The cultural diversity of the South Florida region makes it a unique and desirable place to work and live. The residents of this flourishing market are people from over 150 countries who speak more than 60 different languages. Creative Choice Group, a South Florida-based development and investment corporation founded by Dilip Barot in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, is engaged in private real estate financing, development, and management. The focus for Creative Choice Homes, a subset of Creative Choice Group, today is on exploring affordable housing for the Miami area, particularly with the help of EB-5 funding opportunities.
EB-5 Program Basics
EB-5 is an alternative funding source in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida and other South Florida regions. Foreigners who invest in the United States create American jobs. In exchange, they receive a U.S. green card. American developers and business owners, such as Dilip Barot of Creative Choice Group, are applying EB-5 capital to raise the required funds for their projects.
South Florida EB-5 Investors
Recently, Miami and several other local governments chose to create private EB-5 regional centers, allowing them to pick projects to improve financing options that will serve the local community, charge a lower price to the businesses, and use the fees to subsidize services such as firefighters and law enforcement. In fact, the mayor of Miami recently challenged housing developers, like Creative Choice Homes, to develop more apartments aimed at the groups sidelined during the city’s luxury housing boom, including young professionals, senior citizens, teachers, and police officers. The city promised to arrange for selected developments to be partially funded by EB-5.
How EB-5 Benefits Developers
The regional center serving Miami and Palm Beach Gardens, Florida covers the entire tri-county area, facilitating funding housing projects outside the city. Its purpose is to oversee the creation of a commercial real estate entity funded by EB-5 investors and allow that group to make a loan to a project, such as those created by Dilip Barot’s Creative Choice Group. The group must demonstrate that 10 jobs are created for each investor, with a minimum investment of $500,000 per investor. EB-5 benefits developers such as Creative Choice Group in the following ways:
- The affordable housing component is part of an overall financially viable mix to allow EB-5 investors to recover their money.
- Projects solely funded by EB-5 capital are not sustainable, so the regional center creates a project that appeal to conventional lenders.
- Multiple EB-5 investors can invest in the same project because investors in regional centers are not held to individually creating 10 direct jobs. That means they can all meet the job creation requirements to obtain an EB-5 visa and green card.
EB-5 investments can also serve as mezzanine financing for development projects and are valuable as preferred equity in an investment. The result is providing investors with a defined interest return and a fixed exit strategy.
The Future of EB-5 Funding
EB-5 is an attractive and viable alternative for developers in a broad host of industries. When properly maintained by a private developer such as Dilip Barot of Creative Choice Group and used for the appropriate projects, the EB-5 visa program is a reliable and profitable opportunity for developers seeking financing for commercial enterprises in the United States.