A hangar valuation dataset no one else is keeping
Hangar value turns on facts that live in scattered public systems: which airports are drawing federal investment, which sit near documented environmental contamination, and how lenders have fared on aviation collateral. Valuation Takes Flight collects those systems into one place, keyed to every airport in the country, and refreshes them on a quarterly cycle.
The result is a national baseline that informs each appraisal, expert engagement, and feasibility study the firm takes on. None of the underlying data is expensive to acquire. The value is in the assembly, the coding, and the discipline of keeping it current. What follows are two findings from the current build.
Where federal dollars are building hangars
Over the most recent five years, roughly $28.4 billion in federal Airport Improvement Program grants flowed to airports nationwide. Of that total, about $289 million went specifically to hangar, apron, and related general aviation projects across 337 airports.
The pattern is instructive. The largest hangar investments are not at the major airline hubs, which spend their federal dollars on runways and terminals, but at regional and small general aviation fields. That is precisely the market where new hangar capacity translates most directly into leasehold value. The airports below received the most hangar-directed federal funding in the current window.
Hangar and apron directed AIP grants, most recent five fiscal years. Source: FAA Airport Improvement Program grant history.
Hangar collateral behaves differently than lenders assume
Small Business Administration lending records, public back to 1991, contain 11,392 loans tied to aviation businesses and collateral, totaling about $6.0 billion. Across that book the default rate is 8.1 percent, and lenders charged off 3.1 percent of principal.
The loans whose borrower or address explicitly references a hangar tell a sharper story. That subset, though modest in number, defaulted at 12.6 percent and lost 5.0 percent of principal, roughly half again the rate of the broader aviation book.
The finding is consistent with what makes hangar collateral distinct. A hangar is usually a leasehold improvement on ground the owner does not control, a wasting asset whose value depends on the remaining lease term and the reversion clause. That is exactly the risk a general appraisal, treating a hangar as ordinary industrial real estate, is built to miss and a specialist appraisal is built to price.
SBA 7(a) and 504 loans, fiscal years 1991 to 2026. Hangar-named subset reflects a smaller sample and is reported as a directional signal. Source: SBA loan-level disclosure.