Dear Manish,

Wanted to ask you about my queer situation.

I had an older home loan for a flat in Mumbai when I was working there. Lets call it Loan 1. Then a few years down the line I had to shift to Goa branch of the same company for work and hence was forced to stay on rent. Claimed HRA and loan 1 benefits both for a while. All was good till this point.

Now the twist is that I have finally bought a second home here in Goa. Lets call it loan 2. Now I mandatorily have to set one of my homes as Self Occupied and the other as Deemed Let out. In an ideal scenario the choice would have been straight forward by declaring home 2 (goa) as the self occupied one since it is in the same city of work and the other property in Mumbai (Loan 1) as Let out.

But my problem is that this new home loan (loan 2) is bigger and hence a larger chunk of interest/ principal benefits ensue here as compared to loan 1. Would it be possible for me to state I live on rent here in Goa (rent agreeemtn with my in-laws can be executed if needed) since this new property (loan 2) is far off from place of work and thereby set THIS property (loan 2) as let out and file nominal rent and unlimited interest? the first home in that case should earn me max of 1.5L interest only and I am ok with that.

Pls note I do not wish to claim HRA benefits in this scenario, only want to LET OUT the property in my city that happens to be out of a second home loan. Pls advise me if this would be possible.