Acquiring Real Estate as EB-5 Investment?

As a follow-up to my post on the recent denial of a Regional Center investment proposal involving real estate purchase, here is transcription of a couple interesting exchanges from today’s 1/23 EB-5 Stakeholder Meeting with USCIS. The speakers are Rachel Ellis (USCIS Office of Public Engagement), Kevin ____  (Office of Policy and Strategy), Sasha Haskell (Service Center Operations), and Marty Cummins (an EB-5 stakeholder). The numbers in brackets refer to the time according to my recording.

[01:23:30] Rachel: In addition we’ve also had a request to confirm whether EB-5 Investors can acquire existing residential real estate as part of a diversified investment plan and rent it to the public as an EB-5 qualified enterprise as long as adequate full-time jobs are created by all the diversified investments combined.
[01:23:50] Kevin: I’ll answer that question, too. No, this is counter to the requirement that 100 percent of an EB-5 investment be put at risk through an investment into a job-creating commercial enterprise. Although the requisite number of jobs might be created, the total investment would not be available to the job-creating enterprise.
—
[01:36:55] Marty Cummins: Yes, I’m a little confused on the answer in EB-5 Basic Direct about investing in real estate. If a couple investors invest 2 million dollars (a million dollars each), and if some the jobs are created in, let’s say, a restaurant they own, and some of the jobs are created in rental real estate (they buy real estate that’s unoccupied, renovate it, manage it, maintain and lease it out), and let’s assume that they have 5 full-time employees they can verify and 15 employees that are working in the restaurant: is there any reason why that real estate would not qualify as a business?
[01:37:42] Sasha: Well, I think what you’ve presented is very case-specific, and we will take a look at any application that’s presented to us to determine if it’s qualifying, but I don’t think we’re really prepared to say, you know, in a stake-holders meeting, “thumbs-up” or “thumbs-down” on whether that particular strategy you’re presenting would be acceptable.
[01:38:08] Marty: But would it be fair to say that buying real estate and renting it out would not be *excluded*, as long as we satisfy the rest of the requirements?
[01:38:18] Sasha: Well, it is our understanding that all of the EB-5 capital must be dedicated to the job-creating process. So, you know, it’s really hard to say based on what you’re presenting. It’s like you’re talking about doing a “passive investment” with lots of the money, and then putting some of the money in something else. And we really can’t comment beyond that. Thank you.
[01:38:42] Marty: Alright, thank you.