Canberra Renters and Sellers Speak Out on Duplicate Listing Photos Distorting the Property Market

Canberra residents looking to rent or buy property are raising concerns about a practice that has quietly crept into the local market: the use of duplicate, outdated or misrepresenting images in online property listings, leaving prospective tenants and buyers turning up to inspections to find homes that look nothing like the photographs.

The issue has sharpened focus in the ACT market at a time when housing affordability is already stretched thin. Median house prices in Canberra remained above $900,000 through the first half of 2026, according to CoreLogic data, and rental vacancy rates across the territory have hovered near historic lows. In that environment, residents say, a misleading listing photograph is not a minor inconvenience — it can mean wasted leave from work, unnecessary travel to distant suburbs, and decisions made on faulty information.

Community Facebook groups serving Gungahlin, Belconnen and the inner north have carried dozens of posts in recent months from residents comparing listing photos to the homes they actually inspected. Several threads describe photos apparently taken years earlier, before wear or renovation, or images that appear to have been copied wholesale from a previous listing for a different property on the same street.

What Residents Are Experiencing

The pattern is consistent across different parts of the city. In Gungahlin's Franklin and Ngunnawal estates, residents have described turning up to rental inspections on newly listed properties on Hibberson Street-adjacent streets only to find carpets, kitchens and outdoor areas bearing little resemblance to the advertised photographs. In Belconnen, near the Westfield shopping centre and around the Emu Bank waterfront, similar complaints have circulated on community boards about apartments listed with images that appear to show a different, more recently renovated unit in the same complex.

The ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which handles tenancy disputes in the territory, does not specifically track complaints linked to listing photographs, but residents say the absence of a formal complaints pathway is itself part of the problem. The ACT's rental laws, last substantially updated through the Residential Tenancies Act 1997 and its subsequent amendments, do not explicitly address the accuracy of digital marketing materials. Consumer Affairs ACT, which sits within the Access Canberra directorate, handles misleading advertising complaints under Australian Consumer Law, but residents say the process is slow and the threshold for action unclear.

The Real Estate Institute of the ACT has a code of conduct covering member agencies, and listings on platforms like Domain and realestate.com.au are subject to platform terms that prohibit deliberately misleading content. Whether those mechanisms are working in practice is what community members are now questioning publicly.

Practical Steps and What Comes Next

Several residents active in the Canberra Renters Facebook group, which has more than 8,000 members, have begun compiling guidance for others: screenshot listings before inspections, use street-view tools to cross-check exterior images against current satellite data, and lodge a complaint with Access Canberra if an advertised property is materially different from what is presented in person. The group has also been directing members toward the Tenants' Union ACT on Lonsdale Street in Braddon, which provides free advice on rental disputes.

ANU's Research School of Economics published a working paper in March 2026 examining information asymmetries in Australian rental markets, noting that digital listing quality — including photo accuracy — has measurable effects on the speed and price outcomes of transactions, though the paper did not focus specifically on Canberra.

For buyers, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's MoneySmart guidance recommends always commissioning an independent building and pest inspection before exchanging contracts, a step that would surface discrepancies between listing imagery and actual property condition. For renters, however, no equivalent mandatory protection exists, and the financial cost of multiple wasted inspections falls entirely on them.

Access Canberra confirmed to The Daily Canberra this week that it accepts misleading advertising complaints online at the ACT Government's official service portal. Whether a pattern of complaints about listing images would prompt any broader regulatory review of real estate marketing standards in the territory is a question advocates say they intend to raise directly with the ACT Fair Trading team before the end of the third quarter of 2026.