Do real estate agents need to enrol with AUSTRAC? Sales yes, property management no

Updated 18 July 2026 · AML Compare editorial

Short answer: if your business brokers the sale, purchase or transfer of real estate — as listing agents, buyer's agents or developers selling stock — you're providing a designated service and must enrol with AUSTRAC. If your business only does leasing and property management, those activities are not captured by the Tranche 2 reforms.

The line runs through the middle of most agencies, which is exactly why the confusion exists. Here's where AUSTRAC draws it, including the edge cases that surprise people.

What counts: brokering sales, purchases and transfers

The designated service is brokering the sale, purchase or transfer of real estate in the course of carrying on a business. 'Real estate' for this purpose means fee simple ownership (normal land title), leasehold interests of more than 30 years, and land use entitlements — the company-title and unit-trust arrangements where shares or units confer the right to occupy.

Two details in AUSTRAC's guidance catch people off guard:

No money needs to change hands. Brokering a transfer without consideration — an intra-family transfer, a gifted property — is still a designated service. The transfer is the risk event, not the payment.
Both sides become your customer. When an agent acting for the vendor brokers a successful sale, AUSTRAC treats both the seller and the buyer as the agent's customers for that designated service — meaning customer due diligence obligations run to both. Vendor verification typically needs to happen around the agency agreement; buyer verification around the contract, with specific delayed-CDD arrangements for auction scenarios.

Buyer's agents are explicitly captured, and earlier than many expect: AUSTRAC's position is that a buyer's agent starts providing the designated service when the agreement to find or identify a property is signed — not at contract, not at settlement. If you're charging a fee to hunt for property, your obligations start at engagement.

What doesn't count: leasing and property management

Standard leasing and property management activities are not designated services under the reforms — a position confirmed in AUSTRAC's guidance and echoed by the state real estate institutes. The definitional mechanics: leases of 30 years or less are excluded from the definition of real estate (renewal options don't count toward the 30 years), so arranging tenancies and managing rent rolls doesn't, on its own, put an agency into the regime.

Also excluded from the definition: incorporeal hereditaments such as easements and restrictive covenants, and dwellings not attached to land — the caravan park and some retirement village scenarios, where a resident owns the dwelling but only leases the site. A mobile home on a short site lease is legally a chattel, not real estate.

The practical consequence for a mixed agency: a rent-roll-only business has no enrolment obligation, but the moment the same business brokers sales, the sales side makes the business a reporting entity. You don't get to average the two activities out.

The mixed-agency reality: enrolled for sales, obligations scoped to sales

Most principal agencies do both. The way to think about it: enrolment attaches to the business because it provides at least one designated service, but the operational obligations — customer due diligence, records, reporting triggers — attach to the designated services themselves. Your property management customers don't suddenly need identity verification because your sales team settled a house.

Where it gets less obvious: commercial leasing teams should check lease terms (a 99-year ground lease is 'real estate'; a five-year retail lease isn't), and developers should note that selling their own stock in the course of business is squarely in scope, with reporting-group questions once SPVs are involved.

If you're genuinely unsure which side of the line an activity falls on, AUSTRAC publishes an eligibility checker and sector guidance — the real estate designated services page is the authoritative source — and this page, as ever, is general information rather than legal advice.

If you're in scope: what's actually due

Enrolment is the entry ticket, and the timing rules (29 July 2026 for businesses providing designated services from 1 July, 28 days from your first designated service otherwise) are covered step-by-step in our enrolment deadline guide — including the separate compliance officer notification that follows it.

Beyond enrolment sit the operational obligations: risk assessment, a written AML/CTF program, customer due diligence on vendors and buyers, screening, records and staff training. For a small agency with straightforward stock, a meaningful chunk of that can be stood up without spending anything — here's our honest breakdown of AUSTRAC's free starter kit versus paid software, including the auction-day and volume triggers that genuinely justify a platform.

Common questions

Do property managers need to enrol with AUSTRAC?

Not for property management itself — standard leasing and property management activities aren't designated services, because leases of 30 years or less are excluded from the definition of real estate. A business that only manages rentals has no enrolment obligation. If the same business also brokers sales, the sales activity brings the business into the regime.

Are buyer's agents covered by Tranche 2?

Yes, explicitly. AUSTRAC's guidance says a buyer's agent starts providing a designated service when the agreement to find or identify a property is signed — so obligations, including customer due diligence on the client, begin at engagement rather than at contract or settlement.

Does a family transfer with no sale price still count?

Yes. Designated services cover the sale, purchase or transfer of real estate whether or not any consideration changes hands — AUSTRAC's own example is a professional helping a parent transfer the family home to a child for nothing. If your agency brokers that transfer as part of its business, it's a designated service.