Identity verification for real estate

What real estate businesses ask of identity checks

A property deal has two parties, and an agent usually meets neither in a regulated setting. The buyer may live abroad, the seller may be a stranger to the agency, and the sums are large. Rental platforms face a quieter version of the same problem: fake landlords with real photographs, and tenants who are not who they say. The check has to reach people wherever they are, and it has to land at the right moment in the deal: after the offer is accepted, before funds or keys change hands.

• Verify both parties, not only the one who pays.
• Reach a remote party on a phone, in their own language.
• Add a proof of address when the deal asks for one.
• Screen the parties against sanctions and PEP lists.

The flow

1. Trigger. When the offer is accepted, your system creates one session for each party and sends each a one-time link. A party who opens it on a desktop can finish on a phone with a QR code.
2. Questionnaire. Each party enters name, birth date, contacts and the custom fields your agency needs before the KYC starts.
3. Document and address. Each party photographs a passport, national ID card or other identity document. A utility bill, bank statement or lease can be added to the same session as an extra document.
4. Selfie and active liveness. The selfie is matched to the document portrait, and the party moves the face through two ovals.
5. Screening. International AML screening covers sanctions of OFAC, EU, UK and UN plus 50+ national lists, PEP with relatives and close associates, and adverse media in 40+ languages.
6. Compliance review. Cases the rules do not settle go to the agency's compliance officer in the dashboard, who decides manually. The session log can be exported with the deal file.

Modules used

• Document verification with proof of address as an extra document.
• Face verification and liveness.
• AML screening, billed separately, with daily re-screening of monitored profiles.
• Web SDK and widget: QR hand-off, one-time links and 29 interface languages.
• Dashboard with session log, export and manual decision.

Regulatory frame

What the European Union's AML Regulation, Regulation (EU) 2024/1624, says about estate agents. The Regulation is forthcoming and applies from 10 July 2027.

• Under Article 3, point (3)(d), estate agents and other real estate professionals are obliged entities to the extent that they act as intermediaries in real estate transactions, including the letting of immovable property for transactions for which the monthly rent amounts to at least EUR 10,000.
• Article 19(6), point (c), provides that in the case of real estate agents both parties to the transaction are considered customers.
• Under Article 23(1), for real estate agents the verification of identity is carried out after an offer is accepted by the seller or lessor, and in all cases before any funds or property are transferred.
• Article 22(6) allows identity to be verified through the submission of an identity document, passport or equivalent together with, where relevant, information from reliable and independent sources.

This block describes the texts, not our service. For information; not legal advice.

Sources

• Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 of the European Parliament and of the Council, Official Journal text, fetched 26 October 2026.

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