Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he has plans to bring forward legislative proposals for the regulation of (a) unprofessional, (b) unqualified and (c) unethical agents in the property market to tackle money laundering in the property sector.

The Government is committed to ensuring that the UK property market is hostile to illicit finance whilst ensuring burdens on legitimate businesses are minimised. Estate agents are covered by the UK’s Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 (“the regulations”). Under the regulations, estate agents must conduct customer due diligence checks, including identifying and verifying their clients (which includes both buyers and sellers) and conducting ongoing monitoring. HMRC, as the supervisor of estate agents, is also required to carry out criminality checks on their supervised population to ensure that individuals with a relevant criminal conviction cannot be the beneficial owner, officer, manager or sole practitioner of a relevant estate agency firm.

The regulations were comprehensively updated in 2017 and we’ll continue to keep them under review.