It can be either, and the file decides which. Passive property ownership and rent collection do not qualify; a storage business with staff, contracted customers, access and delinquency management, and services sold alongside the space is an active commercial enterprise.
Describe the business, not the parcel
The regulations exclude passive investment in real estate, so an application that presents the purchase as buying land with revenue attached is answering the wrong question. What an officer looks for is commercial activity: how many customers, on what agreements, managed by whom; whether access control, security and site maintenance are run in-house; whether there is a delinquency and lien process and who operates it; whether the facility sells anything besides space, such as packing supplies, insurance placement, RV servicing or a dump station. The strongest single exhibit is a description of an ordinary operating week, hour by hour, cross-referenced to the payroll and the software the business runs on.
The weakest is a valuation report. If the honest description of the couple's week is two hours of banking, the enterprise question is genuinely in doubt and the plan should change before the money moves. Hypothetical example: a Hope bicycle-repair entrepreneur proposes to buy a U.S.
service shop with a small retail counter and a mobile repair van. The first review asks whether the business will operate through customers, staff, inventory, and decisions made by the investor, rather than merely hold property. A signed purchase agreement, service records, and a staffing plan answer that question.
The investor should decide whether the retail and mobile lines are genuine planned operations before committing funds, not add them later merely to improve the file. E-2 funds must be committed beyond easy recovery and exposed to loss, and the enterprise must be real, active, and not marginal.