Duplicate Photos on Perth Property Listings Mislead Homebuyers, Drive Up Prices

Duplicate and replaced listing images — photographs reused across multiple properties, or swapped out after a sale is agreed — have become a persistent problem on Perth's real estate platforms, and consumer advocates say the consequences for buyers navigating one of the country's tightest housing markets are serious. The issue sits at the intersection of a rapid-fire listings cycle and inadequate platform policing, leaving prospective buyers making decisions based on images that may not reflect the property they inspect.

Perth's rental vacancy rate has hovered near historic lows over the past two years, and the sales market has followed. Properties in suburbs like Balga, Mirrabooka and Midland are moving within days of listing. That pace creates conditions where listing agents — under pressure to publish quickly — sometimes pull image sets from previous campaigns, or where platform algorithms fail to flag when a photo file has been used on a different address. The result: a three-bedroom house on Walter Road East, Morley might appear in its listing with a kitchen that belongs to a Karrinyup townhouse sold eight months prior.

Why Duplicate Images Are More Than a Minor Annoyance

The practical harm is not trivial. A buyer who travels from Fremantle to an outer suburb like Ellenbrook for a Saturday inspection, expecting a renovated bathroom they saw in listing photographs, may find an unrenovated one instead. That costs time, and in a market where buyers are often competing with four or five other parties, missed inspections or misaligned expectations can mean losing the property entirely. For renters, the stakes are even higher — a family that signs a lease online without an in-person inspection, relying on listing photos alone, has almost no recourse if the images were recycled from a previous tenancy or a different unit in the same complex.

Real estate platforms operating in Western Australia are subject to the Australian Consumer Law, which prohibits misleading or deceptive conduct in trade or commerce. Consumer Protection WA, a division of the Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, handles complaints about property advertising in the state. The agency has the power to investigate misleading listings, though enforcement actions specifically targeting image duplication have not been widely publicised. Buyers and renters who believe they have been misled can lodge a formal complaint through Consumer Protection WA's online portal.

The Real Estate Institute of Western Australia has its own code of conduct binding member agents, which requires advertising to be accurate and not misleading. Whether image duplication falls clearly within existing disciplinary mechanisms depends on whether the duplication was deliberate or the result of platform error — a distinction that is often difficult to establish after the fact.

What Perth Residents Can Do Right Now

The most reliable protection is verification before commitment. Buyers and renters should conduct a reverse image search — using Google Images or TinEye — on any listing photograph that appears professionally staged or unusually polished for the suburb. A search takes under a minute and will surface if the same image has appeared on a different address. The City of Perth's free library Wi-Fi, available at the Central City Library on James Street in Northbridge, is a practical resource for those doing this research on the go.

Agents and property managers who do their own photography are less likely to be caught in the duplicate-image problem than those who rely on stock sets or reuse archived campaigns. Asking directly, before an inspection, whether the photographs were taken during the current listing campaign is a reasonable question — and the answer can be telling.

The broader fix lies with the platforms themselves. Automated image-hash detection — technology that flags when an identical image file appears on more than one active listing address — is not technically complex. Several international property portals have implemented it. Whether Australian platforms accelerate that work is, for now, a matter of commercial and regulatory pressure. Consumer Protection WA accepted complaints relating to property advertising through the 2025–26 financial year, and its annual reporting is due later this month, which may provide the first public accounting of how widespread image-related complaints have become in this state.