The NRI’s Guide to Buying Luxury Property in Hyderabad

An advisor’s walkthrough of what actually changes when you buy from abroad — FEMA eligibility, how to fund the purchase, home loans, repatriating your money later, the TDS rules, and buying remotely through a Power of Attorney.

For a non-resident buyer, the hard part of buying a home in Hyderabad is rarely choosing the home. It is everything wrapped around it — which account the money can legally come from, whether you can get a loan, how you get your money back out of the country years later, and how to complete a registration when you cannot be in the room. None of it is difficult once it is laid out plainly; almost all of it is confusing when it is not.

This is the guide we wish more NRIs and OCIs were handed before they started. It is written for the person buying a high-value, often under-construction, luxury apartment from abroad. A note before we begin: the rules below are current as we write, but tax rates and thresholds do change with each Union Budget — treat this as an orientation, and confirm the live numbers with a chartered accountant and the official portals before you sign anything.

First: can you actually buy it?

For residential and commercial property, yes — and easily. Under the RBI’s general permission (framed by FEMA, the Foreign Exchange Management Act), both NRIs and OCI cardholders can buy residential and commercial property in India freely, with no special approval and no cap on the number of properties. For the luxury-apartment buyer, there is effectively no eligibility hurdle at all.

The one hard line is land use. NRIs and OCIs cannot purchase agricultural land, plantation property or a farmhouse — and that prohibition holds regardless of how the money is funded. You can still come to own such property by inheritance, or receive it as a gift from a resident relative; you simply cannot buy it. For an apartment in Kokapet or Gandipet this never comes up, but it matters the moment a “farmland” or “managed plot” investment is pitched to you.

Residential and commercial: buy as much as you like. Agricultural, plantation or farmhouse: you may inherit it, but you cannot buy it.

How the money is allowed to move

This is where most avoidable mistakes happen. The purchase must be funded through normal banking channels — there is no route for foreign-currency cash or traveller’s cheques. In practice that means the payment comes from one of three places:

• An inward remittance from abroad through banking channels;
• Your NRE (Non-Resident External) or FCNR account — i.e. money you have brought in as foreign earnings;
• Your NRO (Non-Resident Ordinary) account — i.e. income earned in India, such as rent or dividends.

Which account you use is not a technicality — it quietly decides how freely you can take the money back out later, so it is worth deciding deliberately at the buying stage rather than the selling stage. You will also need a PAN (Permanent Account Number) to transact and to file the associated tax paperwork; if you do not already hold one, start that early, because it gates almost everything else.

Home loans are available to you

You do not have to fund the whole purchase from savings. Indian banks and housing-finance companies lend to NRIs, typically up to around 80% of the property value (the exact loan-to-value tiers down as the loan size rises, and is subject to your income). Tenures can run long — up to roughly 30 years with some lenders.

The catch NRIs most often miss is repayment: the EMI can only be serviced through your NRE or NRO account, or by direct remittance from abroad, in Indian rupees — you cannot pay it from a foreign account directly. If the home is let out, the rent can service the loan. And the usual home-loan tax deductions (principal under Section 80C, interest under Section 24) are available to you as an NRI too, against any India-taxable income.

The question to answer before you buy: getting your money back out

Repatriation is the part non-resident buyers think about last and should think about first. The headline rule is generous but has structure to it:

• When you eventually sell, the proceeds are first credited to your NRO account, and only remitted abroad after Indian taxes are settled.
• From an NRO account you can repatriate up to USD 1 million per financial year (net of taxes) — for most buyers, comfortably more than enough.
• If you bought the home with foreign-exchange funds (NRE/FCNR or inward remittance), you may repatriate the amount you originally brought in for up to two residential properties, outside of and in addition to that USD 1 million route.
• Each remittance needs Form 15CA (your self-declaration) and Form 15CB (a chartered accountant’s certificate that the tax position is correct) — the paperwork that actually releases the money.

The practical lesson: fund the purchase in a way that matches how you will one day want to exit. A home bought cleanly with remitted foreign exchange is the easiest to unwind and send home. This is exactly the kind of thing worth deciding at purchase, with a CA, rather than discovering at sale.

The TDS rules, without the jargon

Tax-deducted-at-source (TDS) trips up buyers because it depends on who is on the other side of the table.

When you buy from a resident seller or a domestic developer — the usual case for a new under-construction apartment — you, as the buyer, are required to deduct 1% TDS on the consideration under Section 194-IA whenever the price is ₹50 lakh or more, and deposit it against the seller’s PAN. It is a compliance step, not an extra cost, but it is your responsibility to get right.

When you buy resale from another non-resident, that 1% rule does not apply; instead Section 195 governs, and you must deduct at the seller’s capital-gains rate — for long-term gains, currently 12.5% (without indexation for a non-resident seller) plus applicable surcharge and cess. It is a materially larger deduction, so it needs to be handled correctly at closing. The same rule will apply to your own buyer the day you sell — which is another reason to keep clean records of what you paid and how.

Because these rates and sections have moved recently — the long-term capital-gains regime changed materially in mid-2024 — this is precisely the area to verify with a CA rather than a forum post.

Buying when you can’t be here: the Power of Attorney

Most NRI purchases are completed without the buyer flying in, and the instrument that makes that possible is a Power of Attorney (PoA) to a trusted person in India — usually a close family member — who signs and registers on your behalf. Done right, it is routine. Done casually, it is the single biggest source of NRI property fraud, so the discipline matters:

• Prefer a specific, limited PoA for this transaction — naming the property and the acts permitted — over an open-ended general PoA that hands someone broad power over your affairs.
• Execute it abroad and authenticate it: an Apostille in Hague-Convention countries (the US, UK, most of Europe), or attestation at the Indian consulate elsewhere. For property, many sub-registrars still prefer Indian consular attestation even where an Apostille exists — check the local expectation.
• Once it reaches India it must be stamped/adjudicated at the applicable state rate, generally within three months of arrival; and if your attorney will execute the sale deed itself, the PoA usually needs to be registered.
• Choose the holder as carefully as you choose the property. A limited scope and a person you would trust with your signature are your real protections.

The Hyderabad-specific costs to budget for

Beyond the headline price, three line items shape what actually leaves your account — and they are worth modelling before you commit:

• Stamp duty and registration: in Hyderabad’s municipal areas this runs to roughly 6% of value (broadly 4% stamp duty, 1.5% transfer duty and 0.5% registration) — confirm the current figure for your document type at registration.
• GST: an under-construction apartment attracts GST (currently 5% for non-affordable housing, without input-tax credit); a ready-to-move home that already has its completion certificate attracts no GST — only stamp duty and registration. This alone can shift the true cost of “under-construction vs ready” by several percent.
• Rental income, if you let the home: it is taxable in India and repatriable from your NRO account within the same USD 1 million annual route.

And the step no non-resident should skip: verify the project on the Telangana RERA portal yourself — registration number, approved plans and promoter — before any money moves. It is the one check that protects a buyer who cannot walk the site.

The bottom line

Buying from abroad is not harder than buying from Hyderabad — it is just more sequenced. Confirm you can buy it, fund it from the right account, decide your repatriation path before you pay, get the TDS and PoA done cleanly, and verify the project on RERA. Get that order right and the distance becomes a non-issue.

If you would like a single point of contact to coordinate the moving parts — shortlisting, RERA and title checks, and working alongside your CA and a trusted PoA holder — our advisory team regularly walks NRI and OCI buyers through exactly this, honestly and without pressure.