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Diaspora · 9 min read

Returning to Odisha: where should you build your home in the next five years?

If you are Odia and working in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Pune, the Gulf or the United States, you have watched Bhubaneswar change from a distance. This is a practical guide to buying land back home: what the law lets you buy, how to do it without flying back every month, and why we think a plot on the Puri highway is the right blank canvas.

By Acestate BuildersPublished 13 November 2026Legal points checked against RBI, Income Tax and Odisha government sources listed at the end
The Jagannath Temple at Puri
The Jagannath Temple, Puri, forty kilometres down the highway from Pipili. Photo: Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The city you left is not the city that is there now

Bhubaneswar topped the first list of twenty Smart Cities in January 2016 and placed second among smaller cities in the 2020 Ease of Living index. Software exports routed through STPI Bhubaneswar reached ₹3,840 crore in 2024-25, and Odisha's total software and electronics exports crossed ₹12,900 crore in 2023-24, nearly three times the 2019-20 figure. The state's E&IT department counted more than 300 IT companies and about 35,000 jobs across Bhubaneswar, Jatni and Khordha in 2025.

The institutions you may have left to study elsewhere now sit here: IIT Bhubaneswar, NISER, AIIMS, IIIT, XIM University, KIIT and SOA. At the Utkarsh Odisha conclave in January 2025 the state recorded investment intents of ₹16.73 lakh crore, with about ₹20,900 crore of that in IT and electronics. Intents are not factories, but the direction is clear.

Nobody knows exactly how many Odias live outside the state. The Ministry of External Affairs told Parliament in March 2025 that it does not keep state-wise diaspora data. What we do know is that the state has started courting you: a Directorate of Odisha Paribar for non-resident Odias was approved in 2023, and in January 2025 the Chief Minister announced a dedicated NRO policy at the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas held in Bhubaneswar.

Why a plot rather than a flat

Most people who return want something they could not have in a metro: space, a garden, a house their parents can live in on the ground floor, a design that is theirs. A flat gives you a floor plan someone else drew. A plot gives you the decision. It also carries no maintenance bill while you are abroad, and no society to argue with about a tenant.

The catch with plots has always been trust. Buying land you cannot see, in a tahasil you cannot visit, from a seller you have never met, is how diaspora money gets lost. So the rest of this article is about doing it safely.

What the law lets you buy

How to buy without flying back every month

  1. Check the land from your desk. The record of rights for any plot in Odisha is online at the Bhulekh portal. Search by district, tahasil and village, and you will see the khata, the plot number, the recorded tenant and the kisam. The encumbrance certificate can be applied for online through IGR Odisha.
  2. Check the project on ORERA. Any plotted project over 500 square metres or more than eight units must be registered with the Odisha Real Estate Regulatory Authority. Search the registered projects list at rera.odisha.gov.in and match the number against the brochure.
  3. Give a Power of Attorney. Sign it before the Indian consulate or a notary and have it apostilled, then stamp it in India within three months of its arrival. Odisha's registration offices accept a registered Power of Attorney with the attorney-holder's photo identity for execution of the sale deed. Give it to someone you trust; a parent or sibling is the usual choice.
  4. Register through the online system. IGR Odisha runs online slot booking, e-stamping and document submission, so the day at the sub-registrar's office is short and scheduled.
  5. Get the tax right. When buying from a resident seller for ₹50 lakh or more, the buyer deducts 1 per cent TDS and files Form 26QB. If the seller is themselves a non-resident, a different section applies and the buyer needs a TAN. A chartered accountant in Bhubaneswar will handle this in an afternoon.
Repatriation. Sale proceeds can be sent back abroad within the RBI's limits, currently up to two residential properties' proceeds through the NRE route, or up to USD 1 million a financial year from an NRO account. Keep the purchase paper trail from day one.

Where, then?

If you want a city flat, the established addresses in north Bhubaneswar will serve, at the prices they now command. If you want land to build on, we would point you south, to the Bhubaneswar–Puri highway. The reasons are in our other posts on the regional plan and the highway. In short: the four-lane road is there now, its widening is in design, the Puri airport has its clearances, and the state is planning Bhubaneswar, Cuttack and Puri as one economic region.

Our Pipili Highway Plot project is built for buyers who are not here to watch. It is a gated layout at Mouza Kanhupur near the Pipili toll gate, 20 km from Bhubaneswar on the way to Puri. The boundary wall is built and the power is in. Phase 2 is open. For every plot we share the record of rights, a 30-year encumbrance certificate and the approved layout before any payment, and we will put you on a video call from the site on a day that suits your time zone.

A standalone house with a gate, a lawn and a verandah, forty minutes from the sea at Puri and twenty from the capital. That is the canvas. Write to us and we will send the plot availability and the land records the same day.

Sources

Buying from abroad? Start with the papers.

We will send the record of rights, encumbrance certificate and approved layout for any Pipili plot before you commit, and walk the site with you on video.

Request the documents

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