What are SBA Loans?

SBA loans are the cheapest capital most growing businesses will ever access. As of 2026, pricing is roughly Prime plus 2–3%, with terms up to 10 years for working capital and 25 years for real estate. The federal government guarantees a portion of the loan, which lowers the lender's risk and translates into significantly better terms for the borrower. Loan sizes range from $250K to $5MM. Nothing else in alternative finance comes close on price. When the business fits the SBA criteria, SBA is almost always the first answer.

The tradeoff is the underwriting. The process takes four to twelve weeks, sometimes longer. Lenders require two years of clean, profitable financial statements, with credit analysis as rigorous as a traditional bank's. There are program-specific rules: the 7(a) is the general-purpose loan for most business needs, the 504 covers fixed assets such as commercial real estate or large equipment, and SBA Express is a faster option for loans under $500K.

Because SBA is highly specialized, we do not originate SBA loans ourselves. We refer every SBA deal to a partner — a former SBA banker who runs a dedicated SBA-only practice — and stay involved to make sure the borrower is served well.

SBA is the right tool for acquiring a profitable business (typically through the 7(a) program for owner-operator purchases), purchasing commercial real estate with a meaningful down payment (504), refinancing high-cost debt onto a long amortization, or funding growth in an established, profitable business with clean books.

SBA is the wrong tool when you need capital in the next 30 days, when the trailing twelve months have been weak, when the business is in turnaround, or when there is no two-year profitability story to tell. For those situations, we structure a parallel track — invoice factoring, an asset-based line, a bridge, or a real estate cash-out — that gets the business through the period an SBA underwriter could not work within.