Your profession, plainly · REAL ESTATE
You sell property. Since the first of July twenty twenty-six, Australia's anti-money-laundering law says that also makes you a gatekeeper. Here is what that actually means for a real estate business — in about four minutes, straight from the Act.
Since 1 July 2026
First, the frame. You are not regulated for who you are — you are regulated for one or two specific services the Act lists by name. Provide one, and you are what the law calls a reporting entity: enrolled with AUSTRAC, running a small program, checking who you deal with. Not a suspect. A gatekeeper.
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
The everyday gate
Day to day, the visible change is small. Before you provide that designated service, you confirm who your customer is — a couple of extra minutes for the honest ones, which is nearly everyone. The same gate for every customer. Routine, universal, nothing personal.
The program behind it
Behind the counter sits a small program: a risk assessment in your own words, policies your senior people adopt, one named compliance officer, and staff who have been trained. And the Act itself right-sizes it — your steps need only be appropriate to the nature, size and complexity of your business. Small firm, simpler program. Never nothing, but never a bank's program either.
The two triggers
Day to day, two triggers matter. If something about a deal makes you genuinely uneasy — the buyer nobody meets, the price nobody questions — that suspicion starts a report clock. And cash at or over ten thousand dollars has its own routine report. Both are covered, step by step, in this channel's main series.
Built for how deals actually run
Two pieces of good news, written into the Rules themselves. In a property transaction, professionals on the same deal can formally rely on one another's customer checks — the law's own answer to double-handling. And the timing rules give property deals defined windows, so the checks can ride the rhythm of a settlement instead of interrupting it.
Write it down
And the habit that holds it all together: write things down when they happen. The check you ran, the question you asked, the call you made. Records keep for seven years — and the record of an honest process is the best protection your business can own.