Texas · Market Intelligence

Texas Feasibility Studies

An independent, lender-grade feasibility practice for Texas across SBA 7(a) and 504, USDA Rural Development, EB-5, and conventional capital. This page is our standing, sourced read on where Texas markets are oversupplied, how deals actually get funded by region, and where Texas feasibility studies fail review.

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31.3M
Residents, July 20241
~$2.9T
GDP, 2nd-largest US economy2
#2
Nationally in SBA 7(a) volume21
90%+
Texans in metropolitan counties2
The Texas Thesis

A statewide Texas number is indefensible.

Texas rewards feasibility work and punishes shortcuts. It is the nation's second-largest economy, carries no state personal income tax, and, decisively for real estate, has no general Certificate of Need law, so supply in most asset classes is set by the market rather than a permit.2 That freedom is exactly why Texas leads the country in new supply across multifamily and self-storage, and why the central analytical risk here is oversupply the sponsor did not price.

The state is also vast and unevenly settled. More than two-thirds of Texans live in four metros, and over ninety percent live in metropolitan counties, yet the large majority of the land mass qualifies as rural for USDA purposes.222 The result is that the same asset class is oversupplied in one metro and tight in another, and a study built on a statewide average will misprice nearly every deal. Houston is not Austin; Austin is not McAllen; neither resembles Lubbock. We underwrite Texas metro-by-metro, against the current pipeline, the regional funding channel, and the Texas-specific factors most studies miss.

What follows is organized as a working desk: a live oversupply monitor, a funding-routing map, the review failures that sink Texas studies, the regulatory edges that decide outcomes, and a per-metro demand fingerprint. Every figure is dated and attributed in the sources below.

The Oversupply & Pipeline Monitor

Where Texas markets stand, metro by metro.

A supply-pressure read for each metro and asset class, refreshed each quarter from named primary sources. A dash means we hold no current tracked reading, not that the market is balanced. Data current to Q2 2026.

Supply pressure: Oversupplied Balanced Tight Softening / digesting
Metro Multifamily Self-Storage Industrial Office Hotel Pipeline
Houston Balanced92.2% occ. OversuppliedLeads 2026 deliveries Balanced Softening20.1% vac. Renovation-led
Dallas–Fort Worth Oversupplied10.8% vac., 20-yr high Oversupplied Balanced22.3M sf absorbed Oversupplied25.0% vac. OversuppliedLed US pipeline
Austin Oversupplied10 qtrs negative rent Oversupplied~7.9 sf/capita Softening Oversupplied27% vac. Oversupplied5th US pipeline
San Antonio Oversupplied90.7% occ., stabilizing Oversupplied Balanced Softening No read
Laredo / Border No read No read Digesting1.5% → ~11.5% vac. No read No read
McAllen / RGV No read OversuppliedCorpus ~15 sf/capita No read No read Seasonal-demand risk
Lubbock No read Oversupplied17.3 sf/capita No read No read No read

Readings compiled from sources 3–19 below. Vendor vacancy estimates for the same metro can differ; each figure is attributed at its point of use.

Multifamily: the Triangle is digesting a record cycle

Dallas–Fort Worth is working through the largest delivery cycle in its history. Vacancy reached a twenty-year high near 10.8 percent, with vendor reads ranging to 12.0 percent as inventory grew roughly eleven percent over two years.34 The pipeline is now thinning: absorption outpaced deliveries for four straight quarters through mid-2025, and units under construction contracted sharply.4 Austin is the clearest oversupply story in the country, with asking rents falling for ten consecutive quarters through Q4 2025 and posting the lowest rent growth of the 150 largest US metros in early 2025, a direct function of more than 40,000 units built in a three-year window.56 Houston is comparatively balanced, with occupancy near 92.2 percent and rents roughly flat.7 San Antonio posted the highest vacancy of any major US market for three consecutive years and is only now stabilizing as 2026 deliveries reset sharply lower.89

Self-storage: structurally oversupplied statewide

Texas offers more storage per capita than California and holds four of the top five large-metro positions nationally.11 Lubbock sits at 17.3 square feet per capita, more than double the 7.8 national average, with street rates down 6.7 percent year over year to about $102 per month.10 Houston leads projected 2026 deliveries at roughly 889,000 square feet on top of an 8.1 square-feet-per-capita base.10 This is the asset class where a statewide per-capita assumption fails most violently: Austin runs near 7.9 while Lubbock runs 17.3.

Industrial: the border flipped from scarcity to digestion

Laredo is the signature capture-rate case. Industrial vacancy was just 1.5 percent on 36 million square feet at the 2022 peak; by late 2025 it had risen to roughly 11.5 percent as institutional-scale product outpaced the average local user's footprint.1213 Port Laredo processed $339.7 billion in two-way trade in 2024, the highest-value US land port.14 Dallas–Fort Worth, by contrast, recorded 22.3 million square feet of absorption over a trailing year, the most in the country, against a vacancy near 9.1 percent, so its heavy pipeline is being met by exceptional demand.15

Office and hotels

Office is oversupplied across the majors: Dallas–Fort Worth near 25.0 percent, Austin near 27 percent (tied for the highest nationally), and Houston improving but still elevated near 20.1 percent.1516 On lodging, Dallas led the entire US hotel construction pipeline and Austin ranked fifth as of Q4 2025, even as Texas metros reported softening revenue-per-available-room through 2025.17 Metro revenue figures reported by market aggregators citing STR should be confirmed against Texas Comptroller hotel occupancy tax receipts before they drive a pro forma.

Senior housing and the Winter Texan signal

National senior housing occupancy reached 89.5 percent in Q1 2026, its nineteenth consecutive quarterly increase, but Texas metros lag the national line: Houston sat near 84.7 percent and Austin active-adult occupancy near 85.2 percent, which the data attributes to oversupply rather than weak demand.19 In the Rio Grande Valley, the Winter Texan population fell from a record 144,000 in 2009–2010 to about 96,000 by 2015–2016 and has declined one to two percent per year since, an attrition-driven, demand-side oversupply risk that annualized peak-season occupancy will always overstate.18

The Funding-Routing Map

How a Texas deal actually gets funded.

Feasibility work exists to satisfy a specific reviewer. Knowing which channel funds your asset in your region is half the battle. This is the routing most feasibility pages never publish.

SBA district offices in Texas
Six district offices administer SBA programs across the state.20
District officeRegion covered
Dallas / Fort Worth (Euless)North Texas
Houston32 counties, southeastern Texas
San Antonio55 counties, South-Central Texas
Lower Rio Grande Valley (Harlingen)The Valley and border
El PasoFar West Texas
West Texas (Lubbock)Panhandle and West Texas

On the 504 side, Texas is served by statewide Certified Development Companies including Texas Certified Development Company, Capital CDC, PeopleFund, Greater Texas Capital Corporation, North Texas CDC, LiftFund, and BCL of Texas; most lend across the state regardless of headquarters, and competing claims to be the largest are self-reported and unresolved without the SBA data file.20 On the 7(a) side, reported Texas rankings place national special-purpose lenders and Texas regional banks at the top, with Live Oak Bank named the number-one SBA 7(a) lender by dollar volume nationally in fiscal 2025 at roughly $2.85 billion across 2,280 loans, and self-storage among its largest verticals.21 For rural credits, USDA Business and Industry guaranteed loans route through the Texas Rural Development state office in Temple, which carries an 85 percent guarantee on loans under five million dollars in fiscal 2026; only about 4.5 percent of Texas land area is ineligible for USDA rural programs.22

  • Self-storage, a hotel, or another special-purpose asset, anywhere in TexasA national special-purpose lender such as Live Oak Bank, paired with a statewide 504 CDC.
  • Rural manufacturing or food processingUSDA Business & Industry through the Temple state office; 85% guarantee under $5M.
  • Owner-occupied real estate plus long-life equipmentSBA 504 via a Texas CDC for the real estate; 7(a) for working capital.
  • Underserved, women-, minority-, or veteran-owned, needing a microloan or smaller facilityLiftFund, PeopleFund, or BCL of Texas.
  • A large-load project of 75 MW or more (data center, crypto, heavy manufacturing)Price ERCOT interconnection under SB 6 before financing, not after.
Common Review Failures

How Texas feasibility studies fail review.

Each failure below is tied to a real Texas number. These are the recurring reasons a Texas study loses credibility with a lender or agency, engineered out of our deliverables before they ship.

  1. Statewide-average error

    Applying one statewide self-storage figure ignores that Austin runs near 7.9 square feet per capita while Lubbock runs 17.3. A state mean masks a two-times oversupply in West Texas and misprices every deal in between.10

  2. Oversupply blindness

    Citing strong Texas population growth while ignoring the Dallas–Fort Worth 10.8 percent multifamily vacancy or Austin's ten quarters of negative rent growth is the single most common reason multifamily studies fail lender review.35

  3. Winter Texan seasonality misread

    Annualizing peak Rio Grande Valley occupancy ignores the snowbird attrition from 144,000 to 96,000 between 2010 and 2016 and the one-to-two-percent annual decline since.18

  4. Uniform-rurality assumption

    More than ninety percent of Texans live in metropolitan counties, yet only about 4.5 percent of the land mass is USDA-ineligible. Assuming uniform rurality misroutes the financing and misreads demand density.222

  5. Exurban capture-rate error

    Fast-growing exurbs distort trailing data in both directions. Princeton, in the Dallas metro, grew 30.6 percent in a single year to become the fastest-growing US city; trailing Census counts understate demand, while developers over-credit rooftops before absorption catches up.1

  6. Power and interconnection mispricing

    Under SB 6 and the draft PUCT rule, large-load projects face new interconnection fees, contribution in aid of construction, and curtailment exposure. A study that omits ERCOT interconnection timing and cost understates both the schedule and the capital stack.24

  7. Coastal windstorm mispricing

    In the 14 first-tier coastal counties, TWIA commercial policies carry a one-percent-per-item deductible, and the insurer's reserves were depleted by Hurricane Beryl in 2024. A Gulf-facing pro forma that treats windstorm as a rounding error is not defensible.25

Regulatory Edges

The Texas rules that decide feasibility outcomes.

Four regulatory realities separate a Texas study that survives review from one that does not. The first is the one competitors most often state wrong.

No general Certificate of Need, but a Medicaid nursing-bed cap

Texas repealed its Certificate of Need program in 1985 and maintains no general CON law today.23 For hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, assisted living, and independent or active-adult senior housing, supply is market-driven rather than permit-gated, which is precisely why oversupply risk in these categories runs higher in Texas than in CON states. One exception is decisive and frequently missed: Texas still limits Medicaid-certified nursing-facility beds. Under 26 TAC 554.2322, HHSC allocates Medicaid beds, new beds generally require a waiver, and HHSC may de-allocate beds in facilities running below 70 percent occupancy.23 A skilled-nursing study that treats Texas as an open-entry market because the state has no CON is wrong on the one asset class where a de facto cap applies.

Large-load grid interconnection under SB 6

Texas Senate Bill 6, effective September 1, 2025, restructured how very large electrical loads of 75 MW and above connect to the ERCOT grid. A draft Public Utility Commission rule published in March 2026 would attach a non-refundable interconnection fee of $50,000 per MW, full contribution in aid of construction, and curtailment exposure for loads connected after December 31, 2025.24 ERCOT's long-term forecast projects peak demand could reach as high as 218 GW by 2031 against an all-time record of 85.5 GW set in August 2023.24 For any power-intensive project, interconnection timing, upfront capital, and curtailment risk are now first-order feasibility variables.

Coastal windstorm exposure

The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association is the insurer of last resort across 14 first-tier coastal counties. Hurricane Beryl in July 2024 depleted the association's catastrophe reserve and left a reported $413.5 million deficit entering 2025; commercial policies carry a one-percent-per-item deductible.25 Coastal windstorm cost and availability are a live line item in any Gulf-facing pro forma.

Tailwinds in the sponsor's favor

Three recent changes cut the other way. Texas has no state personal income tax; the business personal property tax exemption rose from $2,500 to $125,000 per location effective January 1, 2026;27 and the SBA doubled its combined 7(a)-plus-504 ceiling to $10 million effective July 4, 2026, materially enlarging bankable deal size.26

Metro Divergence

Seven Texas markets, seven demand fingerprints.

Each metro carries its own economic base and its own supply position. These are the units of analysis for a Texas study, and each anchors a dedicated market page.

Energy & ports

Houston

Energy, petrochemicals, the nation's largest medical center, and port logistics. Added more than 198,000 residents in 2023–24. Multifamily is comparatively balanced; self-storage leads 2026 deliveries.1

Diversified

Dallas–Fort Worth

Corporate headquarters, finance, logistics, and tech. Fort Worth crossed 1,008,106 residents to overtake Austin as the state's fourth-largest city. Multifamily and office both oversupplied; industrial absorption leads the nation.115

Tech

Austin

Semiconductors, software, state government, and the university. The clearest oversupply story in the country: rents fell for ten consecutive quarters and office vacancy is among the highest nationally.5

Military & healthcare

San Antonio

Joint Base San Antonio, the South Texas Medical Center, manufacturing, and tourism. Highest multifamily vacancy of any major US market for three years running, now stabilizing.8

Border & Winter Texan

McAllen / Rio Grande Valley

Border trade, Winter Texan tourism, and agriculture. Demand is seasonal and attrition-prone; storage in nearby Corpus Christi runs near 15 square feet per capita.18

Border manufacturing

El Paso

Cross-border manufacturing, Fort Bliss, and logistics. A distinct border economy where current supply data is thinner; we build these studies with primary local research.

Agriculture & university

Lubbock

Agriculture and Texas Tech University. The extreme self-storage case at 17.3 square feet per capita, more than double the national average, with rates falling.10

Coastal & energy

Corpus Christi

Port, energy export, and coastal tourism. A first-tier windstorm county where TWIA exposure and storage oversupply both bear directly on feasibility.25

By Asset Class

Texas feasibility studies by asset class.

Each asset class carries its own Texas demand drivers, from Winter Texan seasonality to border logistics to the express-wash climate. Explore the analytical approach by property type.

Texas Questions

Texas feasibility study questions.

Does Texas require a feasibility study for an SBA loan?

Under SBA SOP 50 10 8, a feasibility study is discretionary rather than universally mandated, and lenders commonly require one for special-purpose properties and startup or ground-up projects that lack operating history. Texas carries a heavy concentration of special-purpose collateral, so feasibility analysis is frequently expected on Texas SBA credits.

Does Texas have a Certificate of Need law?

Texas repealed its general Certificate of Need program in 1985 and has no general CON law today, so hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, assisted living, and independent senior housing face market-driven supply rather than a permit gate. One exception is decisive: Texas still limits Medicaid-certified nursing-facility beds under 26 TAC 554.2322, and HHSC may de-allocate beds in facilities below 70 percent occupancy.

Which Texas real estate markets are oversupplied right now?

As of Q2 2026, multifamily is broadly oversupplied across the Texas Triangle, deepest in Austin, where asking rents fell for ten consecutive quarters through Q4 2025, and in Dallas–Fort Worth, where vacancy reached a twenty-year high near 10.8 percent. Self-storage is oversupplied statewide, acute in Lubbock at 17.3 square feet per capita. Office is oversupplied in all three major metros.

Who funds SBA and USDA loans in Texas?

SBA 7(a) and 504 credits route through six Texas district offices and statewide Certified Development Companies; national special-purpose lenders such as Live Oak Bank concentrate in self-storage, hospitality, and other special-use assets. USDA Business and Industry guaranteed loans route through the Texas Rural Development state office in Temple, which carries an 85 percent guarantee on loans under five million dollars in fiscal 2026.

What is a targeted employment area in Texas for EB-5?

A targeted employment area qualifies an EB-5 project for the $800,000 minimum investment. In Texas, rural areas outside any metropolitan statistical area and outside any city of 20,000 or more qualify as rural TEAs with a 20 percent visa set-aside, while high-unemployment census tracts in large metros can qualify as high-unemployment TEAs. TEA status is verified at the filing date using current unemployment data.

How is a Texas feasibility study different from a national one?

Texas is too internally divergent for statewide assumptions. Houston, Austin, San Antonio, McAllen, and Lubbock have distinct demand curves, and the same asset class is oversupplied in one metro while tight in another. A defensible Texas study is built metro-by-metro against the current supply pipeline, the regional funding channel, and Texas-specific factors like the Medicaid nursing-bed cap and large-load grid interconnection.

Underwriting a Texas project? Start with the market read.

A methodology briefing walks through the analytical framework, the deliverable composition, and the current Texas market data for your metro and asset class.

Request a methodology briefing
Sources

Data sources and dates.

Every figure on this page traces to a named authority. Real-estate readings are point-in-time and vendor-dependent; each is attributed at its point of use.

  1. U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2024 Population Estimates (population as of July 1, 2024); city-growth rankings released May 2025.
  2. Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, Texas economy and gross domestic product data (updated 2025–2026).
  3. Partners Real Estate, "Path to Market Stabilization," DFW multifamily (2025).
  4. Yardi Matrix, Dallas Multifamily Market Report (November 2025); Northmarq DFW absorption commentary (2025).
  5. Colliers, Austin multifamily, via CRE Daily (Q4 2025); MMG Real Estate Advisors, Austin forecast (2025).
  6. National Multifamily Housing Council citing CoStar, Austin rent growth (2025); Apartment List via Team Price (2025).
  7. Yardi Matrix, Houston Multifamily Market Report (December 2025 and March 2026).
  8. Institutional Property Advisors, San Antonio Multifamily Market Report (Q2 2025).
  9. MMG Real Estate Advisors, 2026 San Antonio Forecast.
  10. RentCafe analysis of Yardi Matrix data, self-storage monthly report (March 2026).
  11. StorageCafe analysis of Yardi Matrix data, Texas self-storage per-capita rankings (2025).
  12. CBRE, "Emerging Industrial Markets: Laredo, Texas" (Q4 2022).
  13. Rio Grande Guardian, remarks of Dr. Daniel Covarrubias, Texas A&M International University (2025).
  14. U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, TransBorder Freight Data, Port Laredo (2024).
  15. Partners Real Estate, DFW industrial and Dallas office quarterly reports (Q3 2025).
  16. Yardi Matrix, 2025 office vacancy update (September 2025).
  17. Lodging Econometrics, U.S. Construction Pipeline Trend Report (Q4 2025, released January 2026); metro RevPAR via market aggregators citing STR.
  18. University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Business & Tourism Research Center, Winter Texan studies (2016; updated 2024).
  19. NIC MAP Vision, senior housing occupancy (Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 releases).
  20. U.S. Small Business Administration, Texas district office directory (2025); Texas CDC public disclosures.
  21. SBA fiscal 2025 lender data (Live Oak Bank press release, October 2025); Texas 7(a) rankings via CT Acquisitions citing SBA loan-level FOIA data (fiscal 2024, secondary source).
  22. USDA Rural Development, Texas state office (2026); USDA land-eligibility summary.
  23. National Conference of State Legislatures, "Certificate of Need State Laws" (updated 2025); Texas HHSC, Bed Allocation Rules and 26 TAC 554.2322.
  24. Texas Senate Bill 6 (2025); Public Utility Commission of Texas draft rule 16 TAC 25.194 (March 2026); ERCOT long-term load forecast.
  25. Texas Windstorm Insurance Association and Texas Department of Insurance (2025); HB 3689.
  26. U.S. Small Business Administration, combined 7(a) and 504 loan-cap increase effective July 4, 2026.
  27. Texas Proposition 9 / HB 9, business personal property tax exemption effective January 1, 2026.