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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →AUSTRAC began issuing formal information notices in the last week of August 2026 to businesses that appear to be providing services covered by the anti-money-laundering law without having enrolled. Real estate agencies are among the recipients, along with law firms, accounting practices, conveyancers, jewellers and trust and company service providers, according to notes published by the law firm Clyde & Co and by the accounting firm Grant Thornton, the second dated 1 September.
The notices come one month after the enrolment deadline of 29 July and two months after the law reached the property professions on 1 July. For Queensland agencies, most of which are small businesses, they mark the point at which the regulator stopped asking and started requiring an answer.
Sources: Real Estate Business, 27 August 2026 (enrolments); Clyde & Co, August 2026 (response time). Australia-wide figures.
What a section 167 notice is
The notices are issued under section 167 of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006. The section lets the regulator require a person to give it information or documents. It is an information-gathering power, not a penalty, and receiving one does not mean a business has been found in breach.
According to Grant Thornton, the purpose of this round is to establish three things about each recipient: whether it provides a designated service under the Act, whether it should therefore have enrolled, and whether it is meeting the obligations that follow. Real Estate Business, reporting on 27 August, lists what agencies are being asked for: their enrolment status, their business structure and operations, their payment methods, their policies for handling cash, and their records of transactions involving cash or virtual assets.
Related readPayment redirection scams in property sales: the checks that stop themA notice sets its own deadline. Clyde & Co says the time allowed can be as short as 14 days. Ignoring a notice is a criminal offence, with a maximum of six months' imprisonment or 30 penalty units, which the firm puts at $10,920 at the Commonwealth penalty unit value applying from 1 July 2026. Giving false or misleading information in reply is a far more serious offence.
"Businesses that choose not to enrol should expect regulatory scrutiny," AUSTRAC's chief executive, Brendan Thomas, said, as quoted by Real Estate Business.
How many agencies have enrolled
The counts published in August come from two dates and do not share a denominator.
| Sector | Enrolled | Share of estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Real estate | 17,830 | 49% |
| Accounting services | 13,390 | 47% |
| Legal services | 6,450 | 38% |
| Dealers in precious metals | 270 | 33% |
| All newly regulated sectors | 39,520 | 44% |
Source: Hall & Wilcox, 18 August 2026, citing AUSTRAC figures at 13 August. The total includes sectors not listed separately.
The law firm Hall & Wilcox, in a note dated 18 August, reported that 39,520 newly regulated businesses had enrolled by 13 August, out of an estimated 89,557 that should. That is about 44 per cent, leaving roughly 50,000 businesses unaccounted for. Real estate was the best represented of the large sectors, at 17,830 enrolments, which the firm puts at 49 per cent of the expected number.
Real Estate Business gives a figure one week later, 17,970 agencies at 20 August, and sets it against about 45,000 real estate offices nationwide. On that count the enrolled share is close to 40 per cent, not 49. The difference is in the estimate of how many businesses are caught, not in the number enrolled. An office is not always a separate business, and not every agency carries on a regulated service: property management and leasing sit outside the regime.
Related readProperty spruikers in Queensland: seminars, commissions and the rulesEither way, enrolments barely moved after the deadline. The rise from 17,830 to 17,970 is 140 agencies in a week. No state breakdown has been published, so the number of Queensland agencies on the roll is not known.
Why enrolment is the first thing checked
Enrolment is the simplest obligation in the regime and the easiest to test from outside. A business that provides a designated service must enrol within 28 days of first providing it. For an agency already selling property on 1 July, that produced the 29 July deadline. The duty sits in section 51B of the Act, and Hall & Wilcox notes that a failure to enrol can be dealt with by infringement notice.
The same note says AUSTRAC has named enrolment among its highest enforcement priorities for the 2026-27 financial year, and plans to compare its roll with the membership lists of state and industry bodies to find businesses that are missing. For real estate that comparison is not difficult. Every Queensland agency holds a licence issued by the Office of Fair Trading and appears on a public register.
Enrolment also tells the regulator who to supervise. Until a business is on the roll, AUSTRAC has no compliance officer to write to and no annual report to expect. The section 167 notice is the tool for the gap: it reaches a business that has not come forward.
What an enrolled agency already has to do
Enrolment is the entry point. The obligations that began on 1 July apply whether or not a business has enrolled, and they are the substance of what the notices ask about.
Related readRental scams in Queensland: the warning signs before you pay a bondAn agency that brokers the sale or purchase of real estate must have a written program that assesses its own money laundering and terrorism financing risks and sets out how it manages them. It must appoint a compliance officer. It must identify its customers, who are both the seller it acts for and the buyer on the other side of the contract, and check them before settlement. It must report suspicious matters and any transaction involving $10,000 or more in physical currency, and keep its records for seven years.
The Real Estate Institute of Queensland prepared its members for this with a twelve-stop roadshow in February and March and a toolkit that arranges the work in four phases, from preparation before 1 July to maintaining the program afterwards. The toolkit describes itself as a map and not as advice, and points agencies to AUSTRAC's own starter materials.
John Nguyen, founder of the compliance consultancy AML Partners, told Real Estate Business that for the industry "the real work actually starts now". His point was that an agency can be enrolled and still be exposed, if its program exists on paper and its records do not show it being used.
What an agency that receives a notice faces
The regulator's own article on the notices, published on its website, pairs the warning with an invitation. It says businesses that fail to engage face scrutiny, and that calling AUSTRAC for help "isn't a red flag". Mr Thomas has also said, in remarks reported when the law began, that the agency has never penalised a small business for administrative mistakes.
Related readTitle fraud: how Queensland's register protects an owner's homeThat leaves three kinds of recipient. A business that is not caught, because it only manages rentals or has stopped selling, can say so and show why. A business that is caught and has simply not enrolled can enrol and answer the notice at the same time. The difficult position is the third: a business that is caught, has not enrolled, and does not reply.
Not every agency is covered by the regime
The designated service for real estate is brokering a sale, purchase or transfer of property. Property management and residential or commercial leasing are outside it. An office that only manages rentals has no duty to enrol, though it may still be asked to explain that.
For that third group, Grant Thornton lists what can follow: compulsory enrolment action, infringement notices, civil penalty proceedings and continued supervision. The civil penalty ceiling in the Act is 100,000 penalty units for a company and 20,000 for an individual. At $364 a unit, the value the property industry publication TheOnsiteManager gives for the period from 1 July 2026, those ceilings are $36.4 million and $7.28 million. They are maximums set for the largest institutions, and no court has yet been asked to apply them to an agency.
What it means for buyers and sellers
A client cannot tell from the outside whether an agency has received a notice, and the notice changes nothing in a sale. Contracts, deposits and settlements proceed as before.
What a buyer or seller will notice is the other half of the regime: being asked for identification, and sometimes for an explanation of where purchase money comes from. Those questions are asked of every customer, and an agency that asks them is doing what the law requires. An agency that does not ask is not offering a shortcut. It is carrying a risk it will have to explain later.
The purpose behind the paperwork is the one AUSTRAC gave for extending the law. The agency has estimated that more than $1 billion is laundered through Australian property each year, a figure repeated by the compliance firm VinciWorks on the day the regime began. Property holds value, can be bought in the name of a company or trust, and turns a large sum of doubtful origin into an asset with a clean title. The checks exist to make that harder.
What comes next
The replies to the first notices fall due through September. AUSTRAC has not said how many notices it has sent or when it will publish updated enrolment figures. The next fixed date in the regime is the annual compliance report, which reporting entities ordinarily lodge by 31 March, according to a bulletin on the reforms by the advisory firm KordaMentha.
Clyde & Co reads the regulator's message in one phrase taken from its statements: "the time for preparation is passed". The steps that follow an unanswered notice are set out in the Act. Whether AUSTRAC uses them, and how soon, is the question for the weeks ahead.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
