Selling a flat or a piece of land in India is entirely open to non-residents. What trips people up is never the sale itself — it's the order in which the tax and banking steps are done. Get the sequence right and the proceeds travel abroad smoothly; get it wrong and a large part of the price is locked away as a refund you wait months to recover.
Here is the whole journey, in the order it should actually happen.
1. Before you sign: the lower-deduction certificate
When the seller is a non-resident, the buyer is required to deduct tax at the rates prescribed for NRIs — and crucially, that deduction is computed on the entire sale consideration, not on your actual profit. On a high-value property, that can mean several lakhs withheld even when your real taxable gain is modest.
The fix exists, but only if you act before the agreement: apply to the tax officer for a lower- or nil-deduction certificate. It lets the deduction be sized to your real capital gain instead of the headline price — so the cash stays in your hands on the day of sale rather than becoming a refund a year later. This single step is the difference between a smooth sale and a frustrating one.
2. Work out the capital gain — and the reliefs
Your gain depends on how long you held the property and what you paid for it (with the cost adjustments the law allows). A long-held property is taxed differently from one sold quickly, and the long-term route opens up genuine reliefs.
Reinvestment routes — into a residential house, or into specified bonds, each with its own conditions and time limits — can reduce or defer the taxable gain substantially. But they reward planning before the sale, not after. A short conversation while the property is still yours is worth far more than the best advice after the cheque has cleared.
3. Route the money correctly
Sale proceeds of an NRI's property belong in the NRO account — the home for India-sourced money. From there, the funds can travel abroad up to the prescribed annual ceiling (broadly USD 1 million per financial year), once the tax position is settled and the bank's documentation is in place.
That documentation is a chartered accountant's certification (Form 15CB) and your declaration (Form 15CA), confirming the tax on the sale has been accounted for. With these in hand, the remittance is routine. Where you need to send more than the annual ceiling allows, there is a defined approval route for that too.
The document checklist
- Title chain and the registered sale deed (and succession papers, if the property was inherited)
- Purchase cost proof and dates — for the capital-gains computation
- PAN, and confirmation your PAN is operative (a common snag for NRIs)
- Lower-deduction certificate application — filed before the agreement
- NRO account for the proceeds
- Form 15CB (CA certificate) and Form 15CA — for the repatriation
- Your income-tax return for the year, to claim any excess deduction back
The one rule that saves the most
Talk to your adviser before you sign, not after. Every expensive NRI property story we see traces back to the same thing — the TDS was gone before anyone planned for it. Planned in the right order, an NRI sale is calm from agreement to repatriation.