Perth Renters and Buyers Speak Out as Duplicate Listing Images Fuel Distrust in a Market They Can't Afford to Misread

Property hunters in Perth are losing hundreds of dollars in inspection travel costs and, in some cases, hundreds of hours of planning time because the same photograph — or a set of images from a previous tenancy — keeps appearing against current listings on major real estate portals. The practice, known as duplicate or recycled image use, is not new. But with Perth's rental vacancy rate sitting near record lows and average weekly rents in the metropolitan area having climbed steeply over the past two years, the consequences of a misleading listing photo have never been more costly for ordinary people.

The issue has sharpened this winter as demand for housing continues to surge, driven in part by population growth linked to resources sector recruitment, AUKUS-related defence workforce expansion around Henderson and Garden Island, and sustained migration intake. Prospective tenants and buyers say they are making snap decisions on the basis of online images because properties are leased or sold within days of listing. When those images do not match reality, the fallout lands entirely on the applicant.

What Community Members Are Describing

People from suburbs including Morley, Gosnells and Cannington have been sharing their experiences through community Facebook groups and tenants' advocacy channels over recent months. A common thread: arriving at an open home to find the kitchen shown in the listing photographs belongs to a renovation completed several years ago, or the backyard in the images belongs to a neighbouring property entirely. Others describe studio apartments listed with lounge photographs that turn out to be shared common areas in the building.

The Tenants WA organisation, based in East Perth on Wellington Street, offers a free advice line and has flagged misleading property imagery as a growing complaint category among callers, though the organisation has not published a specific breakdown of complaint types for the current financial year. The Real Estate Institute of Western Australia, headquartered in West Perth, maintains a code of conduct requiring that marketing material not mislead prospective tenants or buyers, but enforcement relies heavily on complaints being formally lodged rather than resolved at the point of listing.

For first-home buyers working with the WA HomeStart and Keystart loan programs, a wasted inspection carries a particular sting. Keystart's income thresholds and property price caps mean eligible buyers are overwhelmingly concentrated in outer suburbs — Armadale, Midland, Rockingham — where stock turns over fast. Taking a weekday afternoon off work to inspect a property that looks nothing like its photographs is not an abstract inconvenience. It is a lost shift, a disrupted childcare arrangement, a tank of fuel at $2.15 a litre.

What Needs to Change, and What Can Help Now

Tenant advocates and community members who have raised the issue publicly are calling for real estate portals to implement mandatory image-dating — a visible timestamp on listing photographs showing when they were taken. A second common request is that portals flag when the same image file appears across multiple listings or has appeared in prior campaigns for the same address. Both measures are technically achievable. Neither has been adopted as standard practice by REIWA's affiliated agencies or the major national portals operating in WA.

In the meantime, people navigating the market have developed their own workarounds. Running listing photos through a reverse image search takes under two minutes and will often surface identical images attached to older listings or different addresses on the same street. Checking the listing date against the agent's sales history for that property address on title-search tools available through Landgate — the WA government's land information authority — can reveal whether photographs predate a recent renovation claim by months or years.

The State Government is scheduled to table a review of the Residential Tenancies Act provisions relating to misleading advertising later in 2026, according to the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety's published legislative program. Community members who have been affected are being encouraged by Tenants WA to submit accounts through the formal consultation process when it opens, so that the pattern of harm has a documented record attached to any proposed rule changes. The window to shape that outcome is narrower than most renters realise.