Read the general investor planning overview
A Devon buyer’s construction budget should be read together with the lease. The question is what the money commits and enables, not simply whose name appears on a completed fixture.
Identify the actual assets and rights
Separate the landlord, the tenant, the investor and the contractor, and say plainly which of them is a party to each document. Read the permitted-use clause, the improvement obligations, the consent-to-alter provision, the reinstatement clause and the termination and assignment terms, keeping what has actually been executed apart from what someone expects the landlord to agree to later. Four papers usually decide the question: the signed lease, the work letter or improvement agreement, the contractor’s invoices with proof of payment, and the occupancy or trade permit for the use proposed. A photograph of a finished interior shows that money was spent; it does not show what the enterprise may lawfully do in the space. Nor does the building’s ownership settle anything on its own — improvements can be a genuine investment in premises the investor will never own, and a landlord-funded fit-out in a building the investor does own is still the landlord’s money.
Trace the commitment and financing
Identify the payments actually made and the conditions attached to money not yet released. Where a fit-out is financed, the security matters more than the loan’s name: borrowing collateralized by the enterprise’s own assets does not count toward the investment, because the risk then sits with the business rather than the investor, while a loan secured only against the applicant’s personal property, or unsecured personal borrowing, can count provided the remaining investment conditions hold. Read an improvement allowance the same way. An allowance the landlord pays or credits is the landlord’s contribution, not the investor’s irrevocable commitment, and a holdback released on final inspection is committed only once that condition is genuinely outside the investor’s power to reverse. Substantiality is judged against the cost of this particular business, not against a builder’s standard price per square foot. Government filing charges and the fees of advisers on the transaction serve a different purpose from capital placed at risk in the enterprise, and belong on their own line rather than inside the invested total without explanation.
Complete the operating and investor analysis
The wider treaty test still has to be satisfied on its own evidence. Nationality is tested twice: the applicant’s own, and the enterprise’s, which ordinarily requires treaty-country nationals to hold at least half the ownership — Canada being a treaty country for this purpose. The applicant must develop and direct the business, shown either by owning at least half of it or by holding genuine operational control. The capital must be lawfully obtained, irrevocably committed, exposed to loss, and substantial in proportion to what this business costs to buy or build; no fixed dollar figure applies. The enterprise must be real and operating and cannot be marginal: it has to support more than a minimal livelihood for the family, or add significantly to the American economy, and where that capacity is projected rather than present it should ordinarily arrive within about five years of normal trading. An intention to leave the United States on termination of E status is still required. Hypothetical example: a Devon investor pays for a walk-in cooler, upgraded three-phase service and a grease interceptor in a leased Ohio unit, and the lease provides that the fixtures become the landlord’s at the end of the term. That does not defeat the investment — the money was spent and cannot be recovered. What must be shown separately is that the permitted use covers the trade the enterprise intends to carry on, and that the spend is proportionate to that trade rather than to the building.
What else is on your mind?
Is there one minimum investment that guarantees E-2 eligibility?Is holding money or owning an asset enough for E-2?Editorial source review: 2026-09-08. General preparation guidance, not an individual assessment.