Imagine driving up to a junction where the traffic signal was installed in 1998 and nobody has touched it since. The road underneath has been rebuilt twice. The junction has a flyover now. But the old signal keeps blinking instructions for a road that no longer exists.
That is roughly the experience of reading the “NRI Registration” FAQ that still sits on the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana Registration and Stamps portals in 2026.
Open it, and you are told about “Overseas Corporate Bodies,” a category of investor the Reserve Bank of India abolished in 2003. You are told to file “Form IPI 7” within 90 days of buying a flat, a form that no longer exists. You are told that you can only send your money home if you bought the property on or after “26 May 1993.” None of this is how the rules work anymore.
To be clear, this is not a case of a portal lying to anyone. It is old text that never got refreshed after the law changed. But if you are an NRI trying to figure out whether you need permission to buy a flat in Hyderabad or Vijayawada, reading it will leave you more confused, and more nervous, than you need to be.
So let us do what the portals have not: bring the FAQ up to date. One post covers both states, because both portals carry almost identical text, and the correction is the same central law either way.
Why the AP and Telangana NRI FAQ is frozen in time
Foreign exchange in India used to run on a suspicious, permission-first law called FERA, the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act of 1973. Under FERA, an NRI wanting to do almost anything with money in India had to ask first.
In 1999, Parliament scrapped FERA and replaced it with FEMA, the Foreign Exchange Management Act. The word “regulation” became “management,” and that was not just cosmetics. FEMA flipped the default. Most routine transactions, including an NRI buying a home, became generally permitted, with no application needed.
Then the detailed rulebook kept evolving. The current framework sits in the Foreign Exchange Management (Non-Debt Instruments) Rules, 2019 and the related Acquisition and Transfer of Immovable Property regulations, consolidated in the RBI’s Master Direction on immovable property. The FEMA rules every NRI property owner should know walk through this modern framework in detail.
The state registration FAQs, meanwhile, were written on top of the FERA-era rules and the earliest version of FEMA. They were never rewritten. So the law moved on three times and the sign kept blinking its 1990s instructions.
What an “OCB” was, and why it stopped mattering
The FAQ spends several questions explaining “Overseas Corporate Bodies,” so it is worth knowing what they were before you can safely ignore them.
An OCB was an overseas company, partnership, trust or society that was at least 60% owned by NRIs. Back in the day, the RBI let OCBs enjoy the same investment facilities as individual NRIs. It was a way for NRIs to pool money through an offshore vehicle and still get “NRI treatment” in India.
That door was shut. Following a review linked to a stock market scam, the RBI de-recognised OCBs as a class of investor in 2003. From then on, no fresh OCB investment was permitted in India under any route. The certificates the FAQ mentions (OAC and OAC 1) went with them.
So when the portal explains OCB facilities, OAC certificates, a 16% net profit repatriation cap, or a three-year lock-in on investment, you can file all of it under history. If you are an individual NRI or OCI buying a home, none of it was ever about you in the first place.
Do NRIs need RBI permission to buy property? (The bit the FAQ gets right)
Here is the reassuring part, and credit where it is due: the portal actually gets the headline correct.
An NRI or OCI does not need RBI permission to buy residential or commercial property in India. There is a standing general permission in the rules. You do not file an application, you do not wait for an approval letter, and you do not report the purchase to the RBI afterwards.
The old FAQ frames this as “the Reserve Bank has granted general permission to foreign citizens of Indian origin” for “bona fide residential purposes.” The outcome is right, but the framing is dated in two ways. First, the operative category today is the OCI cardholder, not the old “PIO.” The PIO card scheme was merged into OCI with effect from 9 January 2015, so there is no separate PIO route to worry about. Second, the “residential purpose only” limitation is gone. An OCI can buy commercial property just as freely as residential.
What you can and cannot buy
This is the part worth committing to memory, because most of it has not changed and it is where real money gets lost.
Residential and commercial: green light
Any number of flats, houses, offices or shops. No RBI permission. You can buy from a resident, another NRI, or an OCI. Payment must move through banking channels, which we come to below.
Agricultural land, farmhouses, plantations: red light
NRIs and OCIs cannot buy agricultural land, plantation property, or a farmhouse. Full stop. Not through a company, not through a resident relative holding it for you, not with a promise that the land will be “converted” later. This is the single most important evergreen fact in the whole FAQ, and it is one of the few things the portal states correctly.
The only lawful way to end up holding agricultural land is to inherit it from a person resident in India. Our deep dive on whether NRIs can buy agricultural land covers the inheritance exception, the “farmhouse” trap, and the real penalty cases, where buyers who cooperated fully still paid three times the purchase price.
Foreign nationals and restricted-country citizens: the rule the FAQ never states
The old FAQ only ever mentions certain countries to exclude them from the definition of “Person of Indian Origin.” It never states the actual rule, which is this: a foreign national of non-Indian origin generally cannot buy property in India at all, except by inheritance, although they may take a lease of up to five years.
Separately, citizens of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, China, Iran, Nepal, Bhutan, Hong Kong, Macau and North Korea need prior RBI permission to acquire or transfer property in India, whatever their residential status. Importantly, this restriction does not apply to OCI cardholders. If you hold an OCI card, you are in the ordinary NRI/OCI lane.
Forget IPI 7 and IPI 8: there is no RBI form to file
If there is one myth in the old FAQ that causes genuine anxiety, it is this one. The portal tells NRIs to file Form IPI 7 with the RBI’s Central Office within 90 days of buying property, and Form IPI 8 within 90 days of selling.
Neither form exists today.
Both were part of the old declaration regime that FEMA swept away. There is no 90-day post-purchase declaration. There is no RBI form to submit when an NRI or OCI buys a residential or commercial property. You buy, you register the deed at the Sub-Registrar’s office, you keep your bank records, and you are done as far as the RBI is concerned.
People still search for “IPI 7” and “IPI 8” precisely because the portals still name them. If that is you, the short answer is: relax, there is nothing to file.
Sending the money home: the real repatriation rules
This is where the stale text can genuinely cost you, because repatriation is the moment NRIs actually need the rules to be right.
The old FAQ says you can only repatriate sale proceeds if you bought the property on or after 26 May 1993, and only if you sell three years after buying, via Form IPI 8. Every part of that is obsolete. There is no 1993 cut-off. There is no three-year holding lock-in for repatriation. There is no IPI 8.
Here is what actually applies:
- If you bought with money brought in from abroad (NRE or FCNR funds, or a direct inward remittance), you can repatriate the sale proceeds up to the amount you originally sent in. This is allowed for a maximum of two residential properties. Any gain above what you brought in follows the NRO route below.
- If you bought with Indian income (NRO funds), or you are past the two-property limit, the sale proceeds sit in your NRO account and you can remit up to USD 1 million per financial year from there.
Either way, the money leaves through your authorised dealer bank, not through any RBI form, and you will need Form 15CA plus a chartered accountant’s Form 15CB to satisfy the tax side. Our guide to Form 15CA and 15CB for NRI repatriation walks through exactly which parts apply. The interplay between the two-property route and the USD 1 million route can get fiddly when you used a mix of NRE and NRO money, so it is worth reading that alongside the FEMA rules guide before you sell.
Rental income, by the way, is repatriable too. Rent is treated as current income: it goes into your NRO account, and after tax it can be remitted within that same USD 1 million facility.
Buying or selling from abroad: PoA, stamp duty, and Anywhere Registration
Now for the genuinely useful bits, because most NRIs are not standing in a Sub-Registrar’s office in Guntur or Warangal on the day of registration. They act through a Power of Attorney (PoA). Here the state FAQs actually contain evergreen gold, and this is where AP and Telangana law does matter.
A few things to get right if you are executing documents from abroad:
- Execute and attest the PoA properly. A PoA signed abroad should be notarised before a local Notary Public and then either apostilled (in Hague Convention countries such as the UK, USA and Australia) or attested by the Indian Consulate (for non-Hague countries such as the UAE). Our Power of Attorney guide covers how to draft one narrowly so you do not hand over more authority than you intend.
- Register within the window. A document must be presented for registration within four months of execution. For a document executed outside India, that four months runs from when it is first received in India, not from the day you signed it abroad. That single detail saves a lot of panic about delays in the post.
- Stamp it in time. Under Section 18 of the Indian Stamp Act, a document executed outside India can be stamped within three months of it being first received in India. Miss that window and you are into deficit stamp duty and penalties.
- Use Anywhere Registration. Both states let you register a document at any Joint Sub-Registrar office within the relevant registration district, not only the one closest to the property. If your usual SRO is overloaded, your PoA holder can pick a less busy office in the same district.
For the state-specific mechanics, the property registration guide for Hyderabad covers stamp duty rates and the SRO appointment process, while the IGRS Andhra Pradesh and IGRS Telangana walkthroughs show you how to search records and pull an encumbrance certificate online, which is the same portal family the outdated FAQ lives on.
A quick correction table
If you keep one thing from this post, make it this. The left column is roughly what the AP and Telangana portals still say. The right column is what actually applies in 2026.
| The old portal FAQ says | What actually applies in 2026 |
|---|---|
| OCBs get NRI investment facilities | OCBs were de-recognised as investors in 2003. The category no longer invests in India. |
| File Form IPI 7 within 90 days of buying | No such filing exists. No RBI form on purchase. |
| Apply in Form IPI 8 within 90 days of selling | No such form. Repatriation runs through your bank plus Form 15CA/15CB. |
| Repatriation only for property bought on/after 26 May 1993 | The 1993 cut-off is obsolete. It does not apply. |
| Repatriation only if you sell three years after buying | The three-year lock-in was removed. |
| PIOs have a separate set of rights | The PIO card merged into OCI on 9 January 2015. |
| RBI general permission is for “bona fide residential” use | OCIs may buy commercial property too, not just residential. |
| Agricultural land, plantation, farmhouse are off limits | Still true. This one has not changed. |
| No RBI permission needed for residential/commercial | Still true. This one is correct. |
What still holds up
To be fair to the old text, strip away the OCB scaffolding and a few solid facts survive:
- No RBI permission is needed for an NRI or OCI to buy residential or commercial property.
- Agricultural land, plantations and farmhouses remain off limits, inheritance aside.
- Payment must move through banking channels (NRE, NRO, FCNR or inward remittance), never cash.
- Rent from a let-out property is repatriable after tax.
- The PoA, stamping and registration windows for foreign-executed documents are genuinely useful and still current.
Everything else, the OCBs, the IPI forms, the 1993 date, the three-year lock-in, is a museum piece.
The frustrating thing about outdated official text is that it looks authoritative. It sits on a government domain, so people trust it, freeze, and sometimes pay a lawyer to solve a problem that was solved by Parliament in 1999. The rules for owning property in India as an NRI are, on the whole, more welcoming than the old FAQ makes them sound. You just have to read them from 2026, not from the year the signal was last serviced.
If you own property across states and want one place to keep your sale deeds, PoA, remittance receipts and bank records, so the paper trail is ready the day you decide to sell or repatriate, Assetly lets you organise and track it all from wherever you are.
Related Reading
- FEMA Rules Every NRI Property Owner Must Know
- Can NRIs Buy Agricultural Land in India?
- How to Give Power of Attorney for Property Without Losing It
- Form 15CA and 15CB: How NRIs Repatriate Property Sale Proceeds
- Property Registration in Hyderabad: Step-by-Step NRI Guide (2026)
Assetly is a property document management platform that helps Indian property owners, including NRIs, organise, verify, and track their property documents digitally. Learn more.
