In White Plains, NY, Dental Office Loans: Associate Buy-Ins and Imaging Upgrades

A dental practice acquisition loan is a term loan for buying an existing practice or a share of one. The request starts with a call to Cedarstone Business Funding or the request form, goes to funding partners, and a partner that takes it up asks for the purchase terms and the practice's records before it sets an amount and a term.

1. Agree on a price with the seller and put it in a letter of intent or a draft purchase agreement.
2. Gather the practice's recent tax returns, its profit and loss statements and a list of the equipment that comes with it.
3. Call or send the request form; the purchase details are talked through on the call.
4. A funding partner reviews the practice's earnings and the buyer's own finances, then sets any offer.
5. At closing the loan pays the seller for the business side: equipment, patient records, goodwill and supplies. The building or office condo is real estate, outside this site.

An associate buy-in is the same move on a smaller scale. The associate buys a share of the practice from the owner, and a term loan can pay for that share; the partner can look at the practice's earnings and the associate's own income.

Refinancing a dental practice loan means replacing an existing business loan, such as the one that bought the practice or its equipment, with a new one on a different term or rate. A funding partner can look at whether a new term loan pays off the old balance. Loans secured by the office building or condo are property debt, outside this site.

Illustration only, invented figures: $96,000 is left on a practice loan at 11% a year with 48 payments to go, $2,481.17 each, or $119,096.16 still to pay. A new 60-month loan at 9% a year for the same $96,000 costs $1,992.80 a month. The payment shrinks by $488.37, but the 60 payments come to $119,568.00, which is $471.84 extra in total.

So a smaller rate alone does not settle it. The office can set the remaining payments on the old loan next to the full cost of the new one, including anything due at signing and any prepayment terms on the existing loan.

Dental offices around Westchester County, NY can match each need to one funding type:

• Equipment financing: patient chairs, delivery units, CBCT and intraoral scanners, lasers, compressors and vacuum pumps
• Term loans: associate buy-ins, practice purchases and refinancing an existing practice loan
• Line of credit: hygienist and assistant payroll while insurance payments arrive
• Inventory financing: implants, impression materials and other supplies bought in bulk
• Working capital: a gap between the work done and the payments collected

County Business Patterns counted 613 offices of dentists (NAICS 6212) with paid staff in Westchester County, NY for 2023, and 309 in that count, 50.4%, had fewer than five employees.

Those 613 dental office establishments paid $237.2 million in wages and salaries during 2023, summed together. That is the county total for the trade, not a range for one office.

Lasers, compressors and intraoral scanners are three separate purchases. A soft-tissue or hard-tissue laser is a stand-alone device with its own quote. An intraoral scanner can take the place of impression trays for crowns and aligners, and its software may carry a subscription of its own. A dental air compressor and vacuum pump supply the whole office from a utility room: the units themselves are equipment, while running new air and vacuum lines through the walls is building work outside this site.

Equipment financing can cover any of the three alone or together on one agreement, with the partner setting the term.

ZIP Code Business Patterns lists 31 offices of dentists in ZIP 10601 for 2023; that postal area is only part of White Plains, NY.

Illustration only, invented figures: a White Plains, NY dental office adds a hygiene day. It buys two patient chairs with delivery units at $21,800 each and a CBCT scanner for $86,000, $129,600 in all, puts $9,600 down and finances $120,000.

At 8.25% a year over 72 months the equipment agreement runs $2,118.67 a month, $152,544.24 over the term, with $32,544.24 of that interest.

The new hygienist is paid from the first week, while the insurance payments for that hygiene day come in later. A line of credit draw of $14,000 at 11.5% a year costs $134.17 in interest for each month it stays out, and the office pays it down as those payments arrive.

A partner may set a different term, ask for a larger down payment or decline part of the request.