AML/CTF Compliance for Queensland Real Estate Agents: What Changes on 1 July 2026

If you settle a property in Queensland on 1 July 2026 without an AUSTRAC enrolment and a documented AML/CTF program in place, you are in breach of federal law from the moment the contract is executed. That is the reality facing every Queensland agent and principal who has not yet acted on the Tranche 2 reforms — and the deadline will not move.

After years of review and consultation, the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Act 2024 received Royal Assent on 10 December 2024. Tranche 2 comes into force on 1 July 2026 and includes professions such as solicitors, accountants, conveyancers, and real estate agents. For agents, this is not an administrative inconvenience. It is the most significant structural change to how Queensland real estate is conducted since the introduction of the Property Agents and Motor Dealers Act — and it carries civil penalties that can personally ruin a principal.

Why Real Estate Is Now a Regulated Industry Under AML/CTF Law

Real estate transactions have been established as a common method of laundering money both internationally and domestically, with illicit funds frequently laundered or invested in the sector. Real estate is one of the most common property types confiscated by the Australian Federal Police-led Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce, reflecting the ease with which illicit funds can be laundered and invested in this sector.

Financial crime happens in Australia every day and it costs up to $82 billion a year. Much of the money being laundered through our systems is linked to harmful crime like illicit tobacco, environmental destruction, corruption, child exploitation, and human trafficking. Property has been a preferred vehicle for layering and integrating criminal proceeds precisely because, until now, agents have had no legal obligation to ask hard questions about who their buyers and sellers actually are.

The new laws simplify and modernise the AML/CTF regime and ensure Australia’s laws meet international standards set by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). Australia has been a notable laggard among comparable nations — the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union have all extended similar obligations to real estate professionals for years. The FATF has repeatedly flagged the Australian real estate sector as a high-risk gap in the country’s financial crime defences. These reforms close that gap.

The reforms are expected to capture tens of thousands of additional businesses into the regulatory net, so service providers who expect to be subject to the new reforms should begin preparing now rather than waiting for the commencement date. The AML/CTF Act is expected to increase the number of regulated entities to approximately 100,000 under AUSTRAC. The vast majority of Queensland’s licensed agencies — from boutique suburban offices to large franchise networks — will be captured.

Which Services Are Captured: Designated Services for Real Estate

The legislation does not regulate the real estate profession broadly. It regulates specific designated services. Understanding exactly which services trigger obligations is the first task for every principal.

If your real estate business provides one or more designated services that have a geographical link to Australia, you will have AML/CTF obligations. You are likely to provide these designated services if you act as a selling agent, buyer’s agent, or are a property developer or other business selling house and land packages, apartments off the plan, and blocks of land in new subdivisions.

The core designated service is acting as a broker in the sale, purchase, or transfer of real estate. AUSTRAC considers a broker to be a person who acts as an intermediary or agent for another person for consideration. To provide this designated service you must be operating as a broker in the course of carrying on a business. A common indicator will be if your services include negotiating on behalf of the person you represent or seeking to find a person for the person you represent to transact with, in return for a commission.

Activities that will generally be a designated service of this kind include brokering conducted by seller’s agents and buyer’s agents. This means conventional residential sales, buyer’s advocacy, commercial property transactions, and property development sales are all within scope. Leasing — the management of residential or commercial tenancies — is generally not a designated service under the current framework, though agents should monitor AUSTRAC’s guidance carefully as it continues to evolve.

What About General Advice and Referrals?

General or hypothetical advice (such as discussing the pros and cons of property ownership before a client decides to buy), simple referrals to third parties, or transactions involving short-term leases or court-ordered transfers are not designated services. An agent who has a general enquiry conversation with a prospective buyer has not yet triggered the obligation. The obligations commence at the point a transaction is actually being brokered.

A selling agent starts providing a designated service to the buyer or transferee when it is reasonably expected that the transaction will proceed — typically when the buyer’s offer has been accepted and the contract is signed. A buyer’s agent starts providing a designated service to a buyer or transferee when an agreement to find or identify a property is signed. Those are the trigger points. Everything that must happen before the transaction can proceed — including customer identification — must be ready before those moments arrive.

Auction Sales

When real estate is sold at auction, it is possible for a buyer to only be known after the fall of the hammer. You can delay initial customer due diligence where completing it would disrupt the ordinary course of business. This transitional flexibility exists specifically for auctions, but the delay is not indefinite. CDD must be completed as promptly as practicable once the buyer is identified. Agents running auction programmes should build that verification step into their post-auction workflow before settlement.

Who Is Your Customer: Both Buyer and Seller

This is the aspect of the new regime that most Queensland agents find counterintuitive, and it is critical to understand it correctly.

Both the buyer and seller (or transferee and transferor) of real estate will be the customer of the same reporting entity for the purposes of the designated service. For example, when a real estate agent acts for the seller and brokers the successful sale of a house, their customer is both the buyer and the seller. This means they will have AML/CTF obligations in relation to both parties.

This is not an analogous arrangement to the way agency law operates under Queensland’s property legislation, where an agent typically owes duties exclusively to their principal (the vendor). Under the AML/CTF framework, the agent’s compliance obligations extend to both sides of the transaction. You must identify and verify the buyer just as you must identify and verify the seller, regardless of who engaged you.

For agencies working in the prestige market, the international investor space, or the development sector — where buyers are regularly companies, trusts, or foreign entities — this dual obligation creates a meaningful due diligence workload. All reporting entities must identify the beneficial owners of their customers and assess the money laundering and terrorism financing risk they pose. A beneficial owner is an individual who ultimately owns or controls an entity such as a company, trust, or partnership — meaning, in this context, an individual who owns 25% or more of the entity.

If a Sydney-based trustee company is buying a Gold Coast apartment on behalf of a discretionary trust whose ultimate beneficiaries are offshore, you are required to understand that ownership chain before the transaction proceeds. This is not optional due diligence. It is a legal obligation.

Enrolling with AUSTRAC: Dates and Process

As AML/CTF reforms expand to include the property sector, real estate agencies that offer designated services must enrol with AUSTRAC by 29 July 2026. Enrolments opened 31 March 2026.

If you provide any of the new designated services that commence on 1 July 2026, you must create an AUSTRAC Online account, log in, and complete the enrol a new business form by 29 July 2026. Note the distinction: the obligation to comply commences 1 July 2026, but the enrolment deadline is 29 July 2026. In practical terms, you cannot begin complying without an enrolment, so agencies should treat 1 July 2026 as the effective enrolment deadline rather than waiting until the formal administrative cutoff.

You must appoint an AML/CTF Compliance Officer within 28 days of providing designated services and notify AUSTRAC within 14 days of the appointment. The AML/CTF Compliance Officer must be at management level and will be required to ensure compliance with the provider’s AML/CTF obligations. For sole traders or small businesses, this will likely be the owner or principal of the business.

The enrolment form requires information including business structure, the nature of designated services provided, and corporate group earnings (which determines your annual AUSTRAC industry levy). Principals should have this information assembled before beginning the process. AUSTRAC’s online guidance previews the exact questions asked in the enrolment form, and agencies are strongly advised to review this before logging in.

Your AML/CTF Program: What It Must Contain

Impacted businesses must assess whether they are providing designated services and, if so, take action to enrol with AUSTRAC and implement an AML/CTF program. The program is not a checkbox form. It is a substantive, written document that sets out exactly how your agency will identify, assess, and manage the money laundering and terrorism financing risks your business faces.

The changes require reporting entities to undertake appropriate measures that focus on identifying, assessing, and mitigating money laundering, terrorism financing, and proliferation financing risk. This replaces the current check-box compliance approach of simply having an AML/CTF program.

Part A: Risk Assessment and Governance

Part A is the risk-based framework: how the agency identifies and assesses the money laundering and terrorism financing risks of its customer base, how those risks are managed, how the agency trains its staff, how it monitors transactions, and how it reviews the program over time.

Your risk assessment must be specific to your business. A large Brisbane CBD agency handling significant volumes of off-the-plan apartment sales to international buyers has a materially different risk profile to a regional Queensland agency handling residential sales to owner-occupiers. The program must reflect that. AUSTRAC does not expect a one-size template; it expects a document that demonstrates genuine engagement with the actual risks your business faces.

The program must include an overarching risk assessment to consider the money laundering, terrorism financing, and proliferation financing risks the reporting entity may reasonably face, proportionate risk mitigation measures to respond to the risk assessment, and the roles and responsibilities of the reporting entity’s governing body and AML/CTF compliance officer.

Part B: Customer Identification and Verification

Part B is the customer identification procedure: how the agency verifies the identity of new customers before providing designated services, and how it handles ongoing customer due diligence over the life of the relationship.

For a natural person customer, this means collecting and verifying name, date of birth, and residential address using reliable and independent data — typically a government-issued photo ID cross-referenced against an electronic identity verification service. For corporate customers, it means identifying the entity, its directors, and its beneficial owners.

AUSTRAC has developed program starter kits as a comprehensive resource co-designed with industry peak bodies to help typical small businesses in newly regulated sectors meet their AML/CTF obligations from 1 July. The REIQ has also produced guidance specific to Queensland real estate agencies. Both are practical starting points, but a starter kit adapted without genuine customisation to your business’s actual risk profile will not satisfy a regulatory review.

Staff Training

Training is not a one-off orientation. Your AML/CTF program must describe how your agency trains all relevant staff to recognise suspicious activity, understand their reporting obligations, and follow the agency’s procedures. Your AML/CTF policies must help you identify suspicious activity, training personnel to recognise suspicious activity and monitor for unusual transactions and customer behaviour that may require you to submit a suspicious matter report.

For multi-agent offices, this means ensuring every salesperson — not just the principal — understands what triggers a suspicious matter report and knows what to do when they encounter something that doesn’t add up about a buyer or seller. The compliance officer carries responsibility, but the compliance officer is only as effective as the team around them.

Customer Due Diligence: Initial and Ongoing

Customer due diligence (CDD) is the practical engine of the AML/CTF program. It covers everything from the initial identity check before a property is listed through to monitoring the transaction as it progresses toward settlement.

CDD requires reporting entities to identify and verify the identity of their customer and certain associated persons, and to understand the money laundering, terrorism financing, and proliferation financing risks associated with providing designated services to the customer, and take steps to mitigate those risks.

Initial CDD must be completed before the designated service commences — or as close to that point as practicable where circumstances (such as an auction) make prior verification impractical. A reporting entity will be required to undertake initial CDD before providing a designated service to a customer. This requires collecting and verifying information about the identity of a customer and understanding the potential risks involved in providing designated services to that customer. A reporting entity will be required to verify their customer’s identity and other relevant information using reliable and independent data.

Ongoing CDD and Transaction Monitoring

CDD does not end at identity verification. Reporting entities must carry out ongoing customer due diligence — including monitoring for unusual transactions and behaviours of customers, and reviewing and updating risk and KYC information on a risk basis.

In practical terms for Queensland agents, this means monitoring the transaction as it progresses. If a buyer’s payment behaviour changes, if funds are coming from an unexpected source, or if the customer becomes evasive when asked standard questions about the transaction, those are indicators that require attention. You must review and update your customer’s risk assessment if your customer is involved in unusual transactions or behaviour that may give rise to a suspicious matter report obligation.

Enhanced Due Diligence

Certain customers require enhanced CDD regardless of whether you have identified specific red flags. Enhanced CDD must be applied in specific circumstances. For high-risk PEPs, including foreign PEPs, who are customers or beneficial owners of a customer, you must use the same customer identification and verification procedures that you use for individuals, as well as your enhanced customer due diligence program.

This includes getting senior management approval before starting or continuing a business relationship with the customer, taking reasonable measures to establish the source of the customer’s and each beneficial owner’s wealth, taking reasonable measures to identify the source of the customer’s and each beneficial owner’s funds, and complying with enhanced CDD requirements, such as verifying information and analysing transactions.

Enhanced CDD also applies where: customers use shell companies or complex trust or corporate structures that have obfuscated beneficial ownership; the customer wants to conduct unusually large cash transactions or only transacts in cash; high-net-worth individuals have income sources that are unclear or have complex or opaque wealth structures; or there are inconsistencies between the information the customer provided and other information available to you related to their income or wealth.

For Queensland agents regularly working with overseas investors — a significant segment of the Brisbane and Gold Coast markets — this enhanced scrutiny framework will become a routine part of the listing and sales process.

Suspicious Matter Reporting

Agents will be required to lodge suspicious matter reports (SMRs) where they form a suspicion that a transaction may be connected to money laundering, terrorism financing, or other serious crime. This reporting obligation is serious and has real-world consequences on both sides: failing to report when you should is a breach of the Act; reporting creates a protected intelligence report to AUSTRAC that cannot be disclosed to the subject.

Once you have identified suspicious activity, you must review that activity and relevant information to determine whether you have reasonable grounds for suspicion. The threshold is not proof, or even strong probability. It is reasonable grounds for suspicion — a significantly lower bar. The SMR must include a clear description of why you are suspicious, what indicators you observed, and what the transaction involved.

You must conduct timely reviews of material relevant to a suspicious matter, such as indicators of suspicious activity and alerts generated by your transaction monitoring program. You must decide if there are reasonable grounds for the suspicion as soon as practical.

Crucially, once you have lodged an SMR, you must not tip off the subject of the report. Commencing on 31 March 2026, it will be an offence for reporting entities to intentionally or inadvertently inform any party under suspicion that there is an ongoing AUSTRAC investigation. This civil penalty will only be applicable where the tipping-off would, or could, reasonably be expected to prejudice an investigation by a governmental authority.

For real estate agents, the practical implication is clear: if you have filed an SMR, do not discuss it with the subject buyer or seller. If the transaction ultimately proceeds or falls over for other reasons, that is a separate matter. The SMR is a confidential intelligence report, not an accusation.

Newly regulated businesses will need to use the new SMR form from 1 July 2026. The form is submitted through your AUSTRAC Online account and must contain sufficient detail for AUSTRAC analysts to assess the report. Vague submissions do not satisfy the obligation.

Threshold Transaction Reporting and Large Cash

If you provide a designated service involving the transfer of $10,000 or more in physical currency, you must submit a threshold transaction report (TTR) to AUSTRAC. This obligation applies to physical cash — bank notes and coins. It does not apply to electronic funds transfers, cheques, or other non-cash instruments.

For most residential agents, genuine $10,000 cash deposits are uncommon. But they happen — and when they do, the TTR obligation is mandatory and time-sensitive. Your AML/CTF program must include a procedure for identifying and reporting these transactions promptly.

You should be aware of customers who may be structuring their transactions to avoid reporting and consider whether a suspicious matter report may be required. If a buyer makes multiple cash deposits just below the $10,000 threshold — say, $9,000 and then $9,500 across two payments — that structuring pattern is itself a red flag. The individual transactions may not each trigger a TTR, but the pattern should trigger an SMR.

Newly regulated businesses not on the Reporting Entities Roll on 30 March 2026 will need to use the new TTR form from 1 July 2026. This applies to all Queensland real estate agents entering the regime for the first time.

Record-Keeping Obligations

Transaction records, CDD documentation, and AML/CTF program materials must be retained for a minimum of seven years. This applies to every identity verification you conduct, every risk assessment you complete, every SMR and TTR you submit, and every version of your AML/CTF program.

Providers, as part of their obligations, are required to maintain full and accurate records related to transactions, customer identification procedures and their AML/CTF program, either as hard or electronic copies stored at the premises or offsite which can be retrieved and audited.

The seven-year retention requirement creates a practical systems question for agencies. A basic file-by-transaction storage approach works for smaller agencies with modest transaction volumes, but offices running fifty or more transactions per year will want to consider purpose-built compliance software or a structured document management system. Whatever approach you use, records must be retrievable and auditable — AUSTRAC inspectors must be able to access them on request.

Penalties for Non-Compliance

The penalties for breaching Australia’s AML/CTF laws are not regulatory fines that a principal can absorb and move on from. If you don’t meet your obligations under AML/CTF law, AUSTRAC can take steps to enforce compliance and apply significant penalties up to $6,600,000 for individuals and $33,000,000 for a body corporate.

Civil penalties under the AML/CTF Act can be imposed against an individual as well as their company. A principal running a company agency is personally exposed, not just the business entity. Non-compliance with the AML/CTF Act can result in civil penalties, infringement notices, and — in serious cases — criminal prosecution. AUSTRAC has broad enforcement powers including enforceable undertakings and licence suspension.

Beyond financial penalties, AUSTRAC has the power to impose enforceable undertakings, require external audits at the agency’s expense, and refer serious matters to the Australian Federal Police. In the context of Queensland’s real estate licensing regime, a finding of serious AML/CTF non-compliance would also likely attract attention from the Office of Fair Trading, with potential consequences for an agent’s licence.

If you are caught under Tranche 2, you will be required to comply by 1 July 2026. This date is legislated, so understanding your obligations is essential to being adequately prepared.

The Tipping-Off Prohibition

There is one obligation that catches agents off-guard because it runs counter to normal professional communication instincts. Once you have reasonable grounds to suspect a transaction is connected to money laundering or another serious offence, you are legally prohibited from disclosing that suspicion — or the fact that you have filed an SMR — to the subject.

This creates a genuine practical challenge in an industry built on relationship management. If you have filed an SMR on a buyer and the transaction is proceeding, you cannot tell the vendor why you have concerns. You cannot advise the buyer to seek legal advice about a potential issue with their funds. You simply proceed with your compliance obligations and say nothing. The only sanctioned disclosure is to your own AML/CTF compliance officer and, in certain circumstances, within a reporting group.

This is an area where staff training is critical. A well-intentioned salesperson who mentions to a buyer that “we’ve had to flag something to the regulator” is not just breaching the Act — they may be impeding a law enforcement investigation. The training obligation in your AML/CTF program must address tipping-off specifically.

Implications for Queensland’s International and Development Markets

The AML/CTF reforms will have their most visible operational impact on two segments of the Queensland market: the international buyer segment (particularly prominent in Brisbane, the Gold Coast, and Cairns), and the off-the-plan apartment and land development sector.

To comply with the new AML/CTF Tranche 2 obligations from 1 July 2026, agents may be required to collect additional information to verify identity, satisfy the provider of the underlying ownership and control of structures, and provide evidence of source of funds or source of wealth. All of this will need to occur before any services are provided.

For developers selling apartments to overseas buyers through local agents, the CDD obligation applies at the point a buyer’s agent agreement is signed or an offer is accepted — before formal exchange. Developers and their selling agents will need to coordinate on who performs and holds the CDD records, and how obligations are shared where multiple agents are involved in a single transaction.

The practicalities of implementing such a prescriptive regime in the real estate sector — where, for instance, the identity of a beneficial owner such as a special purpose vehicle may not be established at the commencement of the matter — will be subject to AUSTRAC guidance prior to the commencement of the provisions. Agents in this space should be monitoring AUSTRAC’s guidance as it is published, rather than waiting until compliance issues arise.

What This Means for Queensland Agents

The 1 July 2026 commencement date is weeks away. There is no transitional grace period for real estate agents who have not yet started. Missing enrolment before you start providing designated services is itself a contravention of the Act. The compliance framework requires work — but it is achievable if agencies act immediately.

The immediate priorities, in order:

Enrol with AUSTRAC. If you have not already created your AUSTRAC Online account and completed enrolment, do it today. Enrolments opened 31 March 2026 and must be completed by 29 July 2026. Treat 1 July as your real deadline.

Appoint your AML/CTF Compliance Officer. The Compliance Officer must be at management level and will be required to ensure compliance with the agency’s AML/CTF obligations. In a small agency, this is the principal. In a larger office, it should be a senior manager with genuine authority and time to perform the role.

Write your AML/CTF program. Use AUSTRAC’s starter kit and the REIQ’s guidance as a foundation, but customise it to your actual business. The risk assessment must reflect your client base, your transaction types, your geographic market, and any third-party relationships. A generic template will not survive regulatory scrutiny.

Build CDD into your workflow. Identity verification of both buyer and seller must occur before or at the point the designated service commences. A customer who enters into a business relationship with a reporting entity on or after 1 July 2026 will not be a pre-commencement customer and will need to have full initial CDD obligations applied to them. Every new transaction from 1 July 2026 requires CDD.

Train your team. Every person in your agency involved in a transaction needs to understand what suspicious activity looks like, what their obligation is when they see it, and what they are legally prohibited from saying. This training must be documented.

Establish your record-keeping system. Decide now whether you are using existing practice management software, a purpose-built compliance platform, or a structured paper-based system. Whatever you use, it must retain CDD documentation, SMRs, TTRs, and program records for seven years in a retrievable format.

The goal of these reforms is not to make life difficult for honest agents doing legitimate transactions. The goal is to ensure that Australia’s property market cannot be used as a vehicle for hiding criminal money. Most Queensland agents will conduct their entire careers without filing a single suspicious matter report. But the infrastructure must be in place from day one — because the one transaction that does involve criminal funds is exactly the scenario the law was written to catch. Agents who have built a sound compliance framework will have nothing to fear from AUSTRAC oversight. Those who have not should be concerned about far more than a penalty notice.

For official guidance and enrolment, refer to austrac.gov.au and the REIQ’s dedicated AML/CTF resources at reiq.com. Agents should seek independent legal advice for their specific compliance circumstances.