The Entree
Let's imagine you've been working in Dubai or Dallas for a few years. The salary is good, the savings are growing, and every call home ends with the same gentle nudge: beta, when are you buying a flat?
It sounds like the sensible thing to do. A backup plan if things go south abroad. A retirement home. An investment that, as every uncle will tell you, never goes down.
And plenty of NRIs act on it. Add up the RBI's four quarterly balance of payments releases for 2025-26, and personal transfers into India, mostly money sent home by Indians working abroad, came to roughly $150 billion (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4).
But talk to NRIs who already own property back home, and many sound tired rather than rich. Tenants who pay late. Maintenance bills that keep climbing. Relatives who were supposed to keep an eye on things, but didn't. Quite a few are quietly trying to sell.
So who's right? We went through the government's own numbers, only from the last two years, to find out.
Start with house prices.
The RBI tracks them through its House Price Index, or HPI. Think of it as a thermometer built from actual sale deeds filed at registration offices across 18 major cities.
RBI House Price Index releases (18 cities, base 2022-23), Jul 2024 to Jun 2026; MoSPI CPI, Aug 2026. Apr–Jun 2026 is provisional.
Two years ago, prices were rising about 7% a year. Since then, growth has roughly halved and settled between 2% and 4%. In July–September 2025, the index even slipped 0.6% from the quarter before, as prices fell in Kolkata, Chennai, Lucknow and Hyderabad. (More quarters: Oct–Dec 2025, Jan–Mar 2026.)
The latest reading shows prices 3.6% higher in April–June 2026 than a year earlier. Meanwhile, retail inflation hit 4.82% in August 2026. In other words, the average home is now appreciating slower than the cost of living.
But there's a bigger catch for NRIs: the rupee.
You earn in dollars, pounds or dirhams. So what really matters is how your flat does in that currency. And the rupee has had a rough stretch. The RBI's reference rate put a dollar at ₹84.40 in November 2024 and at ₹96.29 in May 2026.
Let's do the math. Say you bought a ₹1 crore flat in November 2024. That cost you about $118,500. Now say prices rose 6% over the next 18 months, a touch better than the RBI index. Your flat is worth ₹1.06 crore. Convert it back and you get roughly $110,100.
So you "made" ₹6 lakh on paper, and lost about $8,400, or 7%, in the currency you actually live in. Stretch that over a few more years of a sliding rupee, and a handsome rupee profit can shrink to almost nothing in dollars.
The costs that quietly vanish from the maths
Most return calculations fit in one line: selling price minus buying price. Here's what that formula skips.
First, the entry fee. Under-construction flats carry 5% GST (completed ones with a completion certificate don't), on top of your state's stamp duty, registration and brokerage. You start several percent in the hole before moving a single sofa in.
Second, running costs that grow faster than rent. In August 2026's inflation data, rents rose 2.27% while maintenance, repair and security of homes rose 3.77%. So a rented flat's margin gets squeezed every year, and a locked flat earns nothing at all.
Third, time. "My flat doubled!" sounds great. Over 12 years, that works out to about 6% a year.
Fourth, age. The building depreciates even when the land doesn't. By the time you sell, your 10-year-old flat competes with shiny new towers down the road, and buyers usually prefer those.
Fifth, the exit tax. NRIs pay 12.5% on long-term gains without indexation (adjusting your purchase price for inflation). Under the Finance (No. 2) Act, 2024, residents who bought before 23 July 2024 can pick the old inflation-adjusted method if it's cheaper. NRIs can't.
And sixth, the currency, which we just saw.
So what should a flat be compared with?
Now, that doesn't mean property never makes sense. A home your parents or siblings will actually live in, chosen with their input, is a different decision. You're buying comfort, not returns.
For money you want to grow, though, the options look different.
Plots skip the ageing-building problem but bring encroachment risk. If someone builds a wall on your land while you're in Toronto, the fix runs through a courtroom, and subordinate courts had nearly 5 crore cases pending in July 2026, per National Judicial Data Grid figures tabled in the Lok Sabha. Farmland is off the table anyway: FEMA rules bar NRIs from buying agricultural land, farm houses or plantation property.
REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) are the other route. They're listed trusts that own rent-paying offices and malls, and you buy their units like shares. That means a small ticket, no tenants to chase, and an exit that takes days, not months. SEBI even reclassified REITs as equity-related instruments for mutual funds from January 2026. The trade-off? Market swings, and exposure to commercial rather than residential property.
And then there's the simplest option: invest the money where you live, earmark it for a future Indian home, and don't touch it. (If you pay taxes in the US, Indian mutual funds can come with heavy US reporting, so check with a tax advisor first.)
The questions NRIs keep asking
"Can't I just buy it in my parents' name?" Careful. Under the benami law, a property you pay for but hold in someone else's name can be treated as benami. The exceptions are narrow: property in your spouse's or child's name, or held jointly with a parent or sibling, and paid for from your known sources. A flat solely in your father's name, funded by you, doesn't fit.
"Will I lose 20% when I move the money out?" There's no separate exit tax on the transfer itself. The tax is on your gain, collected when you sell. After that, you can remit up to USD 1 million per financial year from your NRO account, backed by a chartered accountant's certificate.
"Is there a new NRI certificate needed to sell?" Not one we could find. But there is a certificate worth getting. On an NRI sale, the buyer must deduct tax, often on far more than your actual gain. Since April 2026, you can ask the tax department for a lower-deduction certificate (Form 128 under the Income-tax Act, 2025, which replaced the old Form 13). And plan ahead: a buyer taking a home loan may have to fund that deduction from their own pocket, so agree on it early.
"I'll probably have to move back anyway. Shouldn't I buy now?" Maybe the opposite. Move first, rent for a year or two, then buy. As a resident you can use a home loan, and you'll buy for the life you have then, not the one you imagined from abroad.
"I already own a flat that's lying empty. Keep or sell?" If no family member will live in it, the numbers above lean towards selling. It earns nothing, its upkeep rises faster than rents, and nobody's around to notice a leaking pipe.
So should NRIs stop buying property in India altogether? We wouldn't go that far. Some people will buy well and do great. But the last two years of government data suggest the odds are thinner than the family WhatsApp group makes them sound, especially once you count in dollars.
Whether house prices pick up pace again, or the rupee steadies, well, that's something only time will tell.
See you again then…
If this story helped you think twice about that flat back home, share it with your NRI friends and family on WhatsApp, LinkedIn and X.
Disclaimer: This is not investment, legal or tax advice. Please speak with a qualified advisor before making property decisions.