Canberra Renters Say Duplicate Listing Photos Are Costing Them Homes — and Dignity

A growing number of Canberra renters say they are wasting hundreds of dollars in inspection travel costs and losing days of leave chasing properties advertised with recycled or mismatched images — photographs lifted from previous tenancies or entirely different addresses. The practice, sometimes called duplicate image replacement, involves agencies or private landlords substituting outdated or unrelated photos when a property's current condition would likely deter applicants.

The problem is landing hardest on public servants and low-income renters already squeezed by the ACT's persistently tight vacancy rate. As of June 2026, the ACT rental vacancy rate sits below one per cent according to figures published by the Real Estate Institute of the ACT — one of the tightest in the country — meaning applicants feel they cannot afford to skip any listing, even one that looks too good to be true.

What Renters Are Experiencing on the Ground

Residents in Gungahlin's newer estates and in established Belconnen suburbs such as Hawker and Macquarie describe a consistent pattern: a listing on a major platform shows a bright, renovated kitchen and freshly laid carpet; the actual walk-through reveals carpet stained from a previous tenant and a kitchen that matches a floor plan from a decade ago. One renter who joined the ACT Tenants Union's drop-in clinic at the Ainslie Arts Centre in May described travelling from Tuggeranong to a Mitchell property three times before realising the external photos showed a different street number entirely.

The ACT Tenants Union, which operates from offices on Antill Street in Watson, has flagged the issue to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal and is urging the ACT Government to amend the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 to require that all listing images carry a date stamp and a statutory declaration that they accurately represent the property's current condition. The union has documented more than 40 formal complaints related to misleading listing imagery since January 2026, according to its published quarterly report released in May.

The Canberra Community Law centre, which provides free legal advice from its Allara Street premises in the city, has also seen an uptick in rental-related inquiries since February. Staff there have begun distributing a checklist advising renters to photograph every room immediately upon inspection and to request written confirmation of any discrepancy between listing images and actual condition before lodging an application.

Why the ACT Market Makes This Worse

Rental prices in the territory are not helping. Median weekly rent for a two-bedroom unit in Canberra reached $620 in the March 2026 quarter, according to CoreLogic data published by the Real Estate Institute of the ACT. That figure puts enormous pressure on APS3-to-APS5 public servants, who make up a significant slice of the renter cohort in growth corridors like the Gungahlin town centre precinct and around the University of Canberra campus in Bruce.

The ACT Government's Renters Rights Roadmap, announced in the 2025-26 Budget, committed $1.2 million to strengthening tenancy enforcement but did not specifically address listing image accuracy. A bill to expand the functions of Access Canberra's rental compliance team is listed for debate in the Legislative Assembly's August sitting block.

Advocacy groups are pushing for that bill to include a provision modelled on New South Wales fair-trading rules, which allow inspectors to issue on-the-spot fines for materially misleading rental advertising. The ACT currently has no equivalent mechanism.

For renters navigating the market right now, the practical advice from legal aid workers is blunt: reverse image-search every listing photo before booking an inspection, request a written confirmation from the agent that photos were taken within the past 90 days, and lodge any discrepancy report with Access Canberra's rental complaints line at 13 22 81 before signing anything. The August sitting block in the Assembly will be the next real opportunity for the issue to get a legislative hearing — and affected renters say they plan to be in the public gallery when it does.