Off-the-Plan Sales: AML at Developer Scale
Published 9 August 2026 · 5 minute read
1 July 2026
AML/CTF obligations commence for real estate
AUSTRAC
28 days
to enrol with AUSTRAC after first providing a designated service
AUSTRAC
25%
ownership or control threshold for beneficial ownership
AML/CTF Act 2006
7 years
record retention requirement
AML/CTF Act 2006
Most AML guidance assumes one buyer, one property, one settlement. A project launch breaks every one of those assumptions: hundreds of buyers, staged deposits, settlements years away, and a sales suite designed to close in an afternoon. Volume doesn't dilute the obligation — it multiplies it.
Why off-the-plan is a different AML problem
The obligation per buyer is the same as any sale — the arithmetic is what changes. Brokering the sale of real property is a designated service, and every purchaser in a 150-lot release is a customer requiring due diligence. A suburban agency might verify a handful of buyers a month; a project team can face a hundred in a launch weekend.
Off-the-plan also stretches the timeline. Exchange happens now, settlement in two or three years. Buyers assign contracts, nominate related entities, restructure trusts, or on-sell before completion. Each of those events can change who your customer actually is.
Who is responsible — the developer or the agency?
If your agency is brokering the sales, your agency is providing the designated service and carries its own obligations. You cannot outsource them to the developer, and the developer's own arrangements do not cover you.
Get this clear in the agency agreement before launch: who verifies buyers, at what stage, who holds the records, and how information passes between agency, developer and their solicitors. Ambiguity here means either duplicated checks that annoy buyers or gaps that expose you. Both are avoidable with one clause and one workflow diagram.
How do you run CDD on 200 buyers in a weekend?
You don't — not manually. The launch-weekend model only survives Tranche 2 if verification is electronic, self-service, and built into the expression-of-interest or reservation step. Buyer registers interest, completes identity verification on their own phone, and arrives at the sales suite already cleared.
The alternative — sales consultants photocopying passports between contract signings — fails on speed, accuracy and record-keeping all at once. The agencies that will handle project volume well are the ones treating CDD as part of the buyer funnel, not an after-sales chore.
Foreign buyers, trusts and nominee contracts
Project sales attract exactly the buyer types that need enhanced attention: overseas purchasers, family trusts, corporate buyers, and 'and/or nominee' contracts. A nominee clause means your ultimate customer may not exist yet at exchange — and when the nomination lands, due diligence has to catch up with it.
For entities, identify beneficial owners at the 25% ownership or control threshold. For trusts, that means the trust deed, not the trustee's business card. Build these deeper checks into your process as a standard lane, not an exception, because at project scale they are not exceptions.
What happens between exchange and settlement?
Two to three years is a long time in a buyer's life, and monitoring does not stop at exchange. Contract assignments and nominations are the big ones — a new purchaser stepping in is a new customer to verify. Sudden changes in the source of settlement funds, or a buyer becoming uncontactable then reappearing with a different paying entity, are the kinds of signals worth noticing.
Records for every buyer, check and decision must be kept for 7 years. On a 300-lot project, that is a filing problem no spreadsheet handles gracefully. Structured, searchable records are the difference between an easy AUSTRAC interaction and a bad month.
The pre-launch AML checklist for principals
Confirm enrolment: AUSTRAC enrolment is required within 28 days of first providing a designated service — do not let a launch be your discovery moment. Settle the agency-developer split of responsibilities in writing. Put electronic verification in the reservation flow. Define the enhanced lane for trusts, companies, nominees and overseas buyers. Decide who monitors assignments through to settlement.
Do this once, properly, and every subsequent release runs on rails. Skip it and you will be improvising compliance during the busiest weekend of your year.
Quick answers
Does every off-the-plan buyer need customer due diligence?
Yes. Each purchaser is a customer of the designated service of brokering a property sale, so each requires due diligence — whether the release is five lots or five hundred.
Who handles AML when a developer and agency both work a project?
The agency brokering the sales carries its own obligations and cannot rely on the developer's arrangements. Responsibilities, record-keeping and information flow should be agreed in writing before launch.
What about buyers who nominate a different entity before settlement?
A nomination or assignment introduces a new purchaser, and due diligence must cover the incoming entity, including beneficial owners at the 25% threshold. Treat it as a fresh check, not an amendment.
Keep going
General information for Australian agencies, current at the date above — not legal or financial advice. Verify obligations against AUSTRAC guidance and your own advisers.