Perth's property listings plagued by duplicate images as real estate platforms race to fix the problem this week

Perth home hunters searching listings on Realestate.com.au and Domain this week have encountered the same problem repeatedly: photographs from one property appearing on a completely different address, sometimes suburbs apart. The duplicate image issue — known in the industry as duplicate image replacement — has become acute enough that the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia flagged it as an operational concern at its most recent member communications round, with agents in high-turnover corridors like Cannington and Baldivis reporting the glitch to platform support desks multiple times in a single working week.

The timing matters. Perth's median house price crossed $820,000 in the June quarter, according to figures released by CoreLogic on July 1, and the volume of new listings coming to market has accelerated sharply as vendors try to catch the tail end of the winter selling season. When that many properties are uploaded in compressed timeframes, automated image-matching and content-delivery systems on listing platforms can misfire, pulling cached or previously indexed photographs and attaching them to newly created property profiles. The result is a buyer clicking on a three-bedroom home in Thornlie and seeing kitchen photos that belong to a duplex in Armadale.

How the error propagates — and who is being hurt

The mechanics are relatively straightforward. Real estate agencies upload property images through third-party software — platforms like Vault, REST Professional, and Console Cloud are widely used across Perth's northern and southern suburbs — which then syndicate automatically to the major portals. If an image file is given an identical or near-identical filename to one already in the system, the portal's content delivery network may serve the cached version instead of the new upload. Agencies that reuse standard filename conventions like "front-facade.jpg" or "main-bedroom-01.jpg" are most exposed.

Ray White Cannington, one of the busier offices on the Albany Highway strip, had at least two listings this week temporarily displaying photographs from unrelated properties before the files were corrected and re-indexed. Buyers who had already screenshotted or saved those listings were left comparing images that did not match the floor plans attached to the same listing. For first-home buyers using the WA Government's HomeStart grant program — worth up to $10,000 for eligible purchasers — making an offer based on inaccurate visual information carries real financial risk.

Realestate.com.au's support documentation, last updated in March 2026, advises agents to use unique, property-specific filenames and to clear browser cache before confirming a live listing. The platform introduced an automated image-audit flag in late 2025 designed to detect when the same image hash appears across more than one active listing — but agents say the flag generates a warning rather than blocking the upload, meaning the duplicate can still go live.

What Perth agents and buyers should do now

The problem has a practical fix at the agency end. Renaming image files to include the property's street address and a sequential number — for example, "14-Rowe-St-Bentley-img03.jpg" — eliminates the filename collision that triggers the caching error. Several agencies operating out of the Perth CBD's St Georges Terrace property precinct have adopted this convention as a house rule following earlier incidents in April. The Real Estate Institute of WA is understood to be preparing a one-page best-practice guide for distribution to members, though no formal publication date has been confirmed.

For buyers, the safest approach right now is to cross-reference any online listing against the agency's own website, where images are typically hosted on a separate content management system and less prone to the portal syndication glitch. If photographs look inconsistent with a property's listed features — a listed single-garage home showing a double carport, for instance — buyers should contact the listing agent directly before booking an inspection or making any written offer. Perth's Metronet corridor suburbs, including Ellenbrook and Morley, are seeing some of the highest new-listing volumes right now, which makes them the most likely zones for further duplicate image incidents in coming days as agencies rush to market before the mid-July school holiday slowdown.

Both Realestate.com.au and Domain were contacted for comment ahead of publication. Neither had responded by deadline.