cranston

Today, we finally got our cash back from our EB5 "investment".

Despite having awful economic timing when making this property investment with rental payments and the return of our investment we are walking away with a small $ profit and US citizenship for 5.

Good luck to anyone going down this route.

lansbury

Very glad it worked out OK for you.

dudipalacs

Hi, I want to persue the EB5 route, i am really confused, which project to invest and where, will you be able to give any suggesions? how you approached and stuff.. Thanks in advance for your help!

Steve_

There are three or four major companies that set up regional centres, the others are best avoided as they have no/dubious track records. CMB is one, CanAm is another (and they got caught doing some very dubious things with one of their regional centres) and there are a couple of others I can't remember off-hand.

You give them $500,000, plus a "franchise fee", usually something like $50,000 and they loan your money out to a real estate developer who they charge below market rate interest and they give you a tiny fraction of that on your money, so they make their money through the franchise fee and the few percent interest they charge the developer. Plus you've got USCIS fees and lawyer fees on top of that, so the cost to you is $50,000+USCIS fee+lawyer fee+money you would have made on the $500,000 elsewhere. That last one is actually quite important to bear in mind now that interest rates are going up, because if you earn say, 6% a year on the stock market, 6% compounded over the length of the loan (which is typically 6 or 7 years) is quite a lot of money. (Roughly $210,000 for 6% over six years - they might give you a teeny bit of interest but not much).

The problem at the moment is that USCIS has announced new regulations which will raise the upper limit for an investment to $1.8 million and for a TEA to $1.35 million, but the definition of a TEA is a hell of a lot narrower so you'll likely need $1.8 million. And with El Trumpo the anti-immigrant (but married to an immigrant) in the White House I think it's unlikely those regulations won't happen, even though his own son-in-law was running a dodgy EB-5 scheme.

https://iiusa.org/blog/kathy-nuebel-...cy-conference/

Even if the change in the investment limits don't happen, the change in the definition of a TEA almost certainly will, so the current limit of $1 million for a non-TEA will apply.

cranston

I did all my research in 2007, before the global financial crisis (GFC). The investment world has changed incredibly since then and I don't know anything about the firms or projects available today. Because of that, I don't have any suggestions.

Back in 2007, I decided to go for a property based investment. I hoped rising property prices and rising rents would reduce my risk. That assumption was wrong. The GFC hit and tenants were very hard to find and took years to find.

At best these are high risk & low return investment and there are many dishonest promoters attracted by the high fees. At worst, well you know or should do. If you can find another way do so.

I'm just relieved the whole thing is over, I think I have been very lucky.

Steve_

So you put the money in 11 years ago? Holy cow.

Anyway as far as I can tell there are no regional centres available for investment at the moment as everyone is waiting on the USCIS final rule.

cranston

10 years, we invested Jan 2008 and were repaid March 2018.

jxv73

Wow, $500k would need to have grown to $593k just to keep up with inflation over the period. But, you did get PR and USC eventually.