NRI buying property in India: the rules, with their rule numbers

What exactly may an NRI purchase?

Residential and commercial immovable property, in any number, anywhere in India, under the general permission of Rule 24(a) — no RBI application, no ceiling on count. The bar is categorical and equally exact: agricultural land, plantation property, and farmhouses cannot be purchased, and the bar applies to OCIs identically. In a district like Palwal, where most open land is agricultural record, that single line does most of the filtering: what an NRI may buy here is plots and built property in lawful residential or commercial categories, and industrial or warehouse land in genuinely non-agricultural use.

The routes around the bar that brokers sell — GPA arrangements, "society memberships", benami holdings through relatives — are not routes; they are FEMA contraventions with an enforcement directorate attached, stacked on top of ordinary title risk. If the plan requires farm land, the lawful answers are inheritance (below) or a resident family member buying as the true owner with their own funds.

How must the money move?

Through India's banking system: inward remittance from abroad, or debit to your NRE, FCNR(B) or NRO account — Rule 24 says so in terms, and expressly rules out traveller's cheques and foreign currency notes. Keep the trail boring and complete: the same rupees that appear in the deed should be traceable to those accounts, because both the repatriation math at exit and any later scrutiny will read this file. Home loans from Indian lenders are available to NRIs for permitted property and ride the same accounts.

What about gifts and inheritance?

Gifts in: an NRI or OCI may receive residential or commercial property as a gift from a person resident in India, or from an NRI/OCI who is a relative as the Companies Act defines the term — but agricultural land cannot come by gift, only by inheritance. Inheritance in: any immovable property, including agricultural land, from a person resident in India (or from a non-resident who had acquired it lawfully) — which is precisely why inherited farm holdings are the one legitimate way NRI families hold Palwal agricultural land. The tax side of gifts is a separate test under the new Income-tax Act and has its own guide.

What does the buying process add for an NRI?

Everything in the resident process — verification of the record before any token, agreement, deed, registration, mutation — plus logistics: a registered power of attorney if you will not attend the registry (its own guide covers attestation from abroad), PAN for the tax trail, and remote diligence done properly rather than by cousin-assurance. Our NRI engagements run the site visit and the record reading on video, with documents held to camera and the same written terms as any resident client.

One Palwal-belt caution deserves its own sentence: corridor-side land marketed to NRIs as "future residential" is agricultural record today, and buying it before lawful conversion is buying the FEMA problem at a premium.

Which mistakes repeat in NRI purchases?

Three, in a loop. The agricultural workaround: a barred class bought "through" a resident relative — which is not a purchase but a transfer of your money into their name, with the benami law's gravity attached; if the parcel is agricultural, the answer is inheritance or nothing. The POA afterthought: the deal negotiated to closing before anyone starts the authentication-and-stamping run for the power of attorney, adding weeks exactly when the seller's patience is thinnest — the POA guide in this cluster exists to be read first, not last. And the wrong-rail payment: consideration routed outside banking channels, or from an account class that muddies the repatriation story years later — pay from the NRE/NRO/inward-remittance rails the rules name, because the account you pay from today writes the exit rules you live with at sale.

The NRI buyer's pre-token checklist

1. Category check: is the parcel lawfully non-agricultural today — not "will be"?
2. Full title verification, same as any resident deal.
3. Funds pathed through NRE/FCNR(B)/NRO or inward remittance, documented.
4. POA drafted, attested, and adjudicated if you will not attend.
5. PAN active; TDS obligations understood for any future exit.