How Perth's Property Listings Got Flooded With Fake Photos — And Why the Industry Is Only Now Catching Up

Perth's rental vacancy rate sat below one percent for most of 2024 and into 2025, according to figures published by the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia. In that kind of market, a listing with a convincing set of photographs — even borrowed or duplicated ones — can attract dozens of applications before anyone sets foot inside the property. That dynamic, more than anything else, explains how duplicate listing imagery became a significant problem in this city specifically, and why real estate platforms and consumer advocates are now scrambling to deal with it.

The issue is not new. Agents and property managers have recycled photographs between listing cycles for well over a decade, sometimes innocently — reusing shots from a previous tenancy period — and sometimes deliberately, attaching images of a renovated interior to a property that has not been touched since the 1990s. What changed was scale. The post-pandemic population surge into Western Australia, driven by interstate migration and the resources boom centred on the Pilbara, compressed the time buyers and renters had to make decisions. In that compressed market, the photograph became the property.

From Casual Recycling to Systematic Deception

The shift from casual image recycling to something more systematic tracks closely with two developments in Perth's economy. First, the state government's Metronet expansion accelerated sales activity in corridor suburbs like Ellenbrook, Morley and Yanchep, creating constant listing turnover as investors repositioned ahead of new station openings. Second, the AUKUS-linked defence buildup around HMAS Stirling at Garden Island generated sustained demand for rental properties across the Rockingham and Cockburn corridors, with defence personnel and contractors needing accommodation quickly and often remotely — meaning they relied almost entirely on digital listings.

Consumer Protection WA, which sits within the Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety, began receiving a rising volume of complaints related to misleading property photographs from around mid-2023. The complaints described properties marketed with images showing features — renovated kitchens, new flooring, functional air conditioning units — that did not match the physical dwelling on inspection. In several documented cases passed to the department, identical photo sets appeared across multiple addresses in suburbs including Balga, Gosnells and Midland, suggesting the images had been lifted wholesale from other listings rather than taken on site.

Realestate.com.au and Domain, the two dominant listing platforms operating in WA, both have terms of service prohibiting misleading imagery, but enforcement has historically relied on complaints rather than automated detection. That is where the technological lag becomes important. Neither platform had deployed image-matching tools at scale across Australian listings until pressure from consumer groups and state regulators began building publicly in late 2024.

What Regulators and Platforms Are Now Required to Address

The regulatory framework that governs property advertising in WA sits primarily under the Real Estate and Business Agents Act 1978, administered by the Commissioner for Consumer Protection. The Act requires that advertising not be false or misleading, but it predates digital photography entirely and contains no specific provision about image authenticity. That legislative gap has given platforms and agents significant room to manoeuvre, and reform advocates have argued for years that an updated standard is overdue.

Western Australia's state budget surplus — which the Cook government reported at $3.1 billion for the 2024-25 financial year — has drawn attention to whether additional funding for Consumer Protection WA's compliance functions is warranted, given the workload generated by housing market complaints. The department's staffing levels in its property compliance unit have not been publicly confirmed to have increased in proportion to complaint volumes.

For prospective renters and buyers, the practical advice from property advocates in Perth is consistent: request a virtual walkthrough via live video call before submitting any application or deposit, cross-reference listing photographs against satellite and street-view imagery on Google Maps, and report suspicious listings directly to Consumer Protection WA via its online portal at consumerprotection.wa.gov.au. The Tenants WA advocacy organisation, based in East Perth on Adelaide Terrace, also maintains a guide on identifying misleading listings on its website. The fundamental problem — a broken image ecosystem in a broken housing market — will not be resolved by individual vigilance alone, but that is where renters are left for now.