Selling property for someone else, and where AML/CTF touches it
You already know how a listing runs. This is the same campaign with one question added: at what point does the AML/CTF Act apply, to whom, and what do you have to do about it?
Start here
What this service is
A real estate agent stands between a buyer and a seller and brings the two together. You list a property, market it, field the offers, and the deal closes through you. That standing-in-the-middle is what the Act calls brokering, and it is the whole of Table 5, item 1.
A buyer’s agent does the same job from the other side: engaged by the buyer to find a property and secure it. Same item, different starting point.
It does not matter whether you sell by private treaty or at auction, or whether the property is a house, a farm or a warehouse. If you are brokering a sale, purchase or transfer of real estate as a business, you are providing a designated service.
And you have two customers, not one
The vendor pays your commission. The vendor signs your agency agreement. In every ordinary sense the vendor is your client, and the buyer is the other side.
The Act does not see it that way. Table 5, item 1 names its customer as both the seller and the buyer. So you owe customer due diligence to a person who never engaged you, never paid you, and may have found the property themselves on a Saturday morning.
This is the single biggest practical difference between an agent’s obligation and a conveyancer’s. A conveyancer acts for one side and checks one side. An agent brokering a sale checks two.
“brokering the sale, purchase or transfer of real estate on behalf of a buyer, seller, transferee or transferor in the course of carrying on a business”
Customer: both: (a) the seller or transferor; and (b) the buyer or transferee. Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth), s 6(5A) table 5, item 1 — Compilation No. 62 (C2026C00274).
The size of it
45,522 agencies, and a new obligation in each
Real estate is the largest Tranche 2 sector by business count. Most of those businesses are small, and almost none had an AML obligation before 1 July 2026.
Real estate services businesses operating in 2026, down 0.8% on 2025
Properties settled across the five mainland states
Item 1 names both the seller and the buyer as your customer
Brokered real estate became a designated service under Table 5, item 1
When it starts
Two customers, two different starting moments
The obligation does not begin when someone walks into the open home. For the seller it begins when the transaction is reasonably expected to proceed. For a buyer’s agent it begins at the signature on the agency agreement — not the first phone call, and not the coffee.
| Who | The trigger | In practice |
|---|---|---|
| Seller (selling agent) | When it is reasonably expected the transaction will proceed — typically when the offer is accepted and the contract is signed | Before the campaign begins, in practice |
| Buyer (selling agent) | When the buyer becomes a party to the transaction you are brokering | At or shortly after contract |
| Buyer (buyer’s agent) | When the buyer’s agency agreement is signed — not the first call, not the consultation | At engagement |
The auction problem
You may delay the buyer. You may not delay the vendor.
At auction there is no cooling-off and the contract is signed on the spot. Nobody knows who the buyer will be until the hammer falls, and the minutes between the hammer and the signature are not enough to run a full check. AUSTRAC accepts that, and allows initial CDD to be delayed where completing it would disrupt the ordinary course of business.
That concession does not extend to the vendor, and this is the part that catches agencies out. You have known who the vendor is for weeks. The campaign was planned. There is no disruption to point to.
| Who | Can CDD be delayed? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The vendor | No | There is no auction-related reason to delay. The campaign is planned weeks ahead; do it before the campaign starts. |
| The winning bidder | Yes, in the usual case | The gap between the hammer falling and the contract being signed is rarely long enough to complete initial CDD without disrupting business. |
| Under-bidders who buy nothing | Not applicable | No transaction, no designated service, no customer. |
The practical consequence: vendor CDD belongs in your listing process, next to the agency agreement, not in your settlement process.
What actually gets checked
Six checks, run twice — once for each side
Everything below applies to the seller and to the buyer separately. The last column is the one that matters when someone asks later: the obligation is not only to check, but to be able to show you did.
| The check | What is required | How it is usually done | What stays in the file |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identify each customer | Full name, date of birth and residential address, for both sides | Licence or passport, in person or by digital check | What was collected and how it was verified |
| Look through entities | Each beneficial owner of a company, trust or SMSF — generally 25% or more | ASIC extract, trust deed, or fund records | Who they are, and the document relied on |
| Screen for PEPs and sanctions | Whether either party is politically exposed, and a check against the DFAT Consolidated List | A screening tool, or a manual DFAT search | The result and its date, including a clear result |
| Rate the risk | Assess and record the ML/TF risk of each customer | Your program’s risk factors applied to each side | The rating, and the reasons for it |
| Source of funds | In higher-risk cases, establish where the money came from | Often unnecessary for a bank-financed owner-occupier | The explanation and any evidence sought |
| Keep watching | Monitor for as long as the relationship lasts | Review when something changes — a substituted purchaser, a redirected deposit | What you reviewed, when, and what you concluded |
Records are kept for 7 years. How far each check goes depends on the customer’s risk and on your own AML/CTF program.
Are you providing it?
Brokering is caught. Managing is not.
Item 1 is about brokering a sale, purchase or transfer. A great deal of agency work is neither.
| The work | Caught? |
|---|---|
| Brokering a sale, purchase or transfer of real estate | Caught — item 1 |
| Acting as a buyer’s agent to find and secure a property | Caught — item 1 |
| Property management and collecting rent | Not caught — no sale, purchase or transfer |
| Appraising a property for an owner who does not sell | Not caught — no transaction |
| Running the marketing campaign before any offer exists | Not caught yet — the service begins when a transaction is expected |
| Selling your own stock as a developer, with no agent | Different item — Table 5, item 2 |
Property management is the big exclusion and it surprises people, because a rent roll involves money, identity and long relationships. But item 1 needs a sale, purchase or transfer, and a tenancy is none of those. If the landlord later sells, that sale is caught — and the fact you have managed the property for nine years does not mean the CDD is already done.
Selling your own stock as a developer is also outside item 1, because nobody is brokering. That is Table 5, item 2, which has one customer rather than two.
The thirteen designated services
One article for each service you can select when you enrol
13 of 13 written so far. The rest are in progress.
- ConveyancingEvery step of a settlement, and how CDD differs from the VOI you already do.Table 6, item 1
- Selling a businessWhen a company or trust changes hands.Table 6, item 2
- Client moneyHolding or controlling someone else’s money or property in a transaction.Table 6, item 3
- Equity and debt financingRaising money for a company or legal arrangement.Table 6, item 4
- Shelf companiesSelling or transferring a company created to be sold.Table 6, item 5
- Company and trust formationCreating or restructuring a company, trust or partnership.Table 6, item 6
- Director and trustee rolesActing as, or finding someone to act as, a director, trustee or attorney.Table 6, item 7
- Nominee shareholdersHolding shares in your name for somebody else.Table 6, item 8
- Registered officeLetting a client use your address as their registered office.Table 6, item 9
- Real estate agentsyou are hereThe agent’s customer is both sides of the deal — and the two sides start at different moments.Table 5, item 1
- Property developersSelling your own stock with no agent in between, and why that changes who the customer is.Table 5, item 2
- BullionGold, silver, platinum and palladium, and the $5,000 exemption.Table 2, item 1
- Jewellers and dealersWhy the $10,000 line is about how the customer pays, not what they buy.Table 2, item 2
Sources
Where every figure here comes from
Data as at 27 September 2026.
- Real estate designated services · AUSTRAC · Guidance, current at Sep 2026When the service starts for each side, and the auction treatment.
- Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006, s 6(5A) table 5 · Federal Register of Legislation · Compilation No. 62 (C2026C00274)Item 1 and its customer definition, quoted verbatim on this page.
- Real Estate Services in Australia — number of businesses · IBISWorld · 202645,522 real estate services businesses in 2026, down 0.8% on 2025.
- Property Insights FY25 — settlement volumes · PEXA Group · FY25 (Jul 2024 – Jun 2025)722,000 properties settled across the five mainland states.
- Sanctions compliance for real estate professionals · DFAT · Guidance noteThe sanctions obligation that sits alongside the AML/CTF one.
- AML/CTF program starter kits · AUSTRAC · Real estate kit, 2026The sector kit for real estate businesses.
Before you rely on this
This content is general information only. It is not legal, financial or compliance advice. Organisations should check AUSTRAC guidance, legislation, their own AML/CTF Program and professional advice where needed.
- Whether a particular matter is a designated service depends on its own facts. Nothing here decides that for you.
- Whether initial CDD may be delayed in a given case turns on whether completing it would disrupt the ordinary course of business. That is a judgement for your practice, recorded in your program — not a blanket auction exemption.
- Figures are as at 27 September 2026 and come from the sources listed above.
Lex-AML supports compliance workflows and record keeping. It does not provide legal advice, does not guarantee compliance, and does not replace professional judgement or advice from a qualified AML/CTF adviser or legal professional.
GetPost Labs is a technology company. We are not a law firm and not a compliance adviser, and this page is not a substitute for either.
We build Lex-AML. To build it properly we had to understand these obligations the way the people carrying them do, so we researched them with small and medium practices across the affected sectors — how the work actually runs, where the law lands inside it, and which questions were hardest to get a straight answer to. Publishing what we found is how we check that we have understood a requirement before we build for it.
That understanding is also what we bring to a conversation. No two practices run a matter the same way, and tooling that assumes one way of working fits almost nobody. We would rather start from how you already work — your intake, your file, your sign-off, the software you already pay for — and shape the compliance work around that than hand you a process and ask you to adopt it.
So this is an offer of capability, not a pitch. If Lex-AML turns out to fit your practice, we would like to work on it with you. If it does not, what is written on this page stands on its own, and every source it rests on is listed above so you can check it yourself.