Perth's property listings plagued by duplicate images as agents race to clean up digital catalogues

Perth's real estate sector is dealing with a messy housekeeping problem. Dozens of property listings across major portals including realestate.com.au and Domain have carried duplicate or mismatched images this week, a problem that agents and strata managers say has worsened significantly as the city's housing market absorbs record migration volumes and listing turnovers accelerate.

The issue matters now because Perth's property market is moving faster than at almost any point in the past decade. Median house prices in suburbs stretching from Scarborough to Cannington have climbed sharply over the past 18 months, and buyers — many of them interstate or overseas migrants arriving ahead of AUKUS-linked defence contracts at HMAS Stirling in Rockingham — are increasingly making offers based solely on online listings without attending physical inspections. A duplicate image, or worse, a photo recycled from a previous listing at the same address, can mean a buyer commits to a property expecting a renovated kitchen and finds a 1990s laminate benchtop instead.

What triggered this week's clean-up

The Real Estate Institute of Western Australia flagged the problem in a communication to member agencies earlier this week, urging compliance with the institute's digital listing standards ahead of the July 12 implementation date for updated portal guidelines. The guidelines, which have been in development since late 2025, require all residential listings to carry a unique image identifier so that duplicated files can be automatically detected before a listing goes live.

Several agencies along the St Georges Terrace strip and in the Osborne Park industrial corridor — where many mid-tier property management firms base their operations — began auditing their active listings on Tuesday. Staff at one Leederville-based agency described manually cross-checking more than 400 active rentals after their property management software flagged repeated image file names across multiple addresses. The audit process, which is not automated in older software versions, has consumed significant staff time at smaller outfits.

The volume of listings is part of the problem. Perth recorded more than 9,800 properties listed for sale in June 2026 according to figures published by the WA Department of Finance's Landgate division, a figure that represents a substantial increase on the same month in 2024. Rental listings have also climbed as new apartment stock from Metronet corridor developments in Forrestfield and Morley reaches the market. More listings mean more photography sessions, more file uploads, and more opportunity for errors to slip through.

Practical steps agencies are taking now

Property technology providers with Perth offices, including firms operating out of the Spacecubed innovation hub on St Georges Terrace, have moved quickly to offer diagnostic tools. At least two software-as-a-service platforms now offer a batch-scan function that checks an agency's entire listing library against a duplicate hash database, flagging matches within minutes rather than hours of manual review.

For buyers and renters, the practical advice from consumer advocates is straightforward: request a complete photo set directly from the agent by email before signing anything, and confirm the date the images were taken. Under WA's property sales and rental disclosure rules, an agent is required to provide accurate representations of a property's current condition. If a listing carried images from a previous tenancy — showing, say, a furnished apartment that is now empty — that gap between image and reality can form the basis of a formal complaint to Consumer Protection WA on Westralia Square in Perth CBD.

The July 12 deadline gives agencies just over a week to get their catalogues in order. For the agencies currently working through their backlogs, the bigger lesson from this week is structural: as Perth's housing demand keeps climbing — driven by defence workers, mining sector hires, and a wave of skilled migrants processed through the WA State Nominated Migration Program — the administrative systems underpinning property marketing have not kept pace with the volume. Fixing a duplicate image is a five-minute job. Discovering the problem after a contract is signed is considerably harder to unwind.