This article was first published by Hotel Business on May 21, 2012 Four years after the collapse of the traditional financing markets for new hotel developments, most hotel developers are still struggling to find the necessary financing to fill the capital stack required to build new hotels. Even for developers…
Since the release of its “Tenant Occupancy” Notice on February 17, 2012, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) has begun issuing Requests for Evidence on pending regional center applications and exemplar I-526 petitions that involve “tenant occupancy models”. These Requests for Evidence articulate a new USCIS policy to reject…
Why EB-5 financing is important to hotel developers now: Financing for new hotel development is still in short supply, even for experienced hotel developers. As a result, many hotel developers are exploring the EB-5 financing program as an alternative to traditional financing sources. The EB-5 investor visa program offers non-U.S.…
This article appeared in the September 19, 2011 issue of Hotel Business and is reprinted with permission. With hotel development financing still in short supply, the EB-5 investor visa program is an alternative financing source worth exploring . The EB-5 program allows foreign investors to obtain a U.S. visa for…
In a previous posting, we described how the EB-5 investment program can be used by hotel owners and developers to provide an additional source of financing for hotel development, expansion and acquisitions. Although EB-5 financing is not new, the number of potential investors seeking EB-5 visas from mainland China has…
Developers, banks and real estate brokers involved in condo hotel sales have been the targets of numerous class action lawsuits brought by condo hotel buyers in the years following the financial meltdown of 2008. As we and other condo hotel experts predicted, the big guns being wielded by the plaintiffs…
This article was originally published in Hotel Business magazine, November 7, 2010 Mixed-use hotel projects offer benefits to hotel owners around the world. Steven Pan, chairman of Regent Global Holdings—the owner of the Regent hotel brand, was recently interviewed in the Wall Street Journal—and talked about the value added to…
Published in Hotel Business, September 7, 2010. Joint ventures are popping up everywhere in the hotel industry. Nearly two years after the collapse of the old economic order of easy money, the biggest players in the hotel industry are using the joint venture structure to seize opportunities for acquisitions and…
We are just now beginning to see how cities will want to use the new federal stimulus bill to create jobs and build new infrastructure. In the past few weeks, we at JMBM have received several calls from cities seeking to build convention center hotels. Convention center hotels can revitalize…
As a sign of its sweeping popularity, one of the best attended sessions at the recent Lodging Conference in Phoenix was: “Going Green: Environmentally Profitable Hotels.” Some of the pioneers of the green hotel movement, including panel moderator, Howard Wolff, Senior Vice President of the architectural firm Wimberly Allison Tong…