U.S. WILL TRACK SECRET BUYERS OF LUXURY REAL ESTATE

by Michael Wiener, E.A.

Condominiums at the Time Warner Center were found to have a number of hidden owners for over a decade who had been the subjects of government investigations. Concerned about illicit money flowing into luxury real estate, the Treasury Department stated that it would begin identifying and tracking secret buyers of high-end properties. The initiative will start in two of the nation’s major destinations for global wealth: Manhattan and Miami-Dade County.

It will shine a light on the darkest corner of the real estate market: all-cash purchases made by shell companies that often shield purchasers’ identities.

It is the first time the federal government has required real estate companies to disclose names behind cash transactions, and it is likely to send shudders through the real estate industry, which has benefited enormously in recent years from a building boom increasingly dependent on wealthy, secretive buyers. The initiative is part of a broader federal effort to increase the focus on money laundering in real estate.

Treasury and federal law enforcement officials said they were putting greater resources into investigating luxury real estate sales that involve shell companies like limited liability companies, often known as L.L.C.s; partnerships; and other entities. Future investigations, they said, will focus increasingly on professionals who assist in money laundering, including real estate agents, lawyers, bankers and L.L.C. formation agents.

Officials said the new government efforts were inspired in part by a series last year in The New York Times that examined the rising use of shell companies as foreign buyers increasingly sought safe havens for their money in the United States.

The investigation found that real estate professionals, especially in the luxury market, often do not know much about buyers. Until now, none of them have been legally required to. The use of shell companies in real estate is legal, and L.L.C.s have a range of uses unrelated to secrecy. But a Treasury official said her agency had seen instances in which multimillion-dollar homes were being used as safe deposit boxes for ill-gotten gains, in transactions made more opaque by the use of anonymous shell companies.

“We are concerned about the possibility that dirty money is being put into luxury real estate,” said Ms. Calvery, the director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the Treasury unit running the initiative. “We think some of the bigger risk is around the least transparent transactions.”

The department will focus on sales that are both paid for all in cash and conducted using shell companies. The government is requiring title insurance companies, which are involved in virtually all sales, to discover the identities of buyers and submit the information to the Treasury. The government will put the information into a database for law enforcement. The Treasury’s program will affect billions of dollars in real-estate transactions.

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