The NRI buyer's Maharashtra playbook: power of attorney, funding and compliance

An NRI purchase in India fails in three predictable places: the money arrives through a channel FEMA does not recognise, the power of attorney is one attestation short of usable at the sub-registrar's counter, or the buyer trusts a site photograph because they cannot stand in front of the building. None of the three is hard to avoid. All three are hard to fix afterwards, and the last one is the expensive one.

What you are allowed to buy#

The governing text is Rule 24 of the Foreign Exchange Management (Non-Debt Instruments) Rules, 2019, which replaced the older acquisition and transfer regulations. It permits a non-resident Indian or an Overseas Citizen of India to acquire any immovable property in India other than agricultural land, a farmhouse or plantation property. No application, no approval, no intimation to the Reserve Bank.

The exclusion is narrower than it sounds and wider than most buyers assume. It bites on land classified as agricultural in the revenue record, which is why an NRI looking at a plot on a city's fringe needs to establish the land's current classification before anything else, a check set out in buying an NA plot in Maharashtra. It does not bite on a flat, an office, a shop or a plot in a sanctioned residential layout. And it does not undo history: property lawfully acquired when the owner was a resident of India may continue to be held after they become an NRI, under Section 6(5) of FEMA, and agricultural land may be inherited from a resident.

OCI, PIO and the status that follows you#

Rule 24 treats an NRI and an Overseas Citizen of India identically for this purpose, so an OCI card holder buys a flat on the same terms as a non-resident Indian passport holder, and neither needs approval. The PIO card scheme was merged into OCI in 2015, so an old PIO card holder reads themselves as an OCI here.

What does not follow the card is residence. FEMA asks whether you are a person resident in India, which turns on your stay in the preceding financial year and on your intention in coming here. The Income-tax Act asks its own question with its own day counts. In the clear cases the two agree, and in the boundary cases they do not: an OCI card holder who has moved to Pune for good can be resident under one and not yet under the other. Establish both answers before you buy, because one decides how your money may enter the country and the other decides what is deducted when you eventually sell.

How the money must move#

This is the part that turns an ordinary purchase into a contravention, and it does so quietly, because nothing bounces at the time.

Permitted sources are inward remittance through normal banking channels, or funds held in an NRE, NRO or FCNR(B) account. That is the entire list. Payment in cash, in foreign currency notes, by traveller's cheque, or through a friend's resident account as a convenience, is a contravention of FEMA regardless of intention, and the penalty under Section 13 runs up to three times the sum involved. On a Rs 1 crore purchase that is a Rs 3 crore exposure created by a payment somebody made to save a wire fee.

Two consequences worth planning for rather than discovering:

• A rupee home loan is available and is the normal route. Indian banks and housing finance companies lend to NRIs in rupees against Indian property, and repayment must come through inward remittance or from an NRE, NRO or FCNR account. The under-construction disbursement mechanics are identical to a resident's; only the repayment channel changes.
• Keep the paper trail from day one. Which account each instalment left, the foreign inward remittance certificate for each wire, and the bank statements. That file is what proves the source of funds when you eventually sell and want to take the money out.

Taking the money out again#

The exit rules are where the funding decision made at purchase comes back. Where the property was bought with foreign exchange received through banking channels or out of NRE or FCNR funds, the authorised dealer may repatriate the sale proceeds up to the amount originally paid, and for residential property that repatriation is restricted to not more than two such properties. Buy a third residential flat with remitted funds and its sale proceeds do not have the same door out.

Where the property was bought from NRO funds, or inherited, the route is the general NRO facility: up to USD 1 million per financial year, supported by Form 145 and a chartered accountant's certificate on Form 146, the forms that replaced 15CA and 15CB on 1 April 2026, with tax cleared first. That is a generous ceiling for most families and an inconvenient one for a large single asset, and it is worth knowing before the purchase rather than at the sale.

An analogy: the visa stamp on your money#

Money entering India for property carries something like a visa stamp. The stamp records how it came in, and the exit counter reads that stamp to decide what may leave. Remitted foreign exchange gets a return ticket, capped at two residential properties. Rupees earned or held in India get a standing annual allowance instead. Money that walked in without a stamp, cash handed over at a hotel, has no record at the exit counter at all, and the officer's only options are to refuse it or to treat it as a contravention. The purchase is the moment the stamp is issued, and nobody can issue it retrospectively.

Getting the power of attorney to work#

Most NRI buyers cannot be at a Maharashtra sub-registrar's office on the appointed day, so a representative signs and presents on their behalf. The document that authorises this has to survive a chain of formalities, and skipping one link is the single commonest reason an NRI registration is turned away at the counter.

When you deduct tax, and when you are the exception#

As a buyer you sit exactly where a resident buyer sits. Buying from a resident seller means 1 percent under section 393(1) of the Income-tax Act 2025, formerly section 194-IA, where the consideration is Rs 50 lakh or more, reported on Form 141, and the rest of the ordinary TDS routine. Being an NRI yourself changes nothing about that. What does change everything is buying from another non-resident, which pulls the transaction into section 393(2), formerly section 195, at thirteen to fifteen times the rate with no threshold, set out in buying from an NRI seller. An NRI buying resale in a building popular with the diaspora may well be buying from another non-resident, so this is a live risk rather than a footnote.

Rohit cannot visit the site, so he reads the filings instead#

Rohit, 35, buying from abroad, had a shortlist of three under-construction projects and a brother-in-law willing to do one site visit for all of them. Photographs told him three towers existed. The register told him what photographs cannot. Of the 55,913 published Maharashtra registrations as updated on 21 September 2026, 14,003, a quarter, carry a lapsed registration, and a lapsed project looks exactly like an active one in a photograph. One of his three was in that quarter. A second had filed no quarterly progress report for two cycles. The third had a current certificate trail and construction percentages that moved every quarter in the direction they are supposed to move.

He also discovered a limit worth knowing about in advance: roughly a third of published Maharashtra registrations, 32.3 percent, file no usable coordinate at all, so a map check quietly fails on a large minority of the register, and a project that cannot be placed on a map is not a project in a suspicious location, it is a project whose promoter left a field blank. Names and details in this story are illustrative.

For a remote buyer the filings are not a supplement to the site visit; they are the site visit. What to read, quarter by quarter, is in the quarterly progress report guide, and the promoter's history across every project they have registered is in the builder track record method.

ReraGenie keeps every Maharashtra project's filing on one page, free to read. For a buyer who cannot walk the site, the Rs 499 buyer report is the substitute for the visit: the registration's red flags, the possession story, construction and sales building by building with their pace, complaints and court cases in plain words, the professionals who certify the project, and a list of what to verify before you book, to send back to the sales office before any money crosses an ocean.

The 60-second summary#

Buy anything except agricultural land, a farmhouse or plantation property, and you need no permission. Move every rupee through a banking channel you can evidence later, because the exit rules read the entry record. Plan the power of attorney six weeks ahead, through notary, apostille or consular attestation, and Indian stamping within three months of arrival, and use it to sign rather than to buy. And treat the register as your eyes: it is the only part of an Indian property purchase that works identically whether you are in Mulund or in Melbourne.

This article is educational and not legal or tax advice. FEMA rules and tax rates change; confirm the current position with an advocate and a chartered accountant before you remit.