Brokering a property sale gives you two customers, not one. This catches agencies out more than any other part of the real estate reforms, because it cuts against how the job actually feels: you are engaged by the vendor, you are paid by the vendor, and the purchaser is the other side of the negotiation. Under the AML/CTF Act the purchaser is your customer too.
Table 5, inserted by s 6(5A), covers 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 customer column for item 1 names both the seller or transferor and the buyer or transferee. AUSTRAC’s guidance reads brokering as acting as intermediary or agent for consideration, typically commission, and as covering both seller’s agents and buyer’s agents. The rule follows the service rather than the engagement, so it applies to the party who never signed anything with you.
Each customer runs its own customer due diligence, with its own verification and its own evidence. A sale with two vendors and two purchasers is four customer records against one transaction.
When each party becomes your customer
The two customers do not arrive at the same time, and the gap matters. Start CDD on a purchaser too early and you are verifying people who will never buy the property. Start too late and you settle with an unverified customer.
| Your role | Your direct client becomes a customer | The other party becomes a customer |
|---|---|---|
| Seller’s agent | When the agency agreement is signed | When the transaction is reasonably expected to proceed, normally when an offer is accepted and the contract signed |
| Buyer’s agent | When the search agreement is signed | When the transaction is reasonably expected to proceed, on the same test |
| Auction | Standard timing for the vendor | After the fall of the hammer, when the successful bidder is known |
The phrase doing the work is reasonably expected to proceed. An enquiry is not a transaction. A first inspection is not a transaction. An accepted offer with a signed contract is, and from that point the purchaser is a customer of your designated service with the full set of obligations attached.
Auctions and delayed CDD
An auction breaks the ordinary sequence, because the buyer does not exist as an identifiable person until the hammer falls. You cannot verify someone whose identity is unknowable at the time the obligation would otherwise bite.
Delayed CDD is available where starting first is essential to avoid interrupting the ordinary course of business and the added ML/TF risk is low (Act s29), and the auction is the clearest example in the sector. The deferral has to be recorded rather than assumed, and the CDD has to be completed as soon as reasonably practicable and no later than 28 days after exchange or 3 days before the initially agreed settlement day, whichever is earlier (AML/CTF Rules 2025 s 6-32). A deferral that is never closed out is not delayed CDD, it is missing CDD. See delayed CDD for how the deadline is calculated and what has to be on the file.
Selling your own stock: Table 5 item 2
A different item applies where a business sells or transfers real estate it owns without using an independent agent. That is Table 5 item 2, and it captures developers selling house and land packages, apartments off the plan, and blocks in new subdivisions, including sales run through in-house agents or a sales and marketing team.
Here there is only one customer: the buyer or transferee. The seller is you. The service starts at the commitment to sell or transfer, typically when the agreement is entered.
Two exclusions sit alongside it. Incidental sales of real estate by a business that is not in the business of selling real estate, such as a retailer disposing of a warehouse, fall outside. So do private sales of residential property by individuals.
Who is not a customer
Not everyone whose name appears on the file is a customer.
Someone acting on behalf of a party is a person acting for a customer rather than a customer in their own right. That covers an attorney under a power of attorney, a company director or secretary signing for the entity, and an authorised representative. You record them against the customer they act for, and you verify that they hold the authority they claim. The customer is still the party to the transaction.
The distinction matters in both directions. Treat an attorney as a customer and you have created a record with no designated service behind it. Treat them as nobody and you have accepted instructions from someone whose authority you never checked.
Where a party is a company, trust or self-managed super fund (SMSF), the entity is the customer. Its directors, trustees, members, beneficial owners and controllers are identified and verified as part of that customer’s due diligence, underneath the entity, not as separate customers of the service. Beneficial ownership covers how far down that goes.
What catches people out
Assuming the vendor’s agent only has the vendor. This is the single most common misreading of Table 5. The agency agreement tells you who pays you, not who your customers are. If you broker the sale, the purchaser is a customer of that service, and a purchaser who settles without CDD is a gap on your file that no commission arrangement explains away.
Running CDD on every enquiry. This is the mirror-image failure. The counterparty obligation does not attach at first contact, and verifying every person who walks through an open home is both pointless and a privacy problem. The trigger is the transaction being reasonably expected to proceed. Build the workflow around that moment.
Leaving an auction deferral open. Delayed CDD at auction is legitimate and expected. What is not legitimate is a deferral with no completion date and no record of why it was taken. Settlement arrives, the file moves on, and the deferral is never closed.
Counting a corporate buyer as one job. An SMSF or company purchaser is one customer record, but the work underneath it is not one verification. The beneficial owners and controllers each need identifying, and that is usually where a structured purchase takes longer than four individual buyers would.
What is still unsettled
The dual-customer rule itself is not in doubt. It is on the face of the Act: the customer column for Table 5 item 1 reads “both: (a) the seller or transferor; and (b) the buyer or transferee”, and item 2 reads “the buyer or transferee”. Checked against compilation C2026C00274.
What is still settling is the edge of the timing test: precisely when a transaction becomes reasonably expected to proceed in sale types that follow neither the private-treaty nor the auction pattern, including expressions of interest, tender sales and off-market deals. The timing positions on this page come from AUSTRAC’s sector guidance rather than the Act, and that guidance is still developing.
How duely handles this
A sale in duely is one transaction holding every party, each with its role recorded, rather than a file attached to whoever signed the agency agreement. Adding a purchaser creates a second customer with its own CDD, its own verification and its own evidence, and the transaction is not complete until each party’s due diligence is.
People acting on behalf of a party are recorded against the customer they act for, so an attorney or a company signatory sits on the file without becoming a customer of the service.