Certified Practising Valuers with no agency, advisory or transactional interest in the deal. Three blind quotes inside 48 hours. Delivered with a procurement record that evidences the valuation step at arm's length. No fee to the instructing firm or its client.
Australian law firms involved in real-estate transactions become reporting entities under the expanded anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorism financing regime on 1 July 2026. The valuation step inside any conveyancing, estate, family-law settlement, trust transfer or related-party deal sits squarely inside that perimeter.
The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre published its Strategic Analysis Brief on Money Laundering Through Real Estate in 2015, and the Financial Action Task Force followed in July 2022 with updated Real Estate Sector Guidance. Both documents identify the same typology: a property transferred, sold, gifted or contributed at a value that does not reflect the market — used to move, layer or integrate funds. The valuation is the control point that catches it.
Under the Tranche 2 amendments commencing 1 July 2026, lawyers facilitating real-estate transactions must identify and verify the parties, form a reasonable view on the source of funds, assess whether the transaction value is consistent with an arm's-length market price, and keep a record sufficient for an external reviewer to reconstruct the file. The third obligation is the one most firms have no current workflow for. A purchase price, a contract figure, or a bank's mortgage valuation does not, on its own, evidence that the firm independently tested market value. That gap is what an independent transaction-audit artifact closes.
Most Australian valuation work is delivered by firms that also conduct agency, advisory, asset management or transactional work for the same client base. That structure is lawful and commercially rational — but it is not what a regulator looking at a suspicious transaction wants to see on the audit file.
Valuers4U is structurally independent by design. The mechanism is a blind three-quote competitive procurement: three qualified Certified Practising Valuers quote on the instruction without sight of each other's fee or scope. The instructing firm receives the appointed valuer's report plus the procurement record showing the three quotes, scope, qualifications and selection rationale. That record is the independent transaction-audit artifact — what allows a partner, a compliance officer, or an external reviewer to demonstrate that the valuation step was tested at arm's length.
That set of negative covenants is what structural independence actually means in practice. It is not satisfied by an information barrier inside a firm that earns transactional revenue from the same client. It is satisfied only when the valuer has no other revenue line from the matter to protect.
Partner, conveyancer, family-law practitioner or estate solicitor submits property address, parties, matter type, purpose of valuation (conveyance, probate date-of-death, family-law single expert, trust transfer), date and assumptions.
Three panel Certified Practising Valuers in the relevant local market each return a fee, a turnaround commitment and a written conflict-of-interest disclosure confirming no agency, advisory or transactional interest in the property or the parties.
The instructing firm appoints. The valuer engages your firm directly under their own letter of engagement. The completed report and the four-artefact procurement record go onto the matter file for the regulator, the beneficiary, the Court or the audit.
The matter file then contains four documentary artefacts of structural independence: three blind, independently sourced Certified Practising Valuer quotes; three written conflict-of-interest disclosures; the firm's documented appointment decision; and the appointed valuer's report under their own letter of engagement. There is no fee to the instructing firm or its client. Valuers4U pays no rebate, kickback or referral fee to instructing solicitors, conveyancers, partners or paralegals. The money flow is clean, which means the matter file is clean.
The panel makes the valuation defensible on substance. The procurement record makes it defensible on process. Both are needed; neither is optional under the new regime.
All clients of Valuers4U are Australian sophisticated investors within the meaning of section 708(8) of the Corporations Act 2001 — the service is provided in a business-to-business context to instructing professionals only. The service is free to the instructing firm and its client. The appointed valuer pays Valuers4U a procurement fee out of the valuation fee they would have charged regardless.
1 July 2026. The amendments to the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act extend reporting-entity status to legal practitioners involved in real-estate transactions on that date. There is no transitional grace period for the valuation evidence obligation.
Not on its own. A contract price is the figure the parties agreed. A bank valuation is procured by and for the lender. Neither evidences that the instructing firm independently tested market value at arm’s length — which is the obligation a reviewing regulator will assess.
Most established Australian valuation firms also operate agency, advisory or transactional businesses. Valuers4U does none of those. We procure the valuation through a blind three-quote process and deliver the procurement record alongside the report, so the independence of the appointment is itself part of the audit file.
48 hours from instruction to delivery as the standard service level. Urgent matters are accommodated where the panel has capacity.
Nothing. The service is free to the instructing firm and its client. The appointed valuer pays the procurement fee from the valuation fee they would have charged in any event.
Yes. Appointed valuers accept instruction under Family Court Practice Direction requirements for single-expert engagements, and the procurement record evidences the neutrality of the appointment process.
Three blind quotes inside 48 hours from Certified Practising Valuers with no agency, advisory or transactional interest in the matter. Delivered with a procurement record that evidences the valuation step at arm's length. No fee to the instructing firm or its client.