EB5 Affiliate Network (EB5AN), a leading EB-5 investment fund manager, regional center operator, and consultancy, today announced a new rural EB-5 investment fund to partially finance an under-construction residential project just outside of Atlanta, Georgia.
Twin Lakes Georgia is an award-winning master-planned active adult community in Hoschton, Georgia, offering single-family homes and host of a popular amenities just 50 miles northeast of downtown Atlanta. The project is being developed by The Kolter Group, one of the largest privately held real estate developers in the United States with more than $19 billion in realized and in-process development experience.
The Twin lakes Georgia EB-5 project is in Jackson County, the entirety of which qualifies as rural under the rules of the EB-5 Immigrant Investor program administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Under the EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022, which was enacted in March of this year, rural EB-5 projects now enjoy significant advantages for new EB-5 investors including 20 percent of EB_5 visas reserved for investors in rural projects and faster I-526E application processing. This new policy seeks to promote economic growth and job creation in areas outside of the major U.S. cities, which historically have received an outsized share of the EB-5 investment.
According to Sam Silverman, co-founder and managing partner of EB5AN, the 20-percent rural allocation will be of particular interest to investors from China and India. “This is a unique opportunity for EB-5 investors seeking an under construction, rural EB-5 project being developed by an institutional developer with a 25+ year track record,” said Silverman. “There is a cap on the number of EB-5 visas that can be issued in each fiscal year to investors from any one country, and both China and India are already oversubscribed. Immigrant investors under the previous EB-5 law will likely be waiting for many years. A Chinese or Indian national who invests under the new EB-5 law can expect a significantly shorter processing time.”
EB5AN has raised 10+ EB-5 investment funds since 2014, all but one of which were in metropolitan locations. The major benefits of rural EB-5 projects for new EB-5 investors at $800K have shifted the firm’s focus to identify institutional quality projects in rural areas, such as Jackson County, where Twin Lakes Georgia is located.
“Finding suitable rural projects is more challenging,” explains Mike Schoenfeld, co-founder and managing partner of EB5AN. “Our investment strategy is to minimize risk. Many projects in small towns are either too small for EB-5 or have a greater probability of facing development headwinds. Therefore, our rural strategy is to identify high-quality projects in fast-growing exurban localities, places on the frontier of regional growth that are still outside the government’s official delineation of the metro area.”
Jackson County meets the rural definition because it’s not part of the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GA Metropolitan Statistical Area, as determined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), but it’s still close enough to benefit from one of the most robust regional economies in the United States.
“You couldn’t pick a better spot than Jackson County, Georgia,” added Silverman. “It checks all the boxes. There’s a reason that Kolter and other top-tier real estate developers have been successfully building affordable single-family retirement communities there over the last 20 years.”
EB5 Affiliate Network is an internationally known EB-5 investment fund manager, regional center operator, and consultancy that has facilitated more than $1 billion of investment under the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa program. EB5AN works with firms in multiple industries to create high-quality direct and regional center-sponsored investment offerings throughout the United States. EB5AN’s investment funds serve immigrant investors from more than 60 countries with a portfolio of low-risk investments in world-class business ventures.
Created in 1990, the EB-5 Immigrant Investor program has long been a gateway to the United States for foreign nationals living abroad, as well as by those already working or studying in the U.S. on nonimmigrant visas including H-1B, L-1B, and F-1. Thousands of families from all over the world have successfully immigrated by making a job-creating investment in a U.S.-based business enterprise. The EB-5 program has facilitated billions of dollars of foreign direct investment into the United States and created tens of thousands of jobs over the last three decades.
The EB-5 Reform and Integrity Act of 2022 was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Biden on March 15, 2022. The Act renews the EB-5 regional center program and makes significant policy changes affecting both direct and regional center investment, with the goal of increasing transparency and accountability and reducing fraud. In implementing the Act’s numerous provisions, USCIS has declared that all regional centers approved under the old EB-5 law are not authorized to participate in the new EB-5 regional center program established by Act. Consequently, all regional centers must apply again and be approved by USCIS before facilitating EB-5 investments by foreign nationals.