Stolen Moments: Wollongong Residents Speak Out After Their Photos Turn Up on Strangers' Property Listings

The first sign something was wrong came when a Crown Street apartment dweller recognised her own kitchen — down to the cracked tile above the sink she'd been meaning to fix — in a listing for a Fairy Meadow unit she had never visited. Her photograph, taken during a routine bond inspection, had migrated to a completely different property advertisement without her knowledge or consent. She is not alone.

Across the Illawarra, residents are raising concerns about a practice loosely described as duplicate image replacement — the recycling of interior and exterior property photographs from one listing to another, whether through careless database management, deliberate deception, or third-party image-scraping tools that harvest photos from multiple listing platforms. The issue has sharpened in recent months as Wollongong's rental vacancy rate remains historically tight and prospective tenants, many of them students connected to the University of Wollongong's Northfields Avenue campus, are making decisions about properties they have never physically inspected.

Why It Matters in a Tight Market

Wollongong's rental market has been under sustained pressure. The Real Estate Institute of NSW has previously reported vacancy rates across the Illawarra sitting well below two percent for extended periods — a figure that pushes renters to commit quickly, often on the basis of online images alone. That urgency creates ideal conditions for misleading listings to go unchallenged until a tenant is already holding a lease.

Community legal centres have noticed the pattern. Illawarra Legal Centre, based in Crown Street in the Wollongong CBD, has fielded inquiries from tenants who signed agreements after viewing listings that did not reflect the actual condition or layout of a property. Staff there deal with a range of tenancy disputes, and the image accuracy problem represents a newer complication layered on top of longstanding concerns about bond disputes and repair obligations. The centre does not publish individual case numbers, but staff have described the volume of tenancy-related inquiries as consistent with a stressed rental environment.

Neighborhood Watch coordinators in suburbs including Fairy Meadow, Corrimal and Mangerton have also heard from residents who discovered their homes photographed without adequate notice — sometimes during inspections they were not clearly informed were being documented for future marketing use.

What Residents Are Asking For

The conversation has found its way into community meetings at Wollongong City Council chambers on Burelli Street. Residents speaking at recent public forums have raised two distinct concerns: the deceptive use of images in rental listings, and the broader question of whether tenants and owner-occupiers have meaningful control over photographs taken inside their homes.

Under the NSW Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998, individuals have some recourse when personal data — which can include images of private spaces — is collected or used in ways inconsistent with the purpose for which it was gathered. NSW Fair Trading, which oversees property agent conduct, has a formal complaints process for misleading advertising, though residents who have lodged complaints describe the process as slow relative to how quickly a problematic listing can circulate.

Several residents have turned to tenant advocacy groups including Shelter NSW, which operates state-wide but has regional contacts across the Illawarra, seeking guidance on how to compel agents to remove misappropriated images. The short answer from those services: document everything, screenshot the listing with a timestamp, and lodge a formal complaint with NSW Fair Trading online or by calling 13 32 20.

For prospective tenants, advocates suggest requesting a live video walkthrough before signing any agreement, particularly for properties where only a handful of interior images are available — a low image count is sometimes a marker that photographs have been borrowed rather than taken on site. Owner-occupiers concerned about images taken during inspections can request written confirmation from their agent about how and where photographs will be used before any inspection takes place.

NSW Fair Trading's jurisdiction over agent conduct means complaints with sufficient documentation can result in formal investigations. The agency's compliance team can be reached directly through the Service NSW portal. For residents who believe a listing is actively misleading — not simply aesthetically deceptive — a complaint framed around section 52 of the Australian Consumer Law, which prohibits misleading and deceptive conduct, may carry more immediate weight.