Published USCIS filing fees for both petitions, legal and accounting costs for the source-of-funds work, and the interest and security costs of any borrowing used to fund the investment.
Model the loan against income, not distributions
The capital is at risk and is not a fee. Filing fees for the investor petition and for the later petition to remove conditions are published in the USCIS fee schedule and are revised, so read them when filing. Legal costs follow the volume of documentation, and a file that includes borrowed capital carries more of it than one funded from a single sale. Accountants may be needed to reconstruct the property's mortgage history and the years of equity accumulation, and appraisers to value the security. Then there is the borrowing itself: interest, arrangement fees and an ongoing obligation that continues through the conditional period and beyond. Model the repayments against the household's income rather than against hoped-for distributions from the enterprise.
Hypothetical example: a pet-boarding operation is offered as an investment, and the promoter's projected staffing excludes employee benefits, occupancy costs, and the contingency needed to create qualifying jobs. The first review should separate the capital contribution from professional fees, project expenses, tax consequences, and the operating funds that support the employment plan. Subscription documents, the offering materials, payroll assumptions, and independent financial records settle different parts of that comparison. Sequence the analysis by testing whether the job model is feasible before treating the listed investment amount as the total cost. The frequent error is comparing only the entry price of two projects. For EB-5, the capital must remain exposed to enterprise risk and the required employment evidence matters later, so a cheaper proposal with weak staffing may be the more expensive mistake.