Perth Councils and Developers Move to Fix Duplicate Image Problem Clogging Property Listings This Week

Property listings across Perth's online planning and real estate platforms have been hit this week by a growing duplicate image problem, with identical photographs appearing multiple times across Development Assessment Panel submissions, council DA portals and major listing aggregators — slowing approvals, confusing buyers and in some cases triggering automatic system flags that delay time-sensitive decisions.

The issue came to a head in late June 2026, when the City of Stirling's online development portal flagged more than 40 separate application packages that contained repeated image files uploaded by architectural and drafting firms. The duplications were traced to a workflow change introduced earlier this year, in which firms began exporting site plans and elevation drawings as JPEG batches rather than PDFs, generating near-identical file hashes that the council's document management system treated as errors requiring manual review.

Why It Matters Right Now

The timing is particularly sharp. Perth is processing a record volume of development applications driven by immigration-fuelled housing demand and a raft of Metronet-adjacent infill projects along corridors including the Morley-Ellenbrook Line and the Thornlie-Cockburn Link. The City of Wanneroo alone reported in its May 2026 council agenda that residential application volumes had risen substantially year-on-year, placing significant load on its Planning Services team.

When duplicate images slow the review queue even by a day or two per application, the cumulative effect on suburb-level housing supply is real. Developers targeting sites in Ellenbrook, Alkimos and the Brabham pocket near Lord Street have told industry representatives that minor administrative delays are compounding against already tight construction timelines.

Duplicate image errors are not new, but automated replacement tools — software that detects and removes or consolidates repeated files before a package is submitted — have become a live conversation inside the Planning Institute of Australia's WA Chapter this week. A member briefing circulated on 1 July 2026 flagged the issue and asked member firms to audit their export workflows ahead of anticipated guidance from the WA Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage.

Portals, Patches and Practical Fixes

The State Government's ePlanning portal, operated through the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage and accessible via the Landgate-linked infrastructure on Hayman Road in Benara, was updated on 2 July 2026 with a revised file-validation module. The update introduced a deduplication check at upload that alerts submitters in real time when an image file matches one already attached to the same application. It does not automatically delete files — submitters must manually confirm removal — but it is expected to catch the majority of workflow-generated duplicates before they enter the review queue.

Real estate platforms have a parallel but distinct version of the same problem. On Rightmove-adjacent aggregators and on realestate.com.au's Perth-facing listings, agents uploading through CRM software have occasionally published listings in suburbs like Subiaco, Victoria Park and Maylands that show the same hero photograph two or three times in a gallery, reducing the effective visual information available to buyers. Some agents reported the issue stems from cloud-sync conflicts when images are uploaded from multiple devices. The Real Estate Institute of Western Australia flagged the issue to member agencies in a technical bulletin issued on 30 June 2026.

REIWA's bulletin recommended agents using Rex Software or Inspection Manager clear their local image caches before batch-uploading property photographs, and to verify gallery order inside the CRM before pushing to portals. The fix is low-tech, but fixing it consistently across dozens of agencies takes coordination.

For home buyers, the practical advice is straightforward: if a listing gallery appears repetitive, ask the agent directly for a full image set, or request a video walkthrough. Many Perth agencies, particularly those operating in the inner-northern suburbs around Scarborough Beach Road, now offer 3D Matterport tours as standard, which sidestep the static-image duplication problem entirely.

On the planning side, firms lodging development applications through the ePlanning portal should update their export settings before their next submission. The Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage has indicated it will publish formal submission guidelines covering image file formats by the end of July 2026, which will include maximum-resolution standards and explicit rules against duplicate attachments.