Independent, bank-grade feasibility studies for Florida projects — SBA 504 and 7(a), USDA, EB-5, and conventional lending — from a firm with 28 years of practice and 4,000+ engagements completed nationwide.
Feasibility is local, and the evidence for it is published locally. Every Florida engagement is built from the credible subscribed and governmental sources that cover this market specifically: the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey at tract and county level, Florida Department of Transportation classified traffic counts, Bureau of Labor Statistics employment and wage series for Florida metros and counties, FEMA flood determinations, state licensure, registration, and permit records, and the federal sector data — EIA, USDA, CMS, HUD — that covers each asset class — alongside RMA Annual Statement Studies and IBISWorld benchmark corridors. Because these sources are available to the firm for every county in the state, Wert-Berater can underwrite a project anywhere in Florida with the same evidentiary depth a local analyst would bring — drawing on 28 years of firm practice. Every figure is cited to its source, so a Florida lender can pull the same table and reproduce the finding.
Wert-Berater studies are accepted at more than 600 banks, lenders, credit unions, certified development companies, and investment funds nationwide — including the institutions that finance projects in Florida every day. Studies are prepared to the standard the reviewing program actually applies: SBA SOP 50 10 for 504 and 7(a) credits, the full 7 CFR Part 5001 factor framework for USDA guarantees, recognized economic methodology for EB-5, and negotiated coverage standards for conventional underwriting. The deliverable is the firm’s blue-chip standard everywhere it goes: a complete analytical report with every claim sourced, plus a fully linked financial model with zero hardcoded numbers that your underwriter can stress directly.
Party names withheld per the firm’s confidentiality practice; locations and figures as published in the firm’s engagement record.
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These are recent engagements — representative of the firm’s record of 4,000+ engagements completed since 1998 across all fifty states. See the firm’s representative engagement experience →
Program files carry their own rules, and the two that drive most Florida lending are handled on dedicated pages:
The full practice is available in this market — 120+ industries and project types across ten groups, from hotels, RV resorts, marinas, and self-storage through healthcare, senior living, manufacturing, fuel and travel centers, renewable energy, agriculture, and aquaculture — each with its own accepted demand methodology and benchmark set.
Florida’s commercial economy is shaped by tourism, migration, healthcare, trade, construction, professional services, agriculture, defence and aerospace activity. Those drivers overlap but do not create uniform demand. A coastal resort, an inland senior-housing community, an interstate gas station and a suburban medical office require different trade areas, competitive sets and seasonality assumptions. Feasibility work must distinguish permanent households from visitors and part-year residents, and must avoid treating statewide growth as proof that a particular site, product or price point will be absorbed.
Ports and airports support logistics, cruise, hospitality and distribution uses, while established retirement destinations sustain healthcare and senior-living proposals. Tourism-related development is sensitive to source markets, airlift, event calendars and weather disruptions. Multifamily, retail and self-storage demand depends on submarket household formation, housing turnover, competing supply and access rather than state-level momentum alone. Marina studies must reconcile wet-slip and dry-stack alternatives, vessel profile, bridge and channel constraints, hurricane procedures and upland operations. Land-development studies additionally test finished-lot timing, horizontal costs, builder appetite and the sequencing of roads, drainage and utilities.
Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach form a connected but highly segmented South Florida region. Miami combines international trade, tourism, finance, healthcare, multifamily and dense mixed-use development. Broward County supports hospitality, marina, medical, industrial and infill residential projects, while Palm Beach County includes luxury hospitality and residential markets alongside senior housing, healthcare and service retail. Underwriting should not transfer rates or absorption casually among Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach submarkets; access, visitor profile, income characteristics, insurance exposure and the competitive product differ materially.
Orlando is anchored by tourism and conventions but also has healthcare, education, logistics and a broad resident-serving economy. Hotel and attraction-adjacent retail proposals require demand segmentation between leisure, group, business and local use. Tampa Bay supports port and distribution activity, financial and professional services, healthcare, apartments, senior housing and Gulf-oriented tourism. Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater are related markets, yet site access and customer origin can produce very different competitive sets.
Jacksonville combines a major port, interstate distribution, financial services, healthcare, military activity and manufacturing, making industrial and owner-occupied operating-company projects especially relevant. Naples and Fort Myers serve Southwest Florida’s tourism, retirement, healthcare, housing and marine economy; seasonality and storm recovery need explicit treatment in projections. Sarasota, the Space Coast, Tallahassee, Gainesville, Pensacola and the Florida Keys present further combinations of arts and tourism, aerospace, government, universities, military demand and constrained island development. Each project is analysed at the county, corridor and drive-time level appropriate to how its customers actually choose.
Florida land use is governed through county and municipal comprehensive plans, zoning codes and development-review procedures. A project may require future-land-use consistency, rezoning, conditional or special-use approval, site-plan review, concurrency or mobility review, building and fire approval, driveway access, utility capacity and water-management permits. Review paths and public-hearing exposure vary considerably by jurisdiction. Development agreements, planned-unit-development conditions and impact-fee obligations must be read alongside the conceptual programme because an attractive acreage total does not establish permitted density, access or buildable area.
Water is central to Florida site feasibility. Flood zones, base-floor requirements, wetlands, stormwater storage, drainage outfalls, coastal construction controls and evacuation considerations can affect site yield, construction cost, insurance and schedule. Projects may also encounter state transportation access review, regional water-management district permitting, environmental-resource permits, utility-extension commitments and protected-species considerations. Coastal hospitality, marina and residential proposals require particular attention to wind design, saltwater exposure, business-interruption planning and the practical availability and cost of insurance. A feasibility study should connect these items to opening dates, contingency and debt carry, while clearly distinguishing issued approvals from applications, informal feedback and sponsor assumptions.
Florida borrowers work with community and regional banks, credit unions, Certified Development Companies, national banks and specialist hospitality, healthcare and commercial-real-estate lenders. Local institutions may understand a corridor well but still need independent analysis of competitive supply, seasonality, ramp-up and stressed debt service. SBA 504 financing is relevant to qualifying owner-occupied real estate and fixed assets, while SBA 7(a) can support eligible acquisitions, start-ups and operating needs. The lender or CDC determines when a feasibility study is appropriate under SBA standards; it is not universal to every SBA transaction.
USDA Rural Development programmes can be relevant in eligible communities across inland North Florida, the Panhandle and agricultural portions of central and southern Florida. The Florida state office works through its field structure in administering rural business, community and infrastructure programmes, with study scope driven by the programme, project characteristics and Agency review. Conventional underwriting may place particular emphasis on insurance, sponsor liquidity, replacement reserves, presales or preleasing and downside performance after a weather interruption. Florida assignments frequently call for hotel feasibility studies, healthcare feasibility studies, multifamily feasibility studies, marina and boat-storage feasibility studies, self-storage feasibility studies, senior-care feasibility studies, gas-station and convenience-store feasibility studies, retail feasibility studies and land feasibility studies. Wert-Berater applies its nationwide methodology while keeping the evidence and conclusions specific to the Florida site and lending decision.
Legal disclosure. Wert-Berater, Inc. offices are mailing addresses only. Following the COVID-19 pandemic the firm has elected to work remotely; its office locations receive mail and are not staffed for visitors or in-person meetings. Headquarters mailing address: 1968 South Coast Hwy, Ste 2382, Laguna Beach, CA 92651.
Wert-Berater, Inc. is an independent provider of feasibility studies and other related services. The firm does not provide financing or equity investment advice, and does not arrange, broker, or place debt or equity capital of any kind.
All appraisal assignments are performed by Bruce E. Jones, MAI, ASA-GC, BCA, CMEA, a member of the Appraisal Institute since 2006, a staff member of Wert-Berater, Inc. and owner of Special Purpose Realty Valuation.