Residential property buying by non-resident Indians (NRIs) from West Asia has fallen 50-75% as most of them have kept their buying decisions on hold in the wake of the ongoing conflict in the region, said industry stakeholders.
NRIs constitute around 20-22% of the Indian residential market, and NRIs from West Asia constitute 50% of that share. This pause in home-buying does not augur well for the market, which is staring at a slowdown, experts said.
Housing sales across the top seven Indian cities declined 7% q-o-q in the first quarter of 2026 as the West Asia conflict weighed on buyer sentiment, according to Anarock Property Consultants. On a low base of Q12025, the sales grew 7% y-o-y.
“NRIs from Middle East are confused now. They do not know what to do. Most of them have kept their buying decisions on hold,” said MD & CEO of a Mumbai-based development company, adding that NRIs would take a call only after a concrete end to the war.
Liquidity over Luxury
Since the beginning of unrest in the region, demand from West Asian investors has fallen by nearly 50%, said Saurabh Garg, co-founder and chief business officer at NoBroker. Garg expects that demand from West Asian NRIs will normalise and eventually increase. “Given that local Dubai properties may not yield higher returns in the coming years, the strong growth in the Indian market is likely to attract more investment. This mirrors a similar trend we observed during the Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.
Reiterating the stance, another senior executive of a leading brokerage firm said NRIs from West Asia are delaying their decision-making. “We were expecting 3x growth from NRI customers in Indian market since the onset of the war. That has not happened. It has been constant at regular numbers,” he said
“They want to conserve their liquidity. They are not looking to buy in the Middle East. Though they were inclined towards India, they don’t want to buy now. They want to take the call in the next two to three months,” he said, adding that their deals with them are not going ahead.
The 7% dip in sales in Q12025 tracks the war-induced uncertainty, with sentiment and sales clearly affected by surging oil and construction prices — particularly in March, said Anuj Puri, chairman of Anarock, in the firm’s Q1 report.
Rising Construction Costs
“The decline also aligns with large numbers of prospective Middle Eastern homebuyers, who invest significantly in Indian real estate, hitting the pause button under the war cloud,” Puri said.
Gulam Zia, senior executive director at Knight Frank, said NRIs in West Asia are keeping their house in order now more than anything else. “When there is job uncertainty, why would they buy properties,” Zia said. He said though the rupee has fallen 5% every year, property prices have gone up in the same magnitude, nullifying the benefit for NRI buyers.