Investor Visa

[Eugene McLaren]

Hi,

I'm new to biggerpockets and investing in the US. I'm Canadian. I've bought and flipped 1 house in the Chicago area. Crossing the boarder was an issue every time.

Does anyone know if I require a visa of any sort in order to buy and hold properties or where I could find the answer? The internet is unfortunately not very helpful in this instance.

Thank you

Euge

[Sam Piivek]

Hi Eugene

I´m a foreign investor living in EU. Have been investing to US/Chicago real estate since 2012 and have also been looking into that visa issue. I agree with Lumis mail that you do not need a visa to own and run real estate portfolio in US. It is true that in best case you do not even need to visit US to buy or sell real estate. It is still handy to have some "guaranteed" access to US and for me as EU citizen B1 visa  + visa waiver program works well. 6 months admission can be obtained from the US border, but of course you usually can get everything done inside a week. I'll bet you have something similar as Canadian citizen.

After establishing portfolio one interesting Visa you might want to try is E2 Visa. To get this Visa you need 'significant' investment. This basically means more then 50k. There is some other requirements that you can google out, but from experience the biggest obstacle is to show them that business is not marginal. This basically means that your business is creating more then average US citizen is making a year or it has potential to make that kind of money. I would say that 50k net profit/year might be the minimum + you have some potential to develop the business. You can handle all the E2 paperwork by yourself, but it might be a good idea to hire a pro business plan writer. Of course E2 is just for 2 years, but it can be renewed. 

It is not possible to get conventional loan as foreign investor so you have to go to private side. E2 visa + few years to build credit score might work, but it is not a quick solution. There are portfolio/commercial lenders which are asking a bit higher rate. Just be aware of the restrictions for these loan before you start to build a portfolio for these loans. Usually they have minimum house value of 50k and overall portfolio value min $300k-$500k. So to buy a few $35k SFR it will be impossible to get any kind of financing. Hope this helps :)

-Sam-