permanant residency questions

[a.mcgee]

Hi All,

Just new here and have lots of questions needing answered and you people seem to be really helpful :)

A bit about myself.
I live in Scotland,34 Self Employed in property maintenace. Joinery,electrical, plumbing ect (No proper papers though). My wife is 32 and has a degree in Computing we have one son age 2.
We have been going on holiday to Florida for the last seven years and got married there in 2002. I have wanted to move from the first time I visited but the wife didn't want to leave her mother (you know how you women are:hug: ). But after years of pestering her she has finally gave in.

I want to know what the easiest way of moving to Florida. But after reading some of your stories there doesn't seam to be an easy way?:confused:
I know if I invest money in a business this will get us in but how much? And does buying a villa (or several) to rent out count as a business? This way I could buy a villa, rent it out but still stay in the Uk until I could afford another one and then move across when the business is making some profit.
Also I think my wife could get a job in IT easily enough but would I with no trade papers??

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Rgds,

Anthony.

I will let you all get back to that lovely sunshine while look out at the rain :(

[Kriz1]

What kind of IT work...IT workers are two a penny in the USA...jobs are around..a lot more this year than I've seen in a long time...but they want you to be a jack of all trades...I really want my hubby out of it...I may get my wish if he is laid off this month.....LOL!

Profit is not a word commonly used in the villa rental business..but there are others here who know more about it than I do...I'm sure they'll give you some advice...
If you can find a business for yourself to run.. leaving your wife free to get a work permit......if she can then find someone who will sponsor her for a greencard and the companies are out there that will still do that...you could be onto a winner...

[OberonSH]

Have you thought about perhaps a property maintenance business? You'd have to see what qualifications you'd need to trade in Florida (I recall a programme a few years back about a guy who moved over, then realised his electrician qualifications weren't worth the paper they were printed on).

Naturally, you'd have to have some money behind you etc, but this could lead to E2 visa, or if you've a business trading here for over a year, and have someone that could run it on the UK side may qualify for an L1 Intracompany Transfer.

[Kriz1]

Its not that easy to come to the USA as a tradesman..but nothing stopping you from taking on people who are..odd job companies do very well in some parts of the USA...more so if you turn up on time...having a background in trade would be a big plus...and if your wife can get a job offer with a sponsor you could maybe go back to school to get your licenses to work in the USA..

[OberonSH]

With all the rental propeties etc makes sense! No use wasting the skills you have, right?

[Kriz1]

Rental owners and mangment need people that turn up on time..if you can get a rep for doing that..I can't see you being out of work...a lot of background work needs to be done....is there companies like this around for sale...would a start up be better...how much will it cost...but its something to run with...

[McSporran]

Hi,

I'm sure others on here, will have much better advice than I can re Property Mgt or Maintenance, but my advice on buying villas to service a visa application...is dont! There are very few holiday villas turning a profit and the amount of capital you would have to spend to buy as many villas as you would need to do this would (I imagine) be prohibative in itself. Beware - there are still many realtors out there (and a couple of their visa attorney/consultant friends) that will tell you this is a "great idea" - but I just cant see how they can hope to make this work. If you think that most prop mgt compnaies are managing in excess of 30-40 homes...I could go on, but please be careful. Having said all that - Property Management, i.e. managing other peoples villas - can be a very profitable business (I have several friends in this industry and they work very hard, but that also earn good money) - same with Prop Maintenance....in fact same with many types of business, the key here is to find the right business (and the check it out thoroughly before you buy).

There are many related business you could buy though, that will (as Kriz1 says) allow you to be here, and your wife could look for work...which may lead to permanent residency.

I know there are horror stories/scenarios on here, and most are things outside the control of the Visa holder...but also please do remember there are many thousands more who have relocated successfully and love it here (me included :) ). It's definatley not easy, and there will be bumps on the road - but you know this already, and I think you have to want this with every ounce of your being., as you say - you have been thinking about this for some time now - so you've certainly thought it through. I think it's great that you are embarking on one hell of a journey - Good luck mate.

[a.mcgee]

Hi,

Thank you all for the info.
Where would I get info on getting an american qualification/license to trade as a licensed trademan and is there such a qualification/license that would cover me for several trades (ie handy man work).

[OberonSH]

myflorida.com is a good resource, here's the page for licenses:

http://www.myflorida.com/taxonomy/business/business%20licenses,%20permits%20and%20regulation/

[tracifrost]

hi anthony,
just my thoughts here,but try to avoid property maintenance/management.
Immigration particularly in florida are toughening up (sorry about spelling!)
on all forms of maintenance management.
However i currently live in a short term vacation area and i would say there are more houses empty than occupied!!!!
The more i look around, i see an opening for all these empty houses, in some way. Ie money to be made!
Property in Florida is full of empty vacation homes all sitting there earning nothing and usually the only people earning from a property regardless of whether it is being rented out or not is the Property management company.

so here is what i could suggest you look into:
the home to the right of us where we live is constantly being rented out, we have lived in florida for 9 months and i dont think there has been a time, when the house has been empty!!! good going these days.
The property management company is Global, but i asked Global why this house was rented and others they managed were not. they said the homeowner takes all offers to have her home rented.
which leads me to mention that a lot of homeowners need x y and z every month to cover their outgoings. And are not willing to take any offers at all, in regards to rental rates for their properties. Some would simply prefer to take nothing than something!! i would prefer to take something than nothing!

so maybe look at cheap package holidays for UK clients staying in one of thousands of empty villas for say £250.00 a week, that way you can offer something that other property management companies dont offer.
The home owner may say, they need a thousand dollars per month to cover their morgage, HOA fees, taxes etc. but wouldnt 500 dollars a month be better than nothing???

[peter gold]

Anthony
Mc Sporan is right . In the current economic climate steer away from property maintenance.
You would need several homes in different areas to be able to run your own property management business to comply with E2 visa eligibility.
Start looking (see www.bizbuysell.com) for a business costing about $150,000 showing a profit for past two years with at least two employeees, and leased premises. Those criteria seem to satisfy the current E2 visa requirements.
Be careful there are a lot of rogues out there, and a lot of rogue businesses.

[chris]

Before you shoot off finding out about occupational licences, you need to research the visa requirements at the London Embassy and also on the USCIS website. The latter gives you more information on permanent residency which is the title of your thread. Many trades have to re-educate in order to practise their craft.
From the information you have given you ought to consider multiple avenues:
One where your wifes skills/qualifications lead,
Two where yours lead and,
Three where you combine as in a business venture, perhaps a franchise.
On the latter biz aspect, the amount of money to be invested varies from application to application and biz to biz. However you cannot do it on the cheap. I've seen some get an E2 for as little as $60K, others have stumped up over $250K. Horses for courses I'm afraid.
I appreciate that you visit Florida frequently and given that you married here, I guess FL holds a special place BUT... Florida is not the USA and the USA is not Florida. There are 49 other states you could consider and given what I've seen on this and other forums, some visa applicants from the UK have had an easier time with other states than FL.

[tracifrost]

[QUOTE=chris;22623]Before you shoot off finding out about occupational licences, you need to research the visa requirements at the London Embassy and also on the USCIS website. The latter gives you more information on permanent residency which is the title of your thread. Many trades have to re-educate in order to practise their craft.

Chris is correct, my husband is a qualified Security Engineer and anyone working with electrics will tell you, you have to get qualified as an electrician then work your way up into the field of security engineering.
However all electrics(sorry coming from someone that doesnt really know about electrics!!) are different in the U.S and run of different wires/voltages blah blah blah.
cut a long story short, my husbands qualifications in the U.K mean absolutely nothing here in the U.S. nor do his certificates, training etc etc

[tracifrost]

Anthony
Mc Sporan is right . In the current economic climate steer away from property maintenance.
You would need several homes in different areas to be able to run your own property management business to comply with E2 visa eligibility.
Start looking (see www.bizbuysell.com) for a business costing about $150,000 showing a profit for past two years with at least two employeees, and leased premises. Those criteria seem to satisfy the current E2 visa requirements.
Be careful there are a lot of rogues out there, and a lot of rogue businesses.

yes and some company's have been known to take back, the clients that you have bought in with the total figure of the business!
In some ways i think i would rather start up my own business than buy. make sure you look at what staff, the business has, if it has one or two staff under the books, USUALLY it is a better business. USUALLY

[Kriz1]

I think at 34 and 32 you still have time to have a long term plan...our second look at the USA never came until we were 39..we were in our 20s when we first looked..hubby had to put 12 long hard years into being a Sr Test Eng...because he had no degree..
There are very few if any easy ways of getting into the USA...and even when you get here...you have to work none stop to stay....
Look into everything...get tons of info cross check it....ask tons of questions...don't get upset if you get answers you don't want to hear...sometimes people are hard because they don't want you to make a mistake...

[DebbieM]

Tracey

As a property manager I feel I should respond to your post.

Firstly, you really seem to have a downer on management. Done correctly a managment company can be very lucrative and only two and a half years ago we flew through the visa process with no questions asked. Things may be different now granted, but I truly believe every application is judged under its own merits and if you can buy an existing business that shows it is profitable and has the capacity for expansion and meets all the criteria or put together a good business plan for a start up then I can't see how they can discriminate against certain businesses just because of what they do.

There are lots of homes standing empty and that is because rentals are hard to come by. We manage 55 homes (all our owners do their own leasing and are very successful at it) and I can put my hand on my heart and say that non one single owner would rent their house out at a loss - why would they? Global are a big company who cram homes full of people to the max I see it on a daily basis. This means the wear and tear on these homes is massive as are the utility bills and for what $60.00 per night!!! Only the very desperate or very stupid would do this and this is where Global and other large companies score. To suggest starting a business marketing cheap vacation homes shows your total lack of understanding of the management business.

A management company should be working with its clients as business partners finding ways to improve guests experience and getting repeat bookings by ensuring it is maintained and cleaned to the highest standard. To suggest they sell their homes for next to nothing is just ridiculous.

Property Management in my opinion is very understated. For someone to place such a huge investment in the hands of a management company is a big responsibility and not one which should be taken lightly. It is not an easy business to be in and like everyone who comes to work in the US we have to work twice as hard as everyone else. We are on call 24/7 and we certainly don't have the life we imagined when we moved here.

That said, we have a nice standard of living and our kids have a life they could only have dreamt of in the UK - for us it is a fare trade.

What I would suggest to Anthony is to research and research and research again. Contact Realtors to find out who does their work for closing. Remember that UK qualifications are not usually recognized in the US and you may have to take courses to be able to do the work. Like Chris has pointed out, it isn't just a case of getting an Occupational License.

Please don't tar all Management Companies with the same brush.

Debbie

[Kriz1]

I agree with Debbie...its best to have your home empty then fill it with people paying you a low rental...

[DEE F]

Tracey

As a property manager I feel I should respond to your post.

Firstly, you really seem to have a downer on management. Done correctly a managment company can be very lucrative and only two and a half years ago we flew through the visa process with no questions asked. Things may be different now granted, but I truly believe every application is judged under its own merits and if you can buy an existing business that shows it is profitable and has the capacity for expansion and meets all the criteria or put together a good business plan for a start up then I can't see how they can discriminate against certain businesses just because of what they do.

There are lots of homes standing empty and that is because rentals are hard to come by. We manage 55 homes (all our owners do their own leasing and are very successful at it) and I can put my hand on my heart and say that non one single owner would rent their house out at a loss - why would they? Global are a big company who cram homes full of people to the max I see it on a daily basis. This means the wear and tear on these homes is massive as are the utility bills and for what $60.00 per night!!! Only the very desperate or very stupid would do this and this is where Global and other large companies score. To suggest starting a business marketing cheap vacation homes shows your total lack of understanding of the management business.

A management company should be working with its clients as business partners finding ways to improve guests experience and getting repeat bookings by ensuring it is maintained and cleaned to the highest standard. To suggest they sell their homes for next to nothing is just ridiculous.

Property Management in my opinion is very understated. For someone to place such a huge investment in the hands of a management company is a big responsibility and not one which should be taken lightly. It is not an easy business to be in and like everyone who comes to work in the US we have to work twice as hard as everyone else. We are on call 24/7 and we certainly don't have the life we imagined when we moved here.

That said, we have a nice standard of living and our kids have a life they could only have dreamt of in the UK - for us it is a fare trade.

What I would suggest to Anthony is to research and research and research again. Contact Realtors to find out who does their work for closing. Remember that UK qualifications are not usually recognized in the US and you may have to take courses to be able to do the work. Like Chris has pointed out, it isn't just a case of getting an Occupational License.

Please don't tar all Management Companies with the same brush.

DebbieHi Deb long time no hear,glad you answered this post you just saved me a job,we have never worked so many hours in our lives it is constant ,I appreciate Traci that you had a bad experience with a property management compant,as have others on this forum,but please like Deb says,you have to stop tarring us all with the same brush,the vast majority of prop mgnt work extremely hard,and work well with thier owners.

Dee x

[chris]

As an ex-vacation home owner and as the hubby to a wife who operates a small property management company I see both sides of the argument.
I believe that rightly or wrongly the property management industry has got a bad press. That has been caused by unscrupulous and just plain bad management companies. The Embassy has seen it's fair share of bad ones and mickey mouse ones and I think that is where the caution is being highlighted. However, I do feel that as an industry it does not do enough to rid itself of the bad apples. I used to be part of an association and I have to say that many mgmt companies couldn't see the wood for the dollar signs and therin lay the problem. They saw guests are profit units and homeowners as just problems. They forgot totally that were it not for the homeowners, they wouldn't have a business. Debbie said the trust and responsibility that goes with being a prop mngmt company is immense. She is dead right and to really be a good manager IMHO need to have been in the 'vacation home owner' situation to truly understand how it feels and what it means. Many management co's never have owned homes themselves and will never understand about that level of trust and responsibility needed.
That said Traci did couch her comment in 'try to avoid' and did list property maintenance as well.
IMHO, I wouldn't recommend going down the prop mngmt route simply because here in central florida we have an oversupply of vacation homes situation, many UK buyers have paid over the odds and have big mortgages and not enough bums on seats to square the circle. The UK travellers who normally vacation for 2-3 weeks are shrinking and the place is being taken by americans who have 2-3 weeks vacation annually and normally a long weekend is the 'norm' for them. Some vacation homeowners are in dire straits financially which is compounded by the appalling house market which makes selling a house a long term thing.

[SHEILA 13]

I agree with Debbie and Dee regarding Prop Man.it is very hard work and yes Chris I agree with you also.
I can see where you are coming from but at the end of the day if I bought one of Tracie's dvd and I thought it was crap ,it wouldnt put me off buying another !!!!!!:)

[STEVE T]

well done debbiem you tell em girl, you reap what you sow

[tracifrost]

no i am not against property managers at all, had a bad experience, but live and learn.
I now look at all the positive that has happened, after i had such a negative experience, so i wouldnt change a thing
that said i am well and truly aware, even though i have never managed a property in my life! of how hard property managers work.

I describe the work as being in a trench in world war 3 and on a good day you dont get shot!!!
well after hearing all the nightmare stories from a friend of mine in Clermont, who owns a property management company, thats what I describe it as.

[davidmartin_uk]

Hi

Going back to the initial thread of owing a portfolio of property.

We looked at this very briefly when we couldn’t find a hotel to buy but the numbers just don’t add up. For an e2 application you need a nett profit (after debt service) of $50-$60k and at least 2 employees. You would need a large portfolio of property and even then it was difficult to find meaningful employment for 2 additional US citizens on top of yourself. At the sort of general maintenance level you would be paying at least $10 per hour so there is $20,000 per employee just on wages.

As you can see things don’t add up.

Regarding Property maintenance I think all on this forum would agree that in the past there has been a very negative attitude towards these operations at the embassy from one particular consular officer. That seems to have past but be aware that what you purchase needs to be a proper business, not just a bunch of contracts.

Also be aware that there are realtors and business consultants that will actively work for you ( not the sellers) to find the business you want. You can use the long wait for the e2 for UK citizens to your advantage as while other European nationals are buying what is around now (as they have to wait less and are more attractive to sellers) you are in a position of being able to buy 9 months in the future. That is going to be an attractive proposition to some sellers.

My advice

Have a consultation with a London Lawyer (about £300) they can steer you in the right direction, that will be the best £300 you ever spend. The one we used also gave e-mail support while we were in the US so we could send back details of what we had seen and give a yes or no

Go our to Florida for at least a month and see what is about, see what you can buy for your money

[JulieC]

A portfolio of rental properties wont stack up for a E2 visa, it used to 10 years ago but they have tightened up. Even large property management companies find it hard to get approved nowadays. A portfolio of homes to do up might, this is classed as property development, i know a company used to do visas on this premise, I think the guy whose company was involved is a member of this forum.

I did short term rental property management for four years. I never made a fortune but wasnt selling the Big Issue either. It is very tieing, often exasperating and sometimes thankless. Owing the homes you manage may be easier as you have no one but yourself to be responsable to. I dont think it is an easy visa carrier. If you have $300,000 to spend on a rental home, look on the websites and buy a business for that amount, shop, plimbers, even something to do with IT. If you are thinking of buying homes on mortgage please note that there are specific requirements on the amount you can borrow to fund a business on an E2 application.

[davidmartin_uk]

Julie is correct

The amount of borrowing is NO MORE THAN 50% for investments under $1 million. Don't go 1% over that! If you are close to that figure the embassy look favourably on borrowing against real estate not so much about borrowing on the business. Our own project was very close if not on that figure but because we had couched the deal as paying cash for everything and borrowing on the real estate only, this was was looked on in a positive manner by the embassy.

Dave

[Susie]

Excellent thread and so many have hit the nail on the head with regards to property management.

I have been in property management since 1998 and it is extremely hard work 24/7 and 7 days a week. I also agree that our industry does have a bad name and unlikely to obtain a visa unless the entire business is sold and profitable. There have been a few compaines that sold off 10 to 20 homes or the pool contracts or lawn contract, the embassy does not look favourabley at parts of biz

My husband and I did what others sugested. We booked and appointment with (what we thought was ) an immigration attroney in London back in 1989. We found out afterwards the chap was not a lawyer but an immigration specialist ! (becareful, make sure you do book appointment with an attorney)


We wanted to know what the best way to move to the USA would be on a perminent basis and discussed our options and had a five year plan to do so as at the time of interview we were not ready to make the move


He was very good and advised of various ways of doing so. We chose to set up a UK company and once established apply for an L 1 inter company transfer. This L visa application was sucessful and did lead to a green card. It does sound simple, and should be, even so we have suffered delays, errors mainly due to 9/11

[InnVic]

I agree with Debbie...its best to have your home empty then fill it with people paying you a low rental...

I have to agree - people who are looking for "cheap" tend to have have no respect for the place. If it doesn't cost much it is perceived by some to have no value, therefore things get damaged or stolen.

[SHEILA 13]

We manage a home which is on a Guaranteed rental scheme and believe me,they do not respect it all !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our owners wish to be on this sort of scheme .