What is a "designated service" — and which of mine count?

The AML/CTF regime does not apply to real estate agents as a profession. It applies to specific activities — "designated services" — listed in section 6 of the AML/CTF Act 2006 (Cth). Table 5 of s 6 is headed "Real estate services" and contains two items.

Item 1 — brokering. "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 is both the seller or transferor and the buyer or transferee. This is the item that captures agencies, and the both-parties customer definition is the single most consequential thing on this page: a seller's agent owes CDD to the purchaser, and a buyer's agent owes it to the vendor. There is no separate buyer's-agent table and no separate commercial table.

Item 2 — selling on your own account. "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." The customer is the buyer or transferee only. This is the developer item — house and land packages, apartments off the plan, vacant blocks in new subdivisions — and it applies where the seller uses its own in-house sales staff rather than engaging an external agency. Incidental sales are not caught: a business owner selling the premises they trade from is not carrying on a business of selling real estate.

Auctioneers are captured, but which item applies depends on the arrangement. Where an auctioneer sells real estate as part of a business of selling real estate without an independent agent brokering, that sits in item 2. Where the auctioneer is engaged by the vendor's agent to conduct the auction as part of the agent's brokering, the agency's item 1 service is unaffected. AUSTRAC's real estate designated services guidance does not address the subcontracted auctioneer, so take advice on your own arrangement rather than reasoning from these lists.

Table 5's two items are both real estate. Table 6 is a separate table headed "Professional services", and its item 1 is also a real estate service — assisting a person in the planning or execution of a transaction to sell, buy or otherwise transfer real estate, where the transfer is not pursuant to a court order. That is the solicitor's and conveyancer's item, and it matters to you because it is the other half of every reliance and delayed-CDD provision that touches real estate. Its customer is "the person" they act for, singular — which is why a conveyancer's customer set is narrower than yours. If you read an article that puts a real estate agency's own designated service at "Table 3 Item 53", that article predates the 2024 amendments.

What is in scope

• Sales agency work (residential and commercial)
• Buyer's agent representation
• Auction marketing where you represent the seller
• Off-the-plan and project marketing where you broker the transfer
• Commercial sales transactions

What is out of scope

• Residential property management (rent collection, tenancy management, inspections)
• Residential leasing — the Act (s 5) defines "real estate" so as to exclude leasehold interests of 30 years or less, so an ordinary tenancy is not a transfer of real estate
• Short-term rental management
• Strata management
• Standalone valuations
• Pure marketing or advertising work where you do not represent a party to the transfer

The boundary that catches people

Long leases over commercial property — those exceeding 30 years — are transfers of real estate within the s 5 definition, and brokering them is a designated service. Ordinary commercial leases under that threshold are not. If you write commercial leases, ask your solicitor where each one sits before assuming the activity is out of scope.

Mixed agencies

If your agency does sales and residential property management through the same legal entity, the entity is in the regime. The property-management arm doesn't get a carve-out just because its revenue is larger. There is no partial enrolment. Once you provide a single designated service, the whole reporting entity is enrolled, with one programme, one Compliance Officer, and one seven-year record set.

Most agencies provide multiple designated services across multiple parties every week, and each engagement independently attracts customer due diligence and record-keeping.

What to do next. Map every revenue line in your agency against Table 5 Item 1 and mark each as in scope or out of scope. Keep the analysis on file as part of your programme documentation — AUSTRAC inspectors will ask how you decided.