U.S. Ranks First In Being 'Zillow For Money Launderers'
The U.S. is the top country for real estate money laundering schemes, according to the Financial Secrecy Index.
Compiled by UK-based independent organization Tax Justice Network, the index ranks countries by how complicit they are in helping criminals hide money in real estate investments.
The indicator ranks 141 countries. In addition to the Financial Secrecy Index, the organization published a Real Estate Secrecy Index based on three factors.
One factor is whether real estate ownership information is easy to access publicly online. Another is whether the government can access records of real estate ownership through centralized and online systems. The third is whether jurisdictions make foreign companies and other ownership entities, like trusts, submit beneficial ownership information.
The Financial Secrecy Index score is a sum of how much wiggle room a country's laws allow for fraud and what financial incentives the country gives to foreign buyers.
The United States has an FSI value of 2,029, the highest. Second is Switzerland, followed by Singapore and Hong Kong. Rounding out the top five is the United Arab Emirates.
“When you’re Zillow for money launderers, you’re dealing with a more extreme side of money laundering,” Alex Cobham, CEO at the Tax Justice Network, said in a press release.
“It’s the land, the bricks and steel that make up your country,” he added. “There’s no point pretending to wage a war on drugs if you’re letting the bosses buy beach-front condos to rent out and finance their trafficking with.”
There was $2.3B laundered through U.S. real estate deals between 2015 and 2020, 30% of which was commercial, according to think tank Global Financial Integrity.
Real estate is particularly vulnerable to money laundering in the U.S. because the sector has fewer rules and regulations that require due diligence or automatic reporting requirements than financial accounts do, a Brookings report found.
The Biden administration made efforts to crack down on money laundering through real estate, but some rules are loosening under the Trump administration.
In 2025, the Treasury Department stopped enforcing the Corporate Transparency Act, a rule that penalized U.S. citizens or domestic companies for not reporting beneficial ownership information. The rule was used to find money laundering schemes run by shell companies.
In March, a federal district judge blocked a federal rule that required residential real estate buyers to be disclosed in all-cash deals, which was an attempt to tamp down money laundering.
Recent attempts to limit real estate fraud more broadly could make money laundering more difficult. In 2024, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae strengthened financial reporting requirements for brokers and lenders to crack down on multifamily fraud, which includes going through extra steps to verify financial information from borrowers and more stringent Know Your Customer requirements.
