Question 1

Is there anything Tyler-specific about an SBA owner-occupied loan?

Accepted Answer

Not much, and we would rather say so than invent an angle. Education and health services make up 27,700 of the metro's 122,100 nonfarm jobs, 22.7% of everything, anchored by CHRISTUS Trinity Mother Frances, UT Health East Texas, and the UT Tyler School of Medicine, with 230 resident physicians training across the UT Health East Texas system. That is the local employment picture, not a claim about who borrows here: no Tyler-specific SBA lending data was available to us, so treat this page as the national program with local geography on it. See our SBA program page for how we structure a file.

Question 2

How much of my Tyler building do I have to occupy myself?

Accepted Answer

51% of an existing building, 60% of new construction, and new construction is the stricter rule. Under 13 CFR 120.131, buying an existing building requires your practice or business to occupy at least 51% of the rentable space, with the rest leasable. New construction requires at least 60% owner occupancy, caps permanently leased space at 20%, and needs an absorption plan for the remaining 20% (occupied within three years, fully occupied within ten). A Tyler clinic sizing a new building around future growth needs to plan around that ceiling, not around "occupy 60%, lease the rest." Talk to your attorney or CPA about how your entity and lease plan line up against it.

Question 3

What does it cost to permit a new medical or office building in Tyler?

Accepted Answer

Lower-cost, and priced in the code. City of Tyler nonresidential construction runs $5.00 per $1,000 of estimated construction valuation, minimum $50, plus a 25% plan review fee on nonresidential, commercial, and industrial permits. A $500,000 clinic buildout runs about $2,500 for the permit and $625 for plan review, roughly $3,125, and that permit fee covers the fire inspection, with plumbing and electrical billed separately. The residential per-square-foot rate does not apply to a commercial building, so do not size a medical or office permit off a house number. Tyler also sells an expedited plan review, if staffing allows, at 300% of the normal fee plus $100 an hour, a real schedule option to price against your construction timeline. None of this changes the SBA occupancy math above. See our ground-up construction page if you're financing the build itself outside an SBA file.

Question 4

Does it matter which Smith County city I buy my practice's building in?

Accepted Answer

Yes, by a real margin. Property tax runs about 1.63% of assessed value on a City of Tyler parcel (county 0.364231 + city 0.236452 + Tyler ISD 0.845000 + Tyler Junior College 0.185068 per $100, 2025 rates) and about 1.46% on an unincorporated parcel inside Tyler ISD with no city rate at all. Move the same building to Bullard and the stack rises to roughly 2.17%, driven mostly by Bullard ISD's higher rate. On a $500,000 building that's $8,154 a year on a Tyler parcel (500,000 x 1.630751%) against $10,829 in Bullard (500,000 x 2.165834%), a gap of about $2,675 a year, before you've financed a dollar of the purchase.

Question 5

Is Tyler's real estate market stable enough to justify a 25-year SBA loan?

Accepted Answer

It's exactly the kind of market a 25-year loan is built for. Tyler's median list price has slipped a modest 6.2% from its July 2022 peak to $370,250 in July 2026, essentially flat rather than falling out from under you, while rents have kept rising (Tyler up 0.9% year over year, Whitehouse up 5.7%). That's a slow, healthcare-anchored metro with 122,100 nonfarm jobs and steady population growth (252,549 in 2025, up from 234,205 in 2020), not a market built on speculation. A practice buying its own building here isn't betting on appreciation. It's locking in occupancy cost for the life of a 25-year SBA term instead of renewing a lease at whatever the landlord wants next.

Question 6

On a $500,000 Tyler clinic building, what do I put down and carry in tax?

Accepted Answer

About $50,000 down, and roughly $8,154 a year in property tax on a City of Tyler parcel. SBA structures finance up to 90%, so on a $500,000 Tyler clinic building that is up to $450,000 financed and $50,000 from you (500,000 x 90% = 450,000). Budget the carry alongside it: that same building runs about $8,154 a year in property tax on a City of Tyler parcel at 2025 rates and about $10,829 in Bullard. Terms run up to 25 years at market SBA rates, on owner-occupied commercial real estate. Subject to underwriting.

Question 7

Is my Tyler purchase big enough for an SBA loan?

Accepted Answer

SBA files here run $350,000 to $5M and up. A practice buying a $500,000 building in Tyler sits comfortably in that band, in either 7(a) or 504, on owner-occupied commercial real estate. A smaller storefront under $350,000 is not an SBA file for us, and we would look at another structure for it. Note the timeline too: SBA placement runs 30 to 90 days, so it is not the tool for a deal with a 21-day fuse. Subject to underwriting.

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