Selling property you own, and where AML/CTF touches it
You already know how you sell your stock. This is the same sale with one question added: at what point does the AML/CTF Act apply, and what do you have to do about it?
Start here
What this service is
Property development is buying land or a building, improving it through planning and construction, and then selling what you have made. The everyday version is a developer selling apartments from a display suite, or a land estate selling lots through its own sales staff.
The Act does not use the word “developer” at all, and there is no statutory definition of one. What it describes is a situation: you sell real estate as a business, and no independent agent is in the middle. If that is you, you are providing a designated service to your buyer.
Note the word “independent”. It is not “no agent”. Your own in-house sales team, however experienced and however licensed, is not independent of you — so the sale is still yours for this purpose.
Who does this work
The industry is far wider than the listed names. Most of it is small, and it is the small end that is least likely to have heard of any of this.
| Tier | Who | Typical scale |
|---|---|---|
| Listed developers | Goodman, Stockland, Mirvac, Lendlease, GPT and similar | Masterplanned estates, apartments, commercial |
| Large private developers | Meriton, ABN Group and others at that scale | Roughly 3,000–3,500 dwelling starts each in FY24–25 |
| Mid-tier and regional | Several hundred firms, often family-run | 20–200 dwellings a year |
| Small developers | Thousands of individuals and small partnerships | Duplexes, triplexes, subdivisions, 2–10 unit projects |
A two-lot subdivision and a 400-apartment tower sit under the same item of the same table. There is no small-business exemption.
The size of it
244,000 dwellings under construction
That is the highest figure since the Bureau of Statistics began keeping the series in 1984. Roughly one in three new homes in the major cities is bought off-the-plan, which means the buyer is committing years before anyone hands over a key.
Dwellings completed in Australia, March quarter 2026
Dwellings under construction, March quarter 2026 — the highest since records began in 1984
Share of new residential purchases in major cities bought off-the-plan
The buyer or transferee — unlike a brokered sale, which has two
The part most people get stuck on
Are you carrying on a business selling real estate?
For a listed developer this is not a question. For the person who subdivided a block and sold two houses, it is the whole question — and the Act gives no test.
Here is the useful part. The Tax Office has been answering almost exactly this question for decades, because whether you are carrying on a property business decides how your profit is taxed. The factors it weighs are a sensible place to start.
| Your situation | Which way it points |
|---|---|
| You develop and sell property as your main activity | Almost certainly carrying on a business |
| You have done several commercial property transactions before | Points strongly towards a business |
| You bought the land intending to develop and sell it | Points strongly towards a business |
| You engaged a developer to run the project for a fee | Points towards a business |
| You subdivided the back of your own long-held home and sold one lot | Depends entirely on the facts — get advice |
| You are selling the house you have lived in for ten years | Not carrying on a business selling real estate |
Be careful with this, though. The tax test and the AML test are not the same test, and a person can land on different sides of each. Use it as a warning light, not an answer: if the ATO already treats you as carrying on a property business, that is a poor position from which to argue you are not.
Where it is genuinely close, this is a question for your own adviser on your own facts. Nothing on this page decides it.
What actually happens
An off-the-plan sale runs for years, not weeks
This is what makes selling your own stock different from an ordinary house sale. The gap between signature and settlement can run for two years, and two things happen in that gap that a normal sale never sees: circumstances change, and buyers substitute.
| Stage | What happens | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Reservation | A buyer pays a holding deposit and signs an expression of interest | Not binding yet — but the sale is now in prospect |
| Contract | Contract of sale signed, deposit paid or bonded | The natural point to have customer due diligence complete |
| Construction | Months or years pass, and nothing moves | Keep monitoring — long gaps are where circumstances change |
| Substitution | The buyer nominates someone else to take title | A new customer. The original check does not carry across |
| Settlement | Balance paid, title transfers | The person taking title must be the person you checked |
Substitution is the one to watch. Where the contract lets the buyer nominate someone else to take title, the person who finally settles may not be the person you checked eighteen months earlier. That nominee is a customer in their own right, and the original file does not cover them.
The monitoring obligation runs across the whole gap. Two years of relationship is two years of ongoing due diligence — not one check filed at contract and forgotten.
What actually gets checked
Six checks, on one customer, for every lot
A brokered sale has two customers. Yours has one — the buyer. But you have one for every lot you sell, and there is no conveyancer or agent running a parallel check beside you.
| The check | What is required | How it is usually done | What stays in the file |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identify the buyer | Full name, date of birth and residential address | Licence or passport, in person at the display suite 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 the buyer 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 the buyer presents | Your program’s risk factors applied to that buyer | The rating, and the reasons for it |
| Source of funds | In higher-risk cases, establish where the money came from | More often needed here — overseas buyers are common off-the-plan | The explanation and any evidence sought |
| Keep watching | Monitor for as long as the relationship lasts | Re-check at substitution, and on any change of party | What you reviewed, when, and what you concluded |
Records are kept for 7 years. How far each check goes depends on the buyer’s risk and on your own AML/CTF program.
Are you providing it?
Two questions: a business, and no independent agent
| The work | Caught? |
|---|---|
| Selling apartments off-the-plan from your own display suite | Caught — item 2 |
| A land estate selling lots through its own sales staff | Caught — item 2 |
| A builder selling completed house-and-land packages direct | Caught — item 2 |
| Appointing an independent agency to sell the stock for you | The agency is caught under item 1 instead |
| Selling the home you live in | Not caught — no business of selling real estate |
| Leasing completed stock you keep | Not caught — no sale or transfer |
If you appoint an independent agency, the obligation does not vanish — it moves. The agency is then providing Table 5, item 1, and its customer is both you and the buyer. Develop and run an agency, and you may provide both services, with different customers under each.
The provision itself
Table 5, item 2, in the Act’s own words
“selling or transferring real estate in the course of carrying on a business selling real estate, where the sale or transfer is not brokered by an independent real estate agent”
Customer: the buyer or transferee. Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth), s 6(5A) table 5, item 2 — Compilation No. 62 (C2026C00274).
Three phrases carry the whole item. “Selling or transferring real estate” is the act. “In the course of carrying on a business selling real estate” is the question this page spent a section on. “Not brokered by an independent real estate agent” is what separates it from item 1.
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 agentsThe agent’s customer is both sides of the deal — and the two sides start at different moments.Table 5, item 1
- Property developersyou are hereSelling 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.
- Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006, s 6(5A) table 5 · Federal Register of Legislation · Compilation No. 62 (C2026C00274)Item 2 and its customer definition, quoted verbatim on this page.
- Real estate designated services · AUSTRAC · Guidance, current at Sep 2026How item 2 sits alongside item 1.
- Tax consequences on sales of property · Australian Taxation Office · Current guidanceThe factors the ATO weighs on whether a person is carrying on a property business. A different test from the AML one, used here only as a cross-check.
- Building Activity, Australia — March quarter 2026 · Australian Bureau of Statistics · March quarter 202643,816 dwellings completed; 244,000 under construction, the highest since records began in 1984.
- Sanctions compliance for real estate professionals · DFAT · Guidance noteThe sanctions obligation running alongside AML/CTF.
- 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 you are carrying on a business selling real estate depends on your own facts. The ATO factors above are a cross-check from a different area of law, not the AML test, and nothing here decides the question for you.
- The off-the-plan stages describe a common shape, not a legal sequence. Contracts differ, particularly on substitution and deposit handling.
- 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.