Gas Station Financing
Buying, building, or refinancing a gas station? We know the lenders, the environmental requirements, and the parts of the deal that sink most brokers who’ve never done one. Let’s get your project funded on time.
Financing a Gas Station, and Who It’s For
A gas station is one of the harder commercial properties to finance, because a single deal can include the real estate, the business, the fuel systems, the environmental risk, and a convenience store, and a lender has to get comfortable with every piece of it before funding. What the deal needs depends on what you’re doing with it: buying your first station calls for one structure, building from the ground up calls for another, and refinancing to pull capital out calls for a third. Each one is its own kind of deal, and each one benefits from working with someone who has closed it before.
That experience is what we bring. We finance the single-station owner buying their second location, the multi-site operator with three acquisitions in the pipeline, and the developer breaking ground on a new build. We have closed each of these deal types many times, so when you bring us a project, we already know how to do it right.
Why Gas Stations Are Different
A gas station sits on underground fuel storage, and that changes everything a lender looks at. Before anyone funds your deal, the property has to clear a wall of environmental requirements:
Tank System Compliance
A passing tank system compliance test within the last year—line tightness, leak detection, pressure decay, automatic tank gauge readings.
Cathodic Protection Testing
Cathodic protection testing on the tanks within the last three years.
Hydrostatic Testing
Hydrostatic testing on every sump, spill bucket, and under-dispenser containment.
Phase I & II Reports
A Phase I environmental report, and a Phase II if anything in the first one raises a flag.
Tank Removal
For any tank ever removed from the property, the “no further action” letter from the state.
Liability Policy
A $1 million tank pollution liability policy in place.
Miss one, and everything halts until it’s resolved, often after you’ve already paid for an appraisal and committed to a closing date.
And the environmental file is only the start. A gas station’s value lives in numbers that take real familiarity to underwrite: fuel margins that swing with the market, gallons sold by grade, how much profit comes from the store versus the pump, and the franchise and fuel-supply agreements that govern what you can sell and at what price. We’ve closed these deals, so we know how to present every one of those numbers in the terms a lender needs to say yes.
Why Operators Bring Their Gas Station Deals to AAI
We came from the lending side. Our team sat on the credit committees that approve commercial loans, so we know how a lender reads a gas station deal—how they weigh the environmental risk, how they underwrite fuel income, what makes them comfortable, and what makes them pass on a deal.
That’s why we build your file the way the lender’s own committee would. We line up the environmental documentation before it becomes a problem, we present your fuel and store income in the terms a lender trusts, and we take your deal to the few lenders—out of the more than 300 we know—who actually fund gas stations and want this kind of business. The ones who don’t never see it, so you’re not waiting weeks on lenders who were never going to fund it.
How We Finance Gas Stations
A gas station deal can take a few different forms, and the right loan depends on what you’re doing. Select the path that fits your project.
Buying a station
SBA financing, with low down payments for owner-operators
A rural or
small-market station
USDA financing, often the best terms available
Building or remodeling
Construction and construction-to-perm financing
Refinancing
Lower your rate or pull capital out to fund the next station
Not sure which fits? Tell us about your project and we’ll find the right structure.
What You’ll Need
A gas station loan takes more documentation than most commercial deals, between the standard financials and the industry-specific items. Here’s the shape of it:
The business and the deal
Three years of business tax returns, year-to-date financials, and a business debt schedule. Specific to gas stations, you’ll also need three years of fuel sales broken out by grade, gallons, dollars, and cost. If you’re buying, you’ll need the purchase agreement and the property’s income history. And if the station operates under a brand, you’ll need the franchise agreement and the fuel supply agreement.
The environmental file
The tank compliance tests, the cathodic protection records, the Phase I report, and the rest of the environmental documentation a gas station deal requires.
You and any other owners
Three years of personal tax returns, a personal financial statement, and the standard personal documentation for anyone owning 20% or more.
It’s a long list, and the environmental piece is the heaviest part of it. Here’s what matters: most of it won’t fall on you. We pull what your accountant and your franchisor already have, we tell you exactly which environmental tests the deal needs and line up the people to run them. Whatever’s left after that is the short list we’ll bring to you.
What to Watch Out For
A gas station deal has a few places it can go wrong. Here’s where, so none of them surprise you.
The environmental review can halt a deal before it closes, or end it.
A failed tank test or a contamination finding can stop everything cold. We front-load the environmental work so a problem surfaces early, while there’s still time to address it, instead of after you’ve paid for an appraisal and set a closing date.
A tank that was removed years ago can still hold a deal up.
If the property ever had a tank pulled, the lender will want the state’s “no further action” letter. If it doesn’t exist, that has to be resolved before funding, so we check for it early.
The franchise and fuel-supply agreements shape your financing.
Their branding requirements, supply commitments, and territory terms affect what a lender will do, so they have to be accounted for in how the deal is structured.
The store and the fuel are two separate businesses.
A gas station earns from two streams, and each has to be underwritten on its own terms. A deal that treats them as one number, or skips the harder analysis on either, comes back with worse terms than it should.
None of this is a dealbreaker. It’s the everyday reality of financing a gas station, and we handle all of it.
Gas Station Financing FAQ
The details that matter most, answered straight.
Let’s Finance Your Next Station
Tell us about your project, whether you’re buying, building, or refinancing. We’ll tell you which lenders fit your criteria, what the environmental side will require, and what it will take to close the deal.