Read the general investor planning overview
An L’Île-Perrot buyer may negotiate an acquisition whose deposit, financing and closing payments change. Read the final obligations and actual transfers together rather than relying on an earlier headline purchase price. Revisions get negotiated for commercial reasons and then land in an analysis built for other ones. Read the final signed terms rather than the deal as described when talks opened, and record every change as an event with a date instead of a correction to the original figure.
Separate paid, committed and merely expected amounts
Prepare a transaction table showing the recipient, source, payment date and actual conditions attached to each amount. A projected balance or an unrestricted account is not automatically committed investment. Properly structured visa-contingent escrow can be considered; an agreement needs assessment on its real terms rather than an assumption that every contingent payment is excluded.
Examine financing and control after the revision
Lawful source and path remain necessary. A loan secured by enterprise assets does not count as qualifying investment capital; personal-asset security or unsecured borrowing may be assessed under the applicable conditions. Confirm the relevant treaty nationality and generally at least 50% treaty-national ownership, along with the applicant’s ability to develop and direct the business.
Explain the enterprise behind the price
The investment must be substantial and at risk in a real operating, nonmarginal enterprise. Assess its capacity to provide more than a minimal living for the investor and family or a significant economic contribution. A seller’s higher valuation does not establish those conditions, and E-2 has no universal minimum price or fixed employee quota.
A price allocation is drafted for tax and read here for something else
Allocating a purchase price across goodwill, equipment, inventory and a restrictive covenant is ordinary tax planning, and the parties choose the split for reasons unrelated to this analysis. Those choices still shape the evidence. An amount attributed to a covenant not to compete buys a promise from the seller rather than anything the business will operate with, and one attributed to inventory may be consumed before the enterprise has traded a full season. Have the adviser who drafted the schedule explain each line, then set the lines against what the enterprise actually needs to run. Where a revision shifts money between categories, record the shift, since the same total can describe two quite different businesses.
A bank’s promise is not the buyer’s committed capital
Instruments that reassure a seller — a letter of credit, a guarantee from a related company, a deposit held by a broker in trust — do their job precisely by keeping funds under someone else’s control until conditions are met. That design pulls against a requirement for capital irrevocably committed and at risk in the enterprise. Read what releases each instrument and to whom, and identify the moment control passes to the business rather than the moment a document was signed. Where a revised schedule replaces a payment with security of this kind, add a row to the transaction table instead of editing one, so the substitution and its date both stay visible.
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: 2026-09-07. General preparation guidance, not an individual assessment.