The AML numbers for estate agency this year are worth sitting with. In HMRC's latest round, agents were the worst-hit sector: 170 penalties, around £836,000, most for something as basic as not being registered.
That last detail is the tell. An industry fined for sophisticated evasion has a criminal problem. An industry fined for not registering has a mindset problem: compliance treated as an event near completion day, not a state the business is in all year.
I've spent my career in regulated businesses, from broking, where KYC was part of the furniture, to care, where the inspector can walk in any day. That environment teaches you one thing quickly: you can't assemble compliance when it's demanded. You either hold your information so the answers are always ready, or you don't.
Agency is now getting the same lesson. An ID check confirms a person is who they say they are, nothing more. Whether the ownership behind a property actually adds up takes data that's current, connected and traceable to source, and no completion-day urgency can conjure that.
As enforcement climbs, the gap between firms that hold their data that way and firms that don't is going to get expensive.
Co-founder of Propalt and a property investor and developer for 20 years
