Morris Massre is a Realtor with Fortune International Real Estate

There has been a lot of talk over the last five years about how to fix the housing market, and in particular South Florida’s. The president has tried just about everything and nothing has worked. Outside of downtown area condos, the real estate market in South Florida has not seen an improvement yet. If anything, it has gotten worse because of all of the shadow inventory of foreclosures. They just won’t stop coming.

The president’s plan is always the same; i.e., spend more money, create more blue collar jobs that nobody is qualified for, and send people back to school. Great. Now the only businesses making money are universities. Notice all of the commercials lately?

But I have a fix. It’s not quick, but it is effective and will work if all participate. Realtors can benefit from my plan by simply tapping into the South American and Israeli markets. This should be easy down here in South Florida, considering how many of both nationalities are represented here. It has already been proven that buyers from both countries are purchasing here in bulk by the boatload. What do these buyers know that we don’t? Absolutely nothing. It all boils down to the economic prosperity of their countries.

Israel and Brazil, for instance, are booming economically, and these people are looking for a place to buy affordable investment property. America is that place, especially South Florida. I don’t know why they don’t check out the other 49 states, but for some reason, there is a love affair with this area.

Fortune International Realty has led the way with this coupling by bringing in buyers from South America to buy in to their downtown projects, including Paramount Bay, Icon Brickell, Jade and Blue Hyatt, just to name a few. We can influence these buyers into other areas of South Florida, as well.

Broward County, where I have been involved in real estate for more than 14 years, has so many fantastic deals available and is only a few miles north of Dade County. And these buyers are not just sticking to investment property either – a lot of buyers are from Venezuela, for instance.

And that brings me to my next point, and my formula for a successful real estate comeback. In order to for this to happen, we simply need more job creation on all levels, not just blue collar. We fix that issue and that leads to people buying homes instead of renting, because now they have a steady income they can count on.

Now the housing market is back on track. We do that, however, with something not altogether new: the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program. This program is sponsored by the Feds and has been around since 1990, but has not been looked at seriously until now. And, more importantly, it has the ability to single handedly fix our housing market and get people back to work, if used effectively and promoted heavily by the US government. I wonder if that will be in any of the President’s speeches?

The terms of the program are as follows:

-All EB-5 investors must invest in a new commercial enterprise, established on, before, or after Nov. 29, 1990, that is:

1. Purchased and the existing business is restructured or reorganized in such a way that a new commercial enterprise results, or
2. Expanded through the investment so that a 40 percent increase in the net worth or number of employees occurs.

-This commercial enterprise must create or preserve at least 10 full-time jobs for qualifying U.S. workers within two years (or under certain circumstances, within a reasonable time after the two-year period) of the immigrant investor’s admission to the United States as a Conditional Permanent Resident.

-Create or preserve either direct or indirect jobs: direct jobs are actual identifiable jobs for qualified employees located within the commercial enterprise into which the EB-5 investor has directly invested his or her capital.

-Indirect jobs are those jobs shown to have been created collaterally, or as a result of capital invested in a commercial enterprise affiliated with a regional center by an EB-5 investor. A foreign investor may only use the indirect job calculation if affiliated with a regional center.

-And finally, the minimum qualifying investment in the United States is $1 million, and must be in a targeted employment area (high unemployment or rural area). The minimum qualifying investment either within a high unemployment area or rural area in the United States is $500,000. You can find out more about this by visiting their website.

In return for this investment these foreign nationals now have an opportunity to establish residency for them and their families. So, to summarize, we, as Realtors with some measure of influence, recruit foreign companies to invest in South Florida commercially. That is one customer we have made. Then they hire at least 10 more people, which are potentially 10 more customers for you. And so on.

Any foreigner with any semblance of a brain will immediately figure out that this is indeed a good deal all the way around. Open a business, become a citizen, and do a good deed for the local community. Everyone wins. As you can see, this program has the ability to snowball into bigger and better things if advertised and used. I heartily urge all Realtors to look into this, study it, and start promoting it in order to jump start the economy and housing market again. The potential is there. You just have to take advantage of it.