UAE mortgages for Indian & NRI buyers.

If you're a UAE resident

If you live and work in the UAE on a residence visa, you can typically borrow up to 80% of the property value on a first home (70% above), on the same terms as any UAE resident.

If you're buying from abroad

If you are based in India, you can still buy and finance UAE property as a non-resident — usually up to 50–75% of the value, with a larger deposit and a slightly different set of documents. Many of our Indian clients buy remotely.

How we help Indians and NRIs

• Buy as a UAE resident (up to 80% LTV) or as a non-resident from India (typically 50–75%).
• Remote purchase is possible through a Power of Attorney — you don't have to fly over for every step.
• Income can often be considered from Indian salary or business, alongside UAE income where relevant.
• We handle the full process end to end, coordinating with the bank, developer and conveyancer.

Currency: what the dirham peg means for you

The UAE dirham has been pegged to the US dollar at a fixed rate of 3.6725 since 1997, and that peg does not move day to day the way most currency pairs do. The Indian rupee, however, floats freely against the dollar. That difference matters more than it might first seem once you are servicing a dirham mortgage from Mumbai, Delhi or Bengaluru.

Say you take a mortgage on a property priced at AED 1,800,000. Your monthly instalment is fixed in dirhams. What is not fixed is how many rupees you need to earn, convert and remit each month to cover it — that depends entirely on the INR/USD rate on the day you convert. If the rupee weakens against the dollar, the same dirham payment costs you more in rupee terms, even though nothing about your mortgage has changed. If the rupee strengthens, the reverse applies and the payment becomes relatively cheaper.

This is exposure you carry for the life of the loan, not a one-off cost. Some Indian buyers manage it by putting down a larger deposit to shrink the size of the AED debt they are exposed to, or by choosing a shorter tenure so there is simply less time for currency swings to work against them. Neither removes the exposure — nothing does, short of earning in dollars or a currency pegged to it — but both reduce how much of it you are carrying.

Buying from India without flying over

A large share of our Indian and NRI clients complete their UAE purchase without ever needing to be in the country for the transaction itself. This is done through a Power of Attorney (POA) — a legal document you sign giving a named person, often a relative, a lawyer, or someone we coordinate with, the authority to act for you on specific steps of the purchase.

A properly drafted POA can typically cover signing the sale and purchase agreement, completing mortgage paperwork with the bank, and finalising the transfer at the Dubai Land Department on your behalf. What it does not remove is your underlying responsibility for the application — the income, identity and source-of-funds documents still need to come from you, and the bank's credit decision is based on your profile, not your attorney's.

For a buyer several time zones away, juggling UAE business hours against IST, the practical benefit is real: you are not booking flights around bank appointments or developer meetings. We manage the sequencing so the POA holder and the paperwork are in the right place at the right time.

One thing to plan for: the UAE is not a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, so an apostille on its own is not enough — a document signed abroad needs the full consular chain: authentication at home, attestation by the UAE embassy in that country, then attestation by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, plus a certified Arabic translation by a Ministry of Justice–licensed translator. For property specifically, the Dubai Land Department expects its own standard POA template naming the property (by plot, title deed or Oqood number) and the exact transaction it authorises; custom-drafted POAs are routinely rejected, and the document must be registered with the Dubai Courts Notary Public even when it was notarised overseas. Start this early — it is the step that most often delays a remote purchase.

Documents, and where applications usually slow down

What a bank asks for depends heavily on whether you are applying as a UAE resident or from India as a non-resident. Residents typically build their file around UAE income — a salary certificate, UAE bank statements, visa and Emirates ID. Non-resident applicants instead need to evidence income earned and taxed in India, which usually means a longer paper trail and more supporting statements, since the bank cannot verify a UAE salary transfer or visa status.

If you are self-employed rather than salaried, expect a materially different — and heavier — file: a trade licence active for at least two years, two years of audited financials, and six to twelve months of account statements.

In practice, three things slow Indian applications down more than anything else. The first is source-of-funds evidence for the deposit — banks want a clear, documented trail for where the money originated, not just that it exists. The second is income evidence that was never produced with a UAE mortgage in mind, so it needs reformatting or supplementing. The third is that documents issued in India may need notarisation or attestation before a UAE bank will rely on them.

Preparing all of this before you apply, rather than after a request comes back, is the single biggest thing you can do to keep the process moving.

One thing to plan for: the UAE is not a party to the Hague Apostille Convention, so an apostille on its own is not enough — a document signed abroad needs the full consular chain: authentication at home, attestation by the UAE embassy in that country, then attestation by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, plus a certified Arabic translation by a Ministry of Justice–licensed translator. For property specifically, the Dubai Land Department expects its own standard POA template naming the property (by plot, title deed or Oqood number) and the exact transaction it authorises; custom-drafted POAs are routinely rejected, and the document must be registered with the Dubai Courts Notary Public even when it was notarised overseas. Start this early — it is the step that most often delays a remote purchase.

Tax: what the UAE charges, and what to check at home

On the UAE side, the position is straightforward and hasn't changed: there is no personal income tax, no annual property tax, and no capital gains tax for individuals selling property here. Whatever you earn on rental income or on a future sale within the UAE is not taxed by the UAE.

That is only half the picture if you are an NRI or Indian resident. India taxes its own residents on worldwide income, and the rules covering foreign property, rental receipts and gains on sale — along with anything relevant under the India-UAE tax treaty — are a matter for your own tax adviser in India, not for us. We are mortgage brokers, and we deliberately do not quote Indian tax rates or thresholds here, because they change, they depend on your residency status for tax purposes, and getting them wrong from a UAE brokerage would do you no favours.

The sensible order of operations is: understand what the UAE side saves you, then take advice on how India will treat the income and any eventual sale before you commit. If you are unsure who to ask, a chartered accountant familiar with NRI taxation is the right starting point.

Compare lenders & costs

We compare every major UAE bank for your profile — see also our Dubai mortgages guide, the calculators, and the full cost of buying. Whether you're resident or investing from abroad, we manage it end to end.