Which account paid for it, and when, decides how the money leaves

Maybe not. For property other than agricultural land, a farm house or a plantation, your bank can send the whole sale proceeds out with no annual ceiling at all, if you are an NRI or Overseas Citizen of India card holder and four things hold.

1. You bought it after you became non-resident. A flat you held from your resident days is barred from this route without RBI's permission (Rule 29(1)). 2. You acquired it lawfully under the exchange law in force at the time. 3. The purchase money was paid in foreign exchange through banking channels, or out of your NRE rupee account or your FCNR foreign-currency deposit. 4. For a home, this is not your third such repatriation.

That is Rule 29, FEM (Non-debt Instruments) Rules, 2019, and RBI sets out substantially the same conditions at paragraph 8.2 of its Master Direction on immovable property.

The USD 1 million you were quoted comes from a different instrument, the remittance of assets facility (FEM (Remittance of Assets) Regulations, 2016, Regulation 4(2)). It carries the capital in your NRO account that does not qualify under Rule 29: old balances, inherited assets, the proceeds of rupee-funded property.

No single sentence puts Rule 29 proceeds outside that ceiling. The regulations do exclude the proceeds of assets held on a repatriation basis, meaning assets bought with money that came from abroad, but those words sit in the branch governing foreign nationals rather than NRIs. What an NRI relies on is that Rule 29 is a separate and later permission, made by the Central Government, with no figure anywhere in it. The regulations carrying the ceiling also apply only save as otherwise provided by other rules (Regulation 3), which points the same way.

Two things decide the route: which account the purchase money came from, and whether you were already non-resident when you bought. A home loan is the one row in this table where what you do later can still move an asset across the line.

The last row is an exclusion written into the opening words of Rule 29(2). Farmland proceeds still leave by the capped route, they just never get the uncapped one, whatever paid for the land: see inheriting and selling agricultural land as an OCI.

A flat bought while you still lived in India cannot use the uncapped route without RBI's permission, and rent never counts against the cap.

The flat from your resident days is Section 6(5) property under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, the holdings you were allowed to keep from before you left. The remittance of assets facility is what carries it, and RBI says so expressly (Master Direction on immovable property, paragraph 8.1).

Current income hides, because rent, interest and dividends sit in the same NRO account as the capital and look identical on a statement. They never touch the USD 1 million: remittance of current income abroad is its own permitted debit from an NRO account, sitting outside the sentence that carries the cap (RBI Master Direction on Deposits and Accounts, Part II, paragraph 6.8). What the bank does need is satisfaction that the Indian tax on that income has been deducted, paid or provided for (Part II, paragraph 4.7). The cap bites on capital, not on income.

No. That cap was real until 2018 and is not in the rule now in force.

Until 2018 you could take out only what you had paid in foreign exchange, and not a rupee of the gain (Foreign Exchange Management (Acquisition and Transfer of Immovable Property in India) Regulations, 2000). Bring in one crore and one crore could take that route out. The gain was still yours to move. It simply lost the uncapped road and had to queue for the USD 1 million one. The 2018 regulations replaced that wording, and the replacement carried into Rule 29(2)(b), which asks whether the acquisition amount was paid from foreign exchange, an FCNR account or an NRE account. It names no figure, so the gain leaves with the principal.

Three things you will still see quoted are not in the rule in force:

Four documents rebuild a 2011 funding trail. Your bank is entitled to ask you to evidence the payment, and its own obligation to keep the record has probably expired. Transaction records run five years from the transaction (Section 12, Prevention of Money-laundering Act 2002), and remittance registers and vouchers run up to eight under the Banking Companies (Period of Preservation of Records) Rules, 1985. A 2011 transfer has outlasted both, though these are floors and not ceilings, so it is worth asking anyway.

One clock is still running in your favour. Account files and business correspondence are kept for five years after the relationship ends or the account is closed, whichever is later. If that NRE account is still open, the account file is still required to exist, so ask for the file rather than for the advice.

In this order:

1. The NRE or FCNR statement for the months you paid, showing the debits. 2. The inward remittance certificate or advice if you kept it, or the sending bank's own record abroad. 3. The agreement or sale deed's payment schedule, which normally names the account and the cheque or bank transfer reference for each tranche. 4. The builder's or seller's receipts against those references.

Where the chain cannot be closed, the money still moves. The question just changes. Rule 29 asks which account the purchase money came out of. The remittance of assets facility asks for documentary evidence of how you came to own the asset, plus your written undertaking that the funds are your legitimate receivables in India and not borrowed (Regulation 4(2)). Those are different asks, and the second is the one you can still evidence from the registered deed itself.

A purchase paid from more than one source. The position generally taken is to evidence the qualifying share, take that part out under Rule 29, and route the balance through the USD 1 million facility, which asks how you came to own the asset instead. Know that the split is a position and not the rule: Rule 29(2)(b) asks a single question about how the acquisition was paid for and gives no formula for splitting one. The current wording is also less accommodating than the pre-2018 version it replaced, which spoke of an amount and so invited apportionment on its face.

A rupee home loan. If a rupee housing loan funded the purchase, nothing was paid in foreign exchange at the time of acquisition. RBI's Master Direction still names the 2000 rupee borrowing regulations as the source of such loans, and those were replaced on 17 December 2018 by the FEM (Borrowing and Lending) Regulations, 2018, so a newer loan qualifies through the successor rather than the named instrument. RBI's position, at paragraph 8.2 of its Master Direction on Acquisition and Transfer of Immovable Property, is that where those loan repayments were made out of remittances received from abroad through banking channels, or by debit to your NRE or FCNR account, the repayments may be treated as equivalent to foreign exchange received. Instalments met from Indian rent through an NRO account get no such treatment and leave that share on the capped side of the line.

You can use this route for two homes and no more (Rule 29(2)(c)). The rule sets the figure at not more than two such properties and puts no time qualifier on it, which is why it is read as a limit for life. Use it twice and the door closes for residential property. The rule does not say what happens to a third home; it is generally routed through the USD 1 million facility like any other NRO capital.

On the rule's wording the count is of repatriations rather than of sales, since what it restricts is the repatriation of sale proceeds. Read that way, selling a home and leaving the proceeds in your NRO account spends nothing, and the slot goes only when the money leaves under Rule 29. Nothing states when a slot is consumed, so treat that as the reading and not as a rule. Nor does the rule say how the two are chosen, so in practice they are the first two you take out that way.

Karthik works in Dubai and owns two flats in Chennai.

Flat A was bought in 2011 for ₹2.60 crore, paid in four tranches wired from his Dubai salary account to the builder through banking channels. He sells it in 2026, and once the buyer's withholding (Section 393(2), formerly Section 195) and his capital gains tax are settled, ₹8.60 crore is his to move.

Flat B was bought in 2018 for ₹80 lakh out of his NRO balance, built up from Chennai rent and matured deposits. Net proceeds ₹1.60 crore.

He also wants an old ₹95 lakh NRO balance out. Total to move: ₹11.15 crore.

At ₹96 to the dollar, USD 1 million is about ₹9.60 crore. The bank converts on the day, so a stronger rupee shrinks the ceiling in rupees and pushes more of the balance into next year. The facility resets on 1 April. In the first column Flat A also uses one of Karthik's two residential slots, which is what the uncapped route costs him.

On a single ordinary sale the two routes often end in the same place, because the money leaves this year either way. The distinction bites in three situations.

1. A sale worth more than about USD 1 million on its own. 2. Several things leaving in the same financial year, because the facility is pooled across every asset you move. 3. An old NRO balance or an inheritance you also want out, competing for the same ceiling.

Where the ceiling genuinely binds, staging across financial years is not the only answer: RBI can be asked to approve a larger remittance, which is a separate application. And one to watch: RBI put draft Foreign Investment Rules out for consultation on 21 July 2026 which would replace the Non-debt Instruments Rules. The draft does not deal with immovable property, and nothing has been notified, so Rule 29 is what governs today.

The ceiling is per person, so a flat held jointly by two NRIs draws on two of them, one for each owner's share. And the same test runs on the way in: the account you use for the next purchase decides that asset's route from the day you pay, which is covered on buying Indian property as an NRI.

Rule 29 is exchange control. Clearing it does nothing about tax, and the bank will not release the funds until both gates are open.

Whichever door your money leaves by, the capital gain has to be computed and the tax settled, the tax the buyer withheld at source reconciled against it (Section 393(2), formerly Section 195), and the income-tax forms filed: Form 145, with Form 146 from a practising chartered accountant where a certificate is required, under Rule 220 of the Income-tax Rules 2026. For remittances up to 31 March 2026 those were Form 15CA and Form 15CB under Rule 37BB. Same job, renumbered.

Upstream of all of it sits the certificate that stops the buyer withholding on the whole sale price rather than on your gain (Form 128, formerly Form 13, under Section 395). Applied for before completion, it decides how much there is to repatriate in the first place.

The sequence is covered on repatriating property sale proceeds, and the NRO side on NRO to NRE transfers.