The new checks at the settlement table

If you plan to buy or sell a home in Australia in the second half of this year, expect a few more questions before the keys change hands. From 1 July 2026, real estate agents, conveyancers and lawyers must confirm who their clients are and, in many cases, ask where the purchase money is coming from. The requests are not a judgement on any particular buyer or seller. They are the front counter of the largest expansion of Australia’s anti-money-laundering rules in almost two decades, and for the first time the ordinary house sale sits inside the net.

What has changed, and who is now covered

The new obligations come from the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Act 2024, passed by Federal Parliament and given Royal Assent on 10 December 2024 as Act No. 110 of 2024. The regime is administered by AUSTRAC, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, the financial intelligence agency that has long regulated banks, casinos and money remitters. Real estate agents, conveyancers, solicitors, accountants and dealers in precious metals and stones previously sat outside that system. The reform, which the industry calls “tranche two”, brings them in. AUSTRAC estimates the change lifts the number of regulated businesses from around 19,000 to close to 100,000 across the country.

Once a business becomes what the law calls a reporting entity, it has to enrol with AUSTRAC, appoint a compliance officer, keep a written program and, most visibly for the public, carry out customer due diligence. For an agent or a conveyancer, the trigger is providing a designated service, which broadly means brokering the sale, purchase or transfer of real estate for a client. Doing that work now comes with a duty to check the customer.

The dates that matter

Two timelines are easy to confuse, so it helps to keep them apart. Enrolment opened on 31 March 2026, the date AUSTRAC began accepting registrations from the newly covered professions. The customer-facing obligations, the identity and source-of-funds checks that a buyer or seller will actually experience, start on 1 July 2026. A firm already providing these services on 1 July 2026 then has until 29 July 2026 to finish enrolling and to notify AUSTRAC of its compliance officer. So the back-office registration carries a slightly later cut-off than the checks at the front desk, but the questions you will be asked as a customer apply from 1 July.

AUSTRAC’s chief executive, Brendan Thomas, described the reforms as “closing long-standing gaps, lifting protections across the economy and making it harder for criminals to hide, move or enjoy the proceeds of crime”. Property has featured in that thinking for years, because real estate is a durable and high-value way to place large sums beyond easy scrutiny.

What buyers and sellers will be asked for

For most people the identity step is straightforward. You will be asked for government-issued photo identification, typically a passport or an Australian driver licence, and often proof of your current address such as a rates notice, utility bill or bank statement. Where a company or a family trust is buying or selling, the agent or conveyancer also has to identify the real people who own or control it, and screen the parties against sanctions and politically exposed persons lists.

The newer part for many households is the source-of-funds question. Depending on the transaction, you may be asked to show where the deposit and purchase price come from. That can mean bank statements showing a savings history, a settlement statement or sale-proceeds record from a property you have sold, a loan approval from your lender, inheritance paperwork, or, where a deposit is a gift, a short letter confirming it is a gift rather than a loan together with a record of the transfer.

This is where the diaspora experience is worth naming. Many Indian-Australian buyers draw on money transferred from India, on a gift from parents or relatives, or on the proceeds of a property sold overseas. All of that is legitimate, and none of it is a problem. It will, however, now need a clear paper trail. If part of your deposit arrives from abroad, keep the overseas bank statements and the international transfer records, because a cross-border movement of money is exactly the kind of detail a conveyancer is expected to be able to explain.

Why the money question matters

The purpose of the source-of-funds check is not to pry. Under the reformed rules, a regulated professional has to be reasonably satisfied that the funds make sense for the transaction and for the person in front of them. If the explanation is ordinary, savings, the sale of a previous home, a family gift, an inheritance or a bank loan, that is usually the end of it. The check exists so that the rare transaction designed to wash criminal money stands out against the great majority of honest ones. Refusing to take part, though, has consequences. Verification before settlement is now a legal requirement, not an optional courtesy, and a professional who cannot complete it may be unable to act for you.

The warning now appearing in contracts

This background explains the notices buyers are starting to see in sale paperwork. In Queensland, the Real Estate Institute of Queensland, the state’s peak body for agents, has added an anti-money-laundering section to its standard Form 6 and Form 6A appointment schedules from 1 July 2026. The new wording lets agents collect the information they need for compliance and pass it to third parties for verification, adds a clause allowing an agent to end an appointment where compliance cannot practically be met, such as when a client will not provide documents, and allows for any verification costs to be adjusted once known. In New South Wales, conveyancing practitioners report that the standard contract for sale now carries an anti-money-laundering notice explaining that agents, solicitors and conveyancers have these obligations from 1 July 2026. Similar clauses are being built into contracts and client agreements around the country.

Getting ready without the stress

The practical response is simple preparation. Have your photo identification current and to hand for everyone named on the title or the contract. Before you make an offer, gather a tidy record of where your funds are coming from, and if any of it has moved from overseas, save the transfer confirmations and statements rather than deleting them. If a parent or relative is helping with the deposit, ask them for a brief signed note confirming it is a gift. Bringing these documents to the first meeting will usually mean the checks add minutes, not weeks, to your purchase or sale.

None of this changes the fundamentals of buying or selling a home. It adds a verification step that banks have applied for years and that now sits with the agent, the conveyancer and the lawyer as well. Treated as one more item on the settlement checklist, gathered early and kept in order, it is an administrative task rather than an obstacle. The families most likely to feel at ease on 1 July are the ones who have their identification and their money story ready before anyone asks.

Related reading: buying with a 5 per cent deposit and whether students drive up rents.