New Fed Rule Targets Cash Buyers

You can read more about that in “The Refinance That Boosted Our Cash Flow 50%.”

In this article, I want to focus on something unusual that happened at closing. After nearly 25 years and almost 2,000 closings, most of the documents—loan agreements, mortgages, promissory notes, and various addendums—are routine. By the end of signing, you need to flex your hand from signing all the paperwork.

This time, our closing attorney handed us new forms I hadn’t seen before: the Anti-Laundering Information Collection and Certification Forms. Because we were refinancing, we were both the seller and the buyer, so we had to fill out both.

What Are These Forms?

Since March 1, 2026, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) requires extra disclosures from certain real estate buyers—specifically those paying cash for privacy.

The rule targets non-financed purchases made by legal entities or trusts—LLCs, corporations, partnerships, or trust funds—acquiring condos, homes, or land on behalf of someone who wants to remain anonymous.

We were financing from multiple LLC’s into one LLC so this applied to us.

I have included links to the forms from my closing for your review:

• Seller Anti-Laundering Information Collection and Certification Form
• Buyer Anti-Laundering Information Collection and Certification Form

FinCEN warns that:

“The illicit use of residential real estate threatens U.S. economic and national security and can disadvantage those that seek to compete fairly in the U.S. real estate market.”

In short, it’s relatively easy for bad actors to hide money in real estate, especially when no loan is involved.

Cash purchases make up 20–30% of all U.S. real estate transactions, according to the U.S. Treasury’s 2024 National Money Laundering Risk Assessment. Without banks or lenders involved, these transactions bypass the usual anti-money laundering checks, making them attractive to illicit activity.

The 2021 Pandora Papers highlighted the problem: 206 U.S.-based trusts held over $1 billion in assets across 41 countries, and roughly 30 of these were tied to allegations of fraud, bribery, or human rights violations.

To combat this, the Biden administration introduced the “final residential real estate rule”, which creates a paper trail to identify the true beneficiary of any property transaction—even those done entirely with cash.

What This Means for Legitimate Buyers

The new rule does create extra paperwork for buyers using cash for privacy or estate planning. But there are legal exemptions for routine, lower-risk transfers, such as:

• Property transfers due to death (via will, trust, or law)

• Divorce or marriage dissolution

• Bankruptcy proceedings or court-supervised transfers

• 1031 like-kind exchanges via a qualified intermediary

The most important exception is for no-consideration transfers to a grantor trust. Simply put, if you already own a property and deed it into your own revocable living trust without exchanging money, it does not need to be reported.

These exemptions may let you complete a cash transaction while maintaining privacy—but mistakes or non-compliance can carry serious penalties.

Steps for Cash Buyers

If you plan to buy real estate with cash through a corporate structure or trust:

1. Consult a real estate attorney or legal expert to understand your compliance obligations.

2. Prepare full beneficial ownership details: names, dates of birth, addresses, taxpayer IDs, and citizenship information for everyone behind the entity or trust.

3. Keep this info ready for your lawyer or title company at closing.

For real estate investors, the message is clear: if you’re buying real estate in cash, the government now wants to know exactly who’s behind the deal.