Indian Buyers Greece Golden Visa Property Guide 2026

Quick answer: The purchase runs on the Indian financial year rather than the Greek calendar. Under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme a resident individual may remit up to USD 250,000 per financial year, which is not enough to fund either Golden Visa threshold alone. Every Indian buyer therefore has to solve the funding structure before they solve the property, and the structure has to survive both FEMA scrutiny and the Greek requirement under Circular 1/2026 that the money arrive in the buyer’s own name.

What is not Indian about this purchase. The tier map, the area certificate, the letting restriction, the tax number and account sequence, and the pre-deposit checks are the same for every foreign buyer and are documented at €400,000 and €800,000 tier map, 120 m² certified usable area test, short-term rental ban on the qualifying asset, AFM and Greek bank account sequence and cadastre and engineer due diligence. This page covers the remittance problem, which is entirely Indian.

---

The LRS cap is per person, per financial year, and the year ends on 31 March

The Reserve Bank of India permits a resident individual to remit up to USD 250,000 in a financial year under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme. The Indian financial year runs from 1 April to 31 March, and the cap does not accrue: unused headroom does not carry forward.

At prevailing rates USD 250,000 falls well short of a €400,000 deed and further short of €800,000. That single arithmetic fact governs the whole transaction.

Pooling changes who owns the property, and that reaches the permit

The pooling route is the one most often chosen and the one most often mis-executed. If three family members each remit within their own LRS cap, Greek and Indian requirements pull in opposite directions: Circular 1/2026 requires the purchase price to arrive in an account in the buyer’s name, and FEMA requires each remitter’s money to be used for that remitter’s own purpose.

The consequence is that the people who funded the purchase generally need to appear on the deed. That is manageable, and it interacts with the Golden Visa in ways worth understanding before the money moves: the permit rests on one qualifying property, the thresholds are tested on the deed as a whole, and joint ownership among family members is not the same thing as one applicant with dependants. Establish with a Greek lawyer, in writing and before the first remittance, whose names go on the title and which of them is the applicant.

Tax Collected at Source is a cash-flow item, not a tax

TCS applies to LRS remittances above ₹10 lakh in a financial year, at 20% for purposes other than education and medical treatment. It is collected at the point of remittance by the authorised dealer bank.

TCS is not an additional tax; it is credited against your Indian income tax liability and can be claimed back through your return. But it is withheld at the moment the money leaves, so a buyer sending money for a Greek deposit needs the cash for both the deposit and the TCS at the same time, and gets the TCS back much later. Budget it as working capital rather than as a cost.

FEMA compliance is the risk that outlasts the purchase

Exceeding the LRS limit, or structuring around it, exposes the remitter to scrutiny and penalties under the Foreign Exchange Management Act. Two patterns attract attention specifically: remittances routed through third parties who are not related to the purchase, and remittances declared under one LRS purpose code and applied to another.

The documentation to keep from the outset is the A2 form and purpose code for each remittance, the bank advice, the Greek notarial deed showing the consideration, and the correspondence establishing who paid what. A Greek file is closed once the permit issues; an Indian file can be reopened for years.

Double taxation, and what the treaty actually does

India and Greece have a double tax treaty. Greek rental income is taxed in Greece first at 15% to 45% on gross rent with only a flat 5% repairs allowance, and an Indian resident then reports the same income in India and claims credit for the Greek tax paid.

Two practical notes. India taxes on residence, so an Indian who becomes non-resident changes the position entirely, and the residency tests are day-count based and specific. And the credit is against Indian tax on the same income, so where the Greek charge is higher the excess is generally not recoverable.

Bringing the money home is not the mirror image of sending it

Everything on this page so far describes capital leaving India. The return journey has its own rules, and Indian buyers routinely plan the first without planning the second.

Start with what you hold. Once the remittance has left under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme and been applied to the purpose declared on the A2 form, you own a foreign asset, and a resident individual must report that asset in the foreign assets schedule of the Indian return every year, whether or not it produces income and whether or not any tax is due on it. The disclosure obligation is separate from the tax obligation and it does not switch off because the property is empty for a season, because the tenant left, or because the euro rent for the year came to nothing.

Scale gives the point its weight: a €400,000 regional deed funded across two financial years, each tranche capped at USD 250,000 under the scheme and each remittance above Rs 10 lakh carrying 20% Tax Collected at Source, generates an asset that will sit on an Indian return for as long as it is owned, alongside every subsequent year’s rent taxed in Greece at 15% to 45% of gross with only a flat 5% repairs allowance. None of that is optional, none of it lapses with time, and the penalty regime attached to undisclosed foreign assets is deliberately heavier than the tax that would have been due on them.

Then the sale. Proceeds of a foreign asset acquired under LRS are yours, and how they are treated depends on your residential status at the time. A resident individual who sells and does not reinvest is expected to bring the funds back within the period the Reserve Bank prescribes rather than leave them sitting abroad indefinitely, leaving sale proceeds parked in a foreign account because the exchange rate is unfavourable is a decision with a compliance dimension, not just a commercial one. Someone who has become non-resident by then is in an entirely different regime, and the answer changes with them.

Residential status is therefore the first question in any exit planning conversation, not a detail to confirm later. It is determined by day counts and by the specific tests in Indian law, and it can change between the year you agree a sale and the year you complete it.

The capital gain is the third piece, and it is the one where the two systems diverge most expensively. A resident individual is taxed in India on worldwide capital gains, so a gain on the Greek property is reportable and chargeable in India even during a period when Greek capital gains tax on property is suspended and the Greek side of the sale produces a bill of nothing at all.

An Indian owner who sells a €400,000 deed for €480,000 inside the suspension therefore has a Greek liability of zero and an Indian liability computed on the full €80,000 gain, converted to rupees at the rates prescribed for the purpose, with no foreign tax to credit against it because no foreign tax was paid. A suspension in one country is not an exemption in the other. A suspension in one country is not an exemption in the other, and the India-Greece treaty allocating rights over immovable property does not make an Indian resident’s gain disappear from an Indian return. Model the Indian charge when you model the exit, not after you have agreed a price.

Rental income follows the same pattern as the gain. A resident is taxed in India on the Greek rent as it arises, with credit for the Greek tax under the treaty, and the Indian return reports it whether or not the money is ever brought back to India.

Gift transactions inside the family carry their own Indian treatment and are not a way around the LRS cap, since a remittance funded by one person and applied for another’s benefit is judged on substance.

Succession is the piece nobody models at all. If the Greek property passes to Indian heirs, they inherit a foreign asset with Indian disclosure obligations of their own, alongside the Greek inheritance tax and the Greek notarial acceptance procedure this site covers separately. Heirs who have never dealt with foreign-asset reporting acquire that obligation with the property.

The single most useful thing to do about all of this is administrative rather than clever: keep the A2 forms, the bank advices, the TCS certificates, the purchase deed and the exchange rates in one place from the first remittance. Every question above is easy to answer with those documents and expensive to answer without them, and reconstructing them from Greek and Indian records a decade later is worse than either.

Advantages and disadvantages for an Indian buyer

Risks an Indian buyer should price before signing

• Signing a preliminary agreement with a completion deadline the LRS timetable cannot meet.
• Pooling without a Greek lawyer’s written view on whose names go on the title and who the applicant is.
• Treating TCS as a fee rather than as withheld cash that has to be funded twice.
• Mismatched purpose codes between what was declared at remittance and what the money did.
• Assuming the Greek tax is the whole tax, when the Indian return brings the same income back with only a credit for what Greece took.

Buyer scenarios where the Indian position bites

One buyer, €400,000, no offshore funds. The purchase spans two financial years by necessity. Negotiate the completion date around 31 March explicitly, and expect to pay a premium for a seller’s patience.

A family funding jointly. The cleanest route on cash flow and the most complicated on title. Resolve the ownership structure before the first remittance, because unwinding a deed is far more expensive than drafting one.

An NRI with existing offshore assets. The simplest case, since money already held abroad legitimately is outside LRS entirely. The documentation burden shifts from RBI compliance to satisfying Greek source-of-funds requirements, which the proof of funds guide covers.

A worked remittance timetable

The abstract constraint becomes concrete quickly. Assume a €400,000 deed, an all-in requirement near €430,000 once transfer tax at 3.09% of about €12,360 and the notary, lawyer, registry and engineer lines are added, and a single resident individual remitting under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme.

Two things the table makes visible. The completion date cannot be earlier than the start of the second financial year unless another funding route is used, so a seller has to be willing to wait several months between agreement and deed. And the TCS withheld on the way out is cash you do not have during the purchase, recoverable only through a later Indian return, so the working-capital requirement exceeds the purchase price by a meaningful margin.

A family pooling three individual caps compresses the timetable to a single financial year and moves the complexity onto the title instead, which is why the ownership question has to be settled with a Greek lawyer before the first rupee leaves.

Next steps: what Greek compliance asks of the funding trail · how Greek rental income is actually taxed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can one Indian buyer fund a EUR 400,000 Greek purchase in a single year? +

No. The Liberalised Remittance Scheme caps a resident individual at USD 250,000 per financial year, which falls well short of either Golden Visa threshold, and unused headroom does not carry forward. The three workable routes are splitting the remittance across two financial years, pooling remittances from several family members within their own caps, or funding from assets already held legitimately offshore, which sit outside LRS entirely.

Does the Indian financial year affect a Greek property timetable? +

Directly. The Indian financial year runs 1 April to 31 March, so a buyer relying on two years of LRS headroom has to structure completion around that boundary. Signing a preliminary agreement with a completion deadline that the remittance schedule cannot meet is the most common planning failure on an Indian file, and it usually costs a premium to get the seller to wait.

If family members pool remittances, whose name goes on the Greek deed? +

Generally the remitters', and that has to be settled before the first transfer rather than after. Circular 1/2026 requires the price to arrive in the buyer's own name, and FEMA requires each remitter's money to be used for that remitter's purpose, so the people who funded the purchase usually need to appear on the title. Joint family ownership is not the same as one applicant with dependants, so get a Greek lawyer's written view on who the applicant is.

What is TCS on an LRS remittance and is it an extra cost? +

Tax Collected at Source applies to LRS remittances above Rs 10 lakh in a financial year at 20% for purposes other than education and medical treatment. It is not an additional tax: it is credited against your Indian income tax liability and recoverable through your return. But it is withheld when the money leaves, so you need cash for both the deposit and the TCS at the same time and get the TCS back much later. Treat it as working capital.

Is Greek rental income taxed again in India? +

It is reported again, with credit for the Greek tax paid under the India-Greece treaty. Greece taxes first at 15% to 45% on gross rent with only a flat 5% repairs allowance, then an Indian resident reports the same income in India and claims the credit. Where the Greek charge exceeds the Indian tax on that income, the excess is generally not recoverable. An Indian who becomes non-resident changes the position entirely.

---

Data sources: Law 5100/2024; Circular 1/2026 (22 April 2026); Bank of Greece residential price indices Q3 2025; Greek Ministry of Migration Golden Visa processing timelines; AADE transfer tax schedules. This guide is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or investment advice. Indian buyers should consult qualified Greek counsel and tax advisers before proceeding.