Q745. Buying property in India

from NRI who is abroad . . .

Question: Hi NRI Information team, I checked your website and found interesting information and want to enquire about buying a property from NRI. Seller is settled in UK and was saying that he will go in Indian embassy and prepare documents for registration and courier us. With the same documents we can get the flat registered in India. I searched a lot on this but did not find anything on this. Please suggest if I can get property registered in India without him coming over here. Thanks & Regards, Varun Gupta Consulting and Systems Integration (Please do NOT include phone numbers) Answer: Indian Embassies or Indian Consulates in UK or anywhere else in the world, do not prepare documents for registration of property in India. The most that can be done at the Consulate is attestation of a Power of Attorney/Affidavit. The Indian Consulates do not get involved in verifying property ownership in India and the power of attorney that they attest simply verifies the identity of the person signing the power of attorney. This is confirmed by the documents presented to the Consular officer at the time of attestation of the document. Property located in India - Payments must be made in India only For the benefit of readers, paying or accepting payments abroad for property located in India is considered to be illegal. Full payment and registration must be done in the area where property is located. The NRI seller you mention who is abroad, must send a power of attorney to someone to sell the property on his behalf. Due to misuse of POA to register properties in the past, Registrars are more vigilant now. These days it is very difficult to register property based on power of attorney. Procedures require POA to be registered etc. Before paying any sort of deposit, do confirm with a reliable lawyer the ownership of the property and best method of registering the property.