FinCEN announced today that it is renewing the existing Geographical Targeting Orders (GTOs) issued in July 2016 that require all title insurance companies to identify and report on the natural persons behind shell companies that make cash-only purchases of high-end real estate in six major metropolitan markets. The renewed GTOs will be in effect from February 24, 2017 through August 22, 2017.

The initial real estate GTOs were issued to certain title insurance companies (including their subsidiaries and agents) in January 2016 for purchases in the Borough of Manhattan and Miami-Dade County. The July 2016 orders being renewed today expanded the scope of the GTOs to cover all title insurance companies and to include numerous counties in six major metropolitan areas.

The renewal of the GTOs was anticipated. In today’s new release, FinCEN noted that it “has found that about 30 percent of the transactions covered by the GTOs involve a beneficial owner or purchaser representative that is also the subject of a previous suspicious activity report.”

As highlighted in our 2016 Year in Review, FinCEN has increased its focus on AML risks in real estate. We expect FinCEN to further expand their supervisory and enforcement activity in the real estate market, as recommended by the FATF in their 2016 Mutual Evaluation Report.