EB-5 Investor Testimonial:
Niharika and Ishaan from India

Niharika:
Sure. I’m Niharika Kishore. I’m currently working with Amazon. Both Ishaan and I have been in the U.S. since 2015. We came on an F-1 visa to pursue our master’s degrees, went to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. That’s where we met. Ishaan, over to you.

Ishaan:
Yeah, I can go next. So again, my name is Ishaan. Like Niharika mentioned, we’re here for our master’s, and I’ve been here for 10 years. Currently, we are based out of San Jose. Moved around for a bit in the U.S., from being in Chicago to Nashville, Tennessee, and then finally being here. And yeah, we are currently on an H-1B status along with an EB-2 pathway to a Green Card. But yeah, that’s when we decided to pursue an EB-5.

Niharika:
I think primarily it was a long wait in EB-2 and EB-3 and a really high acceptance criteria for EB-1, which also now comes with about a five- to seven-year backlog for India-born citizens. So that’s kind of where the EB-5 journey for us began: the flexibility of being able to live in the U.S. and work anywhere.

Ishaan:
Right. Current wait times are just way too long. There’s a lot of anxiety amongst other visa holders … Indian-related. When you’re working with people, there are lots of people on different visas. You speak with them, there’s the same level of anxiety amongst all of them. You want to focus on the work that you’re doing or in general being more productive people, but that’s the challenge. I feel that the visa process kind of keeps you … is always at the back of your mind. You’re always tracking that. So we wanted that, I guess. From just the long wait times and from a peace-of-mind standpoint, we decided to go for the EB-5 process.

Niharika:
I think the first key thing would be if there are any international source of funds involved, like gifts from friends or family, or anything coming from outside of the United States, then you need to have an attorney that understands how that money is coming in and being funded for the EB-5 project. For us, it was fairly straightforward with all of it being salaried funds from the U.S., but a lot of times it’s very complicated. And so having an attorney that has an understanding of the cross-border taxation and what’s allowed to be used for EB-5 is really helpful.

And I think the second point that was really helpful was for us to understand where our funds were coming from, because there were investments over time that had multiplied. So to be able to trace back where all of that money was coming from was important. So that flow chart, like I mentioned, was a key for us to understand where our money is coming from so we can explain to the lawyers to put in the cover letter.

Ishaan:
Yeah, I think that’s pretty much it. I think source of funds, maybe I had a consideration for our unique situation. Again, it’s not as unique now. As I spoke to more EB-5 investors, it’s not as unique. But initially, when I was talking to different lawyers, I was checking if they had worked with clients who are based in the U.S. and pursuing an EB-5 and if there were certain nuances there. But pretty much, it’s a fairly common pathway. It’s a fairly common pathway. There’s a fair amount of people on H-1B who have transitioned to an EB-5, so it wasn’t as unusual as I was thinking about from the get-go. So these lawyers are fairly well-versed. All of them were fairly well-versed with H-1B to EB-5.

Niharika:
And then I think the other challenge we had was the birth certificate. I mean, you don’t end up realizing how important that is. In India, we typically think the 10th and the 12th exam mark sheets and documents are enough. But unfortunately for EB-5, you do need that birth certificate, and that’s something that the lawyers helped us figure out as well.

Ishaan:
I can go first.

Niharika:
Go ahead.

Ishaan:
So primarily, when we started exploring these projects, the first thing that we realized is the capital stack and the structure of where exactly the loan would sit. These investments … Again, thanks to a couple of people that we spoke to, and, again, Ahmed from EB5AN also helped guide. He was one of the earliest people that we spoke to. And then we shopped around for a fair amount. But then that was the primary criteria: Is this a loan or an equity investment? That became a big consideration.

And then, also in terms of loans, there are different kinds of loans. So we kind of had to educate ourselves on which one again has a better position in the capital stack. So that was one of the criteria. Niharika, you can …

Niharika:
Yeah, so we came up with a whole metric to rank each of the projects in our regional centers to select which project we wanted to go with. One of the top things that we considered was it needs to be a 956F-approved project given that Ishaan and I didn’t have our EB-2 and EB-3 I-140s approved, so we couldn’t have taken that risk of a denial down the line. So a 956-approved project, enough job cushion to get us the jobs needed for the EB-5 Green Card, and then picking a project which was rural and the capital stock which ranked in the senior loan capital stock. So that was kind of the early criteria we went with.

Ishaan:
In terms of … I think you had one more question, right? Hotels versus what kind of projects are you considering? Well, a handful. Primarily, again, all these being construction projects, we had to start getting into the nuances of what kind of projects these are, what’s a repayment, do they have a path to a positive cash flow at some point. And whether these projects are rural and urban, that’s just another curveball in the whole mix.

So out of these, we started sifting through these projects to understand just the general demographic trends and other nuances of those locations. See what kind of … Let’s say if it’s a resort, we were exploring, hey, how does the tourism trends look like for that particular city or market. We were exploring other things around … Let’s say if it’s a housing project, in that case, what are the housing trends or in general mobility trends for those particular cities? Is there an inflow or outflow of people in that area? So all of those things we were bringing together as we were going through this process.

Niharika:
Yeah, I think the best thing about EB5AN was them being very forthcoming. So they laid out the project risk, what’s working for the project, and what are the project risks in a very forthcoming, very clear manner, versus some of the other regional centers that tried to hide some of the downfalls of projects. I think there was a lot of transparency in sharing project risks and project data that helped them earn our trust.

Ishaan:
Yeah, definitely. So I went on … There’s a handful of different EB-5 companies or developers and companies that we were speaking to, and across all of them, EB5AN came out to be the most transparent. We could find project plans and very thought-out, meticulous details about the project in general. Even past projects, we had a lot of transparency in terms of where they are, the repayment, and things like that. A lot of externalities that I could not simply glean from the websites. Other companies, some of them don’t even offer much reading material on the project without talking to an individual.

So that way, the research was happening a lot offline—sorry, a lot online—without necessarily talking to an individual, which is, again, a very fresh take on the way we were spending time with people when we just wanted. We were shopping around and just wanted some information, right? We didn’t have to talk, but then we were still talking to these. So I kind of liked that about EB5AN, where just the amount, the abundance of information that we had on the projects, on the RC in general, and the specific nuances on the projects helped us get a lot more information and just in general understand the project a lot better without having to have multiple follow-up conversations with an individual.

Niharika:
EB5AN made us feel fairly comfortable with putting in $800,000 in investment in a project. A lot of the other RCs that we spoke to made us nervous about that investment.

Niharika:
Do you want to take this, Ishaan?

Ishaan:
Yeah. So in general, we started reading up on Kolter once we were assessing two or three EB5AN projects. One was I think ONE Tampa and then the Rocky River one. Also, Twin Lakes was also live back then. So we were going through these projects. We looked at Kolter as a construction group, and we looked at just their past of successful projects.

Again, that gave us a lot of confidence just in the terms of scale and also the terms of volume that they have delivered over the last I think three decades or something. So there’s a lot of background over there that we typically ignored when we were starting off this research. Most of the developers that the other RCs are working with sometimes turned out to be very small, or a brand-new developer is just working on this one project. So compared to that, Kolter seemed to be a lot more familiar and larger name in general. They had a lot of successful projects, as the volume of houses that they have delivered over the last 20, 30 years has been massive. So all of that gave us confidence about Kolter’s ability to float.

Another thing to consider was there have been two financial … I would say market anomaly events. One was the 2008 financial crisis and then COVID. Kolter seemed to get through both of them. So that was another thing that we just considered, because COVID led to some sort of a strain on the overall construction business, and Kolter seemed to just come out of that. So that again gave us some more confidence on the developer as a brand and as a company.

Niharika:
Yeah. And just to add to that, we of course did read all of the documents that Kolter had provided for the Rocky River project that we finally invested in, but we independently came to the same analysis for North Carolina and for that area in terms of people moving in, in terms of senior housing becoming more popular. So we independently were able to validate a lot of what Kolter had already put together to vet out that project. So having both things match made us more comfortable investing in the project.

Niharika:
A couple of things played into that decision. So on paper when we were evaluating ONE Tampa, it seemed like a better project. The payback was quicker, so we would’ve received our money faster. But considering the ongoing IIUSA lawsuit, there is still a possibility that repayment would be linked to getting your Green Card, which is why we thought that the rural project gives us a better chance of getting our money back but in a longer timeframe. But we will get our money back along with the Green Card much quicker versus the urban project. It wasn’t really a project decision. It was more a Green Card immigration decision to go with Rocky River, the rural TEA.

Ishaan:
Another thing that we did consider later on as we were getting into more detail about these projects is that how viable is a given project and the geography in general. Tampa, again, is a very hot housing market, which is great for that ONE Tampa project. On the other hand, Kolter had a history with very successful … the Cresswind brand. So they had a fair amount of success with Cresswind, with the Twin Lakes. So that was another thing that we did consider, that, hey, this particular kind of living community for a particular age group appealed to us. And also, in the past, we saw the success of the Cresswind brand.

So in general, that was another thing that we considered later. Yes, immigration was the primary thing, but then just the nuance or the difference between the two projects in terms of target audience, we were more drawn towards the community where they had a stronger success record. And again, Kolter had some more successful projects in urban areas as well. But from an immigration standpoint and just in general the success of the Cresswind brand, we decided to go with the rural Rocky River project.

Niharika:
So I think there’s two key points there. The first is the way the projects are built and sold. So some of the other more commercial rural projects is where you put in all of this money and then you expect to sell the project to recoup that money. The key difference between those projects and Rocky River is that they’re only going to build, say, the first hundred houses. They will sell those houses, assess how the market is doing, and then build the next tranche.

So that kind of protects you as an EB-5 investor, that it’s not that they’re going to sit on a thousand houses and then wait for them to sell. They’re only going to build as much as they think they can sell in the upcoming time. So that kind of hedges a little bit of the risk versus the other commercial real estate, which is you have to build the entire resort to put it on the market for rentals. So I think that was one of the major differences that I found.

Ishaan:
I think from a cash flow standpoint, I was also considering the seasonality and the popularity of these destinations. Some of these resorts that we were looking at are typically ski resorts. Again, for these rural projects we were looking at ski resorts, hotels, things like that. So we were assessing in general the visitorship of those locations and all that stuff. So in general, I thought that there’s some seasonality component to it. Also, resorts and hotels by nature kind of fall in the discretionary spending category.

If another market downturn were to happen in the long run, I would want to be protected in the sense that discretionary spending and travel gets cut off the first. That’s what we saw in COVID, same thing as what we saw in 2008.

So that’s the reason why we were also trying to avoid hotels and resorts. Again, not to say there aren’t good hotel projects also out there. But we just, given the time horizon we are looking at—it’s close to seven years—we wanted to plan for something and avoid some of the risk that comes with a tourism- or hotel-related project.

Niharika:
The other thing is the target demographic for the Rocky River Project typically would already have another home that they would sell and purchase this one. So from a cash flow standpoint, there is very less reliance on a mortgage or something like that. You would typically do an upfront down payment for the entire amount and purchase that house. So that kind of also helps us know that okay, once these 80, 100 homes, the first tranche is built, it will be sold fully in cash.

Niharika:
From my standpoint, that experience was excellent. Between Ishaan and I deciding to invest in Rocky River and us actually transferring over the entire $800,000 investment was pretty much just a one-week wait. So we decided the next day. EB5AN, Ahmed was able to send us the documents, the subscription documents. We reviewed them. We got them reviewed by our lawyers. We signed them and sent over the payment along with the documents. It was a fairly straightforward process. And then within another 48 hours, all of the documents that the lawyers needed from the regional center side were already sent over to them.

Ishaan:
I think in general, the experience was very, very positive. When you speak to multiple RCs—and we spoke to maybe eight or 10 different RCs in the get-go—each of these RCs, the expectation is that, hey, you are going into this blind. You can read as much online as you can, but then the RC also needs to educate you on the project, on the nuances, and things like that.

I think by far the EB5AN team and Ahmed—we are primarily working with him—in general, the experience with them was much, much better. We learned a lot about the EB-5 process in general, about these investments, from Ahmed. And this is not just pertaining to the project. It’s in general an overall understanding of what these projects are and the risk.

Then we had follow-up questions. We had multiple sessions with EB5AN. That did not necessarily happen with the other RCs, even the ones with attractive projects. Again, we went in with the knowledge that we probably gained from talking to the EB5AN team, which helped us have more informed decisions.

So, in general, I had a fair amount of … I think that it was a very positive experience, just the way we were onboarded to the whole thing. We asked about multiple projects. We had different 30-minute connects for each individual project, and for each one, we had overall a fairly positive outcome where we learned more about the project and learned new things.

So all in all, I just think from that standpoint, making sure your customer understands the full thing, I would give 10 out of 10 points, because we fully learned the process. It helped make us more comfortable with it. It made us feel we know what we are doing. At the same time, it made us feel that you guys also know what you’re doing.

Niharika:
Yeah, EB5AN definitely educated and trained us to ask the right questions without the expectation that we will move forward with them. A lot of the other RCs that we talked to were basically “Come sign with us. We’re the best in class. We have the most repayment,” and a lot of these flowery things. Nobody really talked to us at the project level on what are the merits of the project, what are the risks associated with it. So EB5AN again wins on the transparency, but they really educated us on what are the right questions to ask and how do we correctly assess a project without the expectation of us wanting to invest with them.

Ishaan:
I think for those who are … Again, just going off that prompt, I think for those who are interested in EB-5 … Niharika, do you want to take that question?

Niharika:
Sure. I think early recommendations for me for anyone that’s trying to evaluate whether EB-5 is the right path forward to them for them or not, it’s a very personal decision. For us, it was driven more by not having I-140s approved and not having enough time left on H-1Bs. For others, it could be something like their 20-year wait time on an EB-2 or EB-3 to get a Green Card. So the situation is very different, so they need to come up with the criteria that is most important to them.

But my recommendation to them, first thing … A fun recommendation would be have a first call with Ahmed. He will really try to explain what you need to ask and how do you evaluate the whole process, because our first conversation was with Ahmed, and that was very eye-opening for us I think. Now that I go back and reflect, a lot of what we learned about the EB-5 process was from that first 30-minute conversation that we had with Ahmed.

The other thing is … I forget the name of the book, but Ishaan maybe might remember. We read a book on the EB-5 investment that kind of walked us through what are the different stages, what is the capital stack. The first 30 minutes of conversation were a lot of jargon and terms like capital stack and equity and loan structures, are you senior debt? There was a lot of things that were being thrown at us with us not fully understanding what all of that meant. That book really helped us understand what does that terminology mean, what does the process look like, why do people who have applied before 2022 not have their Green Cards now, what changed after the RIA ruling, what are the urban and rural set-aside visas mean. A lot of those fundamentals were cleared to us through that book. I would highly recommend reading that book.

I think the other recommendation I would have is talk with anybody that is willing to talk to you about EB-5. At first, the first 30 days of scoping a project is really absorbing all of the information that’s being thrown at you, and it’s a lot. There’s a lot of good projects out there. There’s a lot of bad projects out there. There’s a lot of RCs out there. So talk to whoever you can to gather as much information so that you can figure out what is important to you to make the decision on which project and which RC to move forward with.

Ishaan:
Yeah. I think fully echoing Niharika’s point on reading that book, definitely scheduling calls or at least introductory calls, learning more about the EB-5 process in general, and just getting familiar with these projects. This can be a daunting task for almost anyone. It took us two and a half months to fully finalize and invest in this, and during that time, we were just absorbing and discussing and brainstorming on what all do we need to consider.

So I would definitely say start early. If you’re even remotely interested, do read up this particular book. Do talk to different EB-5 RCs or to EB5AN, but do talk to RCs and just get familiar with the process. Every conversation you have, you’ll incrementally learn more, and at some point, you’ll be very well versed where you go into these conversations fully knowing what you need to know about the project to make a decision about it or not. So again, I think that just get started. When you think this is a viable pathway, start immediately and just start talking to people, I would say.

Niharika:
Yeah, the name of the book is The Essential EB-5 Investor’s Guide by Dilip Parmeswaran—excellent book.

The other thing I would recommend is take everything that everyone is saying with a pinch of salt. The different people that you are talking to, everybody has their own point of view and is looking at their best interest. You are the only one that’s looking at your best interest. So everything that everyone else is saying needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, and you will have to analyze it for if that’s the right decision for your investment.

Niharika:
Yes and yes. I would recommend Donoso and also EB5AN for others. The main reason is transparency, the communication that happened between all the teams, and EB5AN just being very forthcoming and always available for our questions.

Ishaan:
Yeah. So definitely, again, yes on Donoso side. With them, we’ve had a positive experience. Again, like Niharika mentioned, she’s been or at least spoken to Aarushi or the Donoso partner a long time ago, maybe six or seven years ago. And her being in that space since then gave us some confidence. So I think, all in all, it was a positive experience. She knew our unique circumstances and helped clarify a lot of the doubts. Again, immigration can be a complex process, so she helped us along the way get through each of those stages one step at a time.

And the next would be, yeah, I would definitely recommend EB5AN. So far, the overall experience has been phenomenal. This is a big, big investment. It’s equivalent to buying a house, right? Or maybe more, because you’re putting a lot of capital in one go. Making sure that you’re comfortable with the project, you understand the project, you’re comfortable with it, you understand the cash flows, the long-term goals of the projects, and those things—I think I have been very, very comfortable with EB5AN compared to any of the other RCs. We definitely liked the way we approached the project and we understood it … sorry, the way we approached the project and how the projects were structured. Again, Kolter Group also came out as a strong partner for EB5AN, which also gave us a lot of confidence in the projects that were happening in general. So yeah, I would definitely recommend working with EB5AN as well.