Once the EB-5 Visa investor, along with his or her family, are now U.S permanent residents, which means they have maintained the Green Card status, which normally counts both the conditional and permanent status -- for a period of 5 (straight) years, then they are now eligible for the application of the naturalized U.S citizenship.
For those who are currently in their Green Card status and are thinking of living and working simultaneously in their home country and in the United States must talk to their immigration lawyer so the investor can continue to maintain their green card status since the application for naturalized citizenship requires some period of continuous living in the United States. Also, as soon as the EB-5 investor receives their permanent Green Card, they are now automatically qualified to receive the ROI or return of investment, assuming that the EB-5 loan has been reimbursed by the developer (borrower). Every Regional Center business project is expected to have an exit strategy which shows how they are planning to return the invested capital back to the EB-5 investors. The borrowers or developers can do this in two ways. The first one is they can sell the entire project and use the proceeds to pay off the EB-5 loan. This will work if the revenue significantly exceeds the total amount of the money which they owe from the bank and/or the EB-5 investors. Let’s say that a business project like constructing a commercial office building is worth $100 million when it was built and after 5 to 6 years, the value appreciated to $125 million and was able to sell for the same value. Then, this means there is $25 million, which they can use to pay back the EB-5 investors along with the bank loans, if they have some. Checkout EB5 Process times & more.
The second way is by re-financing the EB-5 loan/s. Using the same example above, the developer plans to build a $100 million worth commercial building. To do this, they invested $20 million, then took a bank loan worth $50 million and the remaining $30 million they got from 60 different EB-5 investors. The building was finished and after 5 to 6 years, the price accumulated to $125 million. Now, what the developers can do is to get a new loan worth $80 million from a new bank using the $125 million worth commercial building as collateral. Then, they’ll use the money to pay off their previous bank loan worth $50 million along with the $30 million, which they will divide among the 60 EB-5 investors or they can also just get a separate loan for each debt and use the money to pay them off. These are the two most common exit strategies that almost all developers use and investors must also have knowledge when it comes to this. But remember, nothing is permanent and there are numerous factors which can affect the developer’s exit strategies like the current economic and market conditions as well as the demand and supply and so on. |