In the last few years there has been a tremendous increase in the popularity of the EB-5 Program. More regional centers were created and more developers started turning to the EB-5 Program to find investors. This increased the number of projects available in the EB-5 marketplace for investors to choose from.
With so many choices in the EB-5 marketplace, investors and their agents have to narrow down their criteria for choosing the best projects.
To gain insight into the EB-5 marketplace, it's important to look at what criteria EB-5 investors and agents use to select projects to invest in or promote.
The primary goals of the EB-5 investor are to receive a green card and to receive their money back from their investment. How they do that is by looking at the following 5 factors:
- Job creation success
- Do the economic models point to strong job creation?
- Is there a job creation buffer?
- Market demand for this new commercial enterprise
- Is there research or are there models showing the demand for this project?
- What is the competition like?
- When looking at where the project will be located, what is the local economy like?
- Conservative future forecasts
- Investors are primarily concerned with job creation and getting their money back
- Projects that project high revenue are more likely to look too risky for EB-5 investors
- Escrow terms that favor the investor
- This includes refunds for investors who's petitions are denied
- Investors want an escrow deal that won't release their funds into the project until the project's business plan is USCIS approved
- A strong EB-5 team
- Investors and agents look for regional centers that have a strong history of success and quality
- They look for reputation and knowledge of the industry and project field
- They want a professional team, not one individual who's going to act as the immigration lawyer, business planner, and bank
