Property developer AML: which sales are captured

Yes, if your business sells real estate and the sale is not brokered by an independent real estate agent. That is a designated service in its own right (table 5, item 2), and the buyer is your customer. If an independent agent does broker the sale, the agent is the reporting entity for it and your selling entity becomes one of the agent’s customers. This guide covers which sales are captured, what changes when you sell direct, and what the agent will ask of you; our off-the-plan guide covers the long gap between contract and settlement, and nominations.

TL;DR:

• A developer that sells without an independent real estate agent provides a designated service (table 5, item 2) and must apply to enrol with AUSTRAC no later than 28 days after starting.
• When you sell direct, the buyer is your customer: identify its beneficial owners if it is a company or trust, and apply enhanced CDD where section 32 requires it.
• Reporting covers suspicious matters, threshold transactions in physical currency of $10,000 or more, and an annual compliance report.
• When an independent agent brokers the sale, the agent is the reporting entity and your selling entity is one of its customers; AUSTRAC treats in-house agents and sales staff as your own sale.
• AML Guard offers tailored compliance tools that generate integrated risk assessments, policies, and workflows with identity verification and beneficial ownership checks, starting with a demo to match your sales model.

Table of Contents

• Which developer sales are captured
• The program, briefly
• Customer due diligence when you sell direct
• Reporting and record-keeping: SMRs, TTRs, and compliance timing
• Selling through an agent: you become the agent’s customer
• Action checklist: enrolment and first operational steps
• How AML Guard operationalises developer compliance
• Where to focus first if you’re behind
• Get your developer AML program running with AML Guard
• Sources
• FAQ

Which developer sales are captured

The designated service is “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” (table 5, item 2), and its customer is the buyer. AUSTRAC’s real estate guidance gives house and land packages, apartments off the plan and blocks of vacant land in new subdivisions as examples, including where the developer sells with its own in-house agents, sales or marketing employees. You start providing the service when there is a commitment to sell, typically when you enter the agreement to sell.

Common developer activities that trigger capture include:

• Sales run by your own in-house agents, sales or marketing staff, whether off the plan or of completed stock.
• Granting or re-granting a leasehold interest of more than 30 years as part of selling real estate, which AUSTRAC treats as selling.
• A transfer for no consideration, where it is made in the course of the business.

Not captured: incidental sales by a business that is not in the business of selling real estate, such as a business selling its own premises, and leases of 30 years or less, which are not real estate under the Act. Construction contracts and the project finance you borrow are not sales of real estate either. Where a project runs through a special purpose vehicle, the entity that sells is the one providing the service, and related entities can form a reporting group (section 10A) to share a program.

The program, briefly

Once you provide a designated service, the AML/CTF Act’s program obligations apply as they do to any reporting entity. The fixed points are:

1. Business-wide ML/TF risk assessment. It covers money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation financing risk (section 26C) and must be in place before you provide the first designated service (section 26E).
2. AML/CTF policies. Your policies, systems, and controls flow directly from the risk assessment, so a policy document that doesn’t match your actual risk profile does not do its job.
3. Governance. A senior manager approves the risk assessment and policies (section 26P), the governing body oversees the program (section 26H), and you designate an AML/CTF compliance officer at management level (section 26J).
4. Review cadence. Review the risk assessment at least every three years and when there is a significant change (section 26D), such as launching a new project type, and have the program independently evaluated at least every three years (section 26F).

The AML/CTF Rules 2025 fill in the detail. Enrolment is an application to AUSTRAC no later than 28 days after you start providing the service (section 51B).

Pro Tip: Don’t outsource your risk assessment to a downloaded template and stop there. The program must be appropriate to the nature, size and complexity of your business, so the assessment should reflect how you actually sell, whether that’s high-volume off-the-plan releases, foreign buyer concentration, or heavy reliance on buyers agents.

Customer due diligence when you sell direct

When you sell direct, your customer is the buyer, and initial customer due diligence is due before you start providing the service, which is typically when you enter the agreement to sell. For an individual buyer that is identity, verified against reliable and independent sources. For companies and trusts, which are common in off-the-plan and site sales, it goes further.

• For a company buyer, collect its name, ACN, principal place of business and registered office, confirm it exists, record its directors, and identify its beneficial owners: any individual who owns 25% or more, directly or indirectly, and anyone who controls it.
• For a trust or SMSF buyer, identify the trustee, the beneficiaries or classes of beneficiary, the settlor, the appointor and anyone else with control; a corporate trustee’s own owners resolve on its ACN. Our trust KYC guide covers what to collect.
• Screen the buyer and its beneficial owners for PEPs and sanctions, and apply enhanced CDD where section 32 requires it: for example a high-risk buyer, a foreign PEP among the buyer, its beneficial owners or anyone acting for it, a buyer present in or formed in a jurisdiction the FATF has called for enhanced due diligence on, or a suspicious matter report where you go ahead with the sale.

The real estate delay agents use does not apply to you: Rules section 6-32 covers agents brokering a sale and lawyers acting for a buyer, not a developer selling direct. The general delay in Rules section 6-12 can, where starting before CDD is complete is essential to avoid interrupting the ordinary course of business and the added risk is low (section 29). Even then only part of the verification can wait: you verify the buyer’s own identity first, and what can follow is verifying its beneficial owners, anyone it is buying for, and whether any of them is a PEP or sanctioned. You can hold the deposit but must not transfer the property to the buyer before CDD is complete, and CDD must be finished within 20 business days.

Reporting and record-keeping: SMRs, TTRs, and compliance timing

Reporting obligations don’t stop at onboarding. They run for the life of the customer relationship, and developers need clear internal triggers for each report type.

1. Suspicious matter reports under section 41, within 3 business days, or 24 hours for terrorism financing, apply when something about a transaction doesn’t add up, such as a buyer refusing to explain the source of a large deposit, or a nomination substituting a completely unrelated entity at the last moment before settlement.
2. Threshold transaction reports apply to physical currency of $10,000 or more, reported within 10 business days (section 43); developers rarely see cash at this scale, but it’s worth checking every settlement pathway for exposure.
3. International value transfer service reports (section 46) are given by businesses that provide those transfer services; a developer does not give one because a buyer pays from overseas.
4. Annual compliance reports (section 47) follow a financial year cycle, with the first reporting period running from 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027 and lodgement due within three months of each period’s end, which is 30 September 2027 for the first.

Transaction records are kept for seven years from when they are made (section 107), and customer due diligence records until seven years after the business relationship ends or the sale is completed (section 111).

Selling through an agent: you become the agent’s customer

Two situations are specific to developers.

The first is selling through an agent. When an independent real estate agent brokers the sale, the agent provides the designated service (table 5, item 1) and its customers are both the buyer and the seller. That makes your selling entity the agent’s customer. Expect to give its name, ACN or ABN, principal place of business and registered office, evidence that it exists, its directors, and what the agent needs to identify its beneficial owners, as AUSTRAC’s initial CDD guidance for companies sets out. For a special purpose vehicle, that usually means the individuals behind the parent group. If the agent is really your own in-house agent or sales staff, the sale is your own designated service; where an agent is related to you or works only for you, settle whether it is independent on the facts, with advice.

The second is nomination and assignment. The party who signs the contract isn’t always the party who takes title at settlement, and a nominee or assignee is a new buyer: CDD on them is due before completion, as our off-the-plan guide sets out.

• Confirm in writing whether your selling agent is independent, and which entity is the seller.
• Have the selling entity’s company and ownership details ready for the agent’s CDD.
• Run CDD on every nominee or assignee before settlement, not after.
• For multi-entity projects, decide upfront whether SPVs enrol separately or form a reporting group

Pro Tip: Treat every assignment clause in your sale contracts as a compliance trigger, not just a legal formality. If your contracts allow nomination, your CDD process needs to allow for it too.

Action checklist: enrolment and first operational steps

Getting started doesn’t need to be complicated, but the sequence matters.

1. Confirm your designated service exposure. Work out exactly which legal entities in your structure sell property directly, without an independent agent, and have each apply to enrol with AUSTRAC no later than 28 days after it starts (section 51B).
2. Start the risk assessment. AUSTRAC’s real estate program starter kit is written for agents who broker sales, so use it as a reference for your business-wide ML/TF risk assessment and policies and build them around how you actually sell.
3. Appoint your compliance officer. Allocate the AML/CTF compliance officer role, record the senior manager’s approval of the risk assessment and policies, report it to the governing body, and set a training schedule for anyone touching a sale.
4. Build your CDD workflows. Set up processes for company and trust buyers, nominees, and assignees, with a seven-year records retention process built in from day one.

How AML Guard operationalises developer compliance

Turning these obligations into working practice usually means producing four linked documents: a business-wide risk assessment, AML/CTF policies, a compliance action plan, and a staff training manual. AML Guard generates these as one connected set, so the policies actually reflect the risk assessment rather than being bolted together from separate templates.

On the customer due diligence side, the platform runs identity verification with document and biometric liveness checks, sanctions and PEP screening, and beneficial ownership determination on a buyer’s ACN, with an officer approving each determination before customer due diligence proceeds.

• Guided risk assessment, policies, action plan, and training manual generated as one set
• Identity verification with biometric liveness and ongoing sanctions/PEP screening
• ACN-based beneficial ownership checks with officer sign-off
• An 8-year tamper-evident audit trail, above the Act’s seven-year minimum, with compliance status sent to REX and never the underlying CDD data

Developers can book a demo to see how a tenant gets configured to their specific sales structure.

Where to focus first if you’re behind

Start with the question this article opens with: which of your entities sells without an independent agent. Then put the risk assessment in place before the next sale (section 26E), fix your company, trust and nominee CDD, and keep records that show what was checked and why. Documentation discipline, more than any single tool, is what separates a defensible program from a paper one.

Get your developer AML program running with AML Guard

AML Guard is built specifically for Australian Tranche 2 reporting entities, including property developers managing off-the-plan sales, nominee assignments, and corporate or trust buyers, rather than adapted from banking compliance software that doesn’t fit how developers actually transact.

The platform’s guided wizards produce your risk assessment, policies, action plan, and training manual as a single consistent set, and its CDD workflows handle the exact scenarios developers face most: ACN-based beneficial ownership checks on corporate and trust buyers, and identity verification for nominees before settlement. A transaction party can pay for their own check, and each eligible CDD check fee earns a credit against that calendar month’s AML Guard subscription, capped at the subscription fee. If you’re ready to see how your sales structure maps onto a working compliance program, book a demo and get your tenant configured to your designated services and risk profile.

Sources

The obligations here are drawn from the Act, the Rules and AUSTRAC’s guidance.

• Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Rules 2025
• Real estate designated services | AUSTRAC
• Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (Cth)
• Initial CDD for body corporate, partnership or unincorporated association | AUSTRAC

FAQ

Does AML apply to property management?

Generally no. The real estate designated services are brokering and selling real estate, and managing rentals is neither; a lease of 30 years or less is not real estate under the Act either. Granting a lease of more than 30 years as part of selling real estate is treated as selling.

What are the new AML rules for property developers in Australia?

Tranche 2 obligations require developers providing real estate designated services to enrol with AUSTRAC, run a documented AML/CTF program with a business-wide risk assessment and policies, conduct customer due diligence, and report suspicious matters and threshold transactions. The first annual compliance reporting period runs from 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027.

Is AML compliance a legal requirement for real estate agents and developers?

Yes, where either provides a real estate designated service with a geographical link to Australia, AUSTRAC requires enrolment and an operating AML/CTF program. This applies regardless of whether the entity is a licensed agency or an in-house developer sales team.

Who owes the AML obligation when a developer sells through an agent?

When an independent real estate agent brokers the sale, the agent provides the designated service and both you and the buyer are its customers. When you sell with your own in-house agents or sales staff, the sale is your own designated service and the buyer is your customer.

How much does AML Guard cost for a property developer?

Pricing for AML Guard’s Platform subscription and individual CDD services is available on the pricing page rather than published as a flat figure, since costs depend on transaction volume and entity structure. Booking a demo is the fastest way to get a configuration and quote suited to your project pipeline.

Recommended

• AML/CTF Compliance Checklist for Real Estate Agents: What You Need Before 1 July 2026
• Tranche 2 AML Australia: your compliance obligations explained
• AML training real estate: what agencies must do
• Tranche 2 customer due diligence in Australia