Duplicate Images on Property Listings Are Costing Perth Renters Time and Money — Here's Why It Matters

Perth renters are burning fuel driving to inspections that don't match reality. The culprit, increasingly identified by tenant advocates and real estate industry bodies across Western Australia, is the widespread recycling of duplicate or outdated property photographs on listing platforms — the same image appearing across multiple properties, sometimes in different suburbs, sometimes years apart.

It is a problem that sounds trivial until you consider the stakes. Greater Perth's residential rental vacancy rate has been hovering below one per cent for an extended stretch, according to figures published by the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia. At that level of competition, a tenant who wastes two weekends chasing ghost listings — properties photographed a decade ago before a kitchen was stripped out, or images lifted from a Scarborough unit and slapped on a Midland listing — can miss the narrow window entirely and lose a rental to someone else.

What's Actually Happening With Listing Photos

The mechanics are straightforward. When a property changes hands or management, image libraries stored on platforms like realestate.com.au and Domain sometimes carry over from previous campaigns. Property managers working across large portfolios — some of the bigger agencies on St Georges Terrace manage hundreds of residential properties simultaneously — have been known to reuse stock photos, particularly for storerooms, car bays, or common areas that look generic enough to pass unnoticed.

The problem compounds in high-turnover corridors. Along the Metronet rail expansion route through suburbs including Forrestfield, Morley, and Ellenbrook, new apartment and townhouse stock is hitting the market faster than some agencies can commission fresh photography. The result is listings where the building in the photo is a different colour to the one being leased, or where a balcony shown no longer exists after a body corporate decision to enclose it.

Tenancy WA, the state's primary tenant advisory service based in Perth's CBD on Pier Street, fields calls about misleading listings regularly, though the organisation's published data does not disaggregate complaints specifically about photographic misrepresentation from broader advertising complaints. Consumer Protection WA, operating under the Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, has the authority to investigate misleading advertising under the Australian Consumer Law, which applies to real estate listings as commercial representations.

The Real Cost to Ordinary Perth Households

Do the numbers on a single wasted inspection trip. Petrol from Cannington to Joondalup and back is roughly 80 kilometres. At current Perth unleaded prices sitting around $1.85 per litre for most of July, that is a real cost — and that is before accounting for parking near a city-fringe property, an hour off work, or the childcare arrangements some families need to make to attend an open home.

For new arrivals to Perth — and the city is absorbing significant immigration-driven population growth as the WA government's own budget forecasts acknowledge — the problem is worse. Someone who arrived in Perth three months ago and does not know that a photograph labelled 'Leederville' looks nothing like the part of Leederville near Oxford Street has no reference point to flag the inconsistency before they show up.

The practical fix sits with the industry itself. The Real Estate Institute of Western Australia's professional conduct guidelines require accurate representation of properties, and agents found to have published materially misleading listings face referral to the Department of Consumer Protection. Tenants who suspect a listing is using duplicate or misrepresentative images can lodge a formal complaint with Consumer Protection WA online or by calling 1300 304 054.

Prospective renters should cross-reference listing images against Google Street View for the address before attending, check the date metadata on listing photos where visible, and ask the managing agent directly in writing — email creates a record — whether the photographs were taken during the current tenancy or vacancy period. Perth's rental market is not going to soften meaningfully in the short term. The information gap will keep costing people money until agencies are held to a higher photographic standard, and until tenants know the tools available to push back.