'My home listed without my knowledge': Sunshine Coast residents speak out on short-term rental image theft

A Mooloolaba couple discovered their home was being advertised on a major short-term rental platform in June using photographs lifted directly from a previous real estate listing, without their permission, without their knowledge, and with a stranger's bank details attached. They are not alone.

Across the Sunshine Coast, homeowners and renters are raising concerns about a pattern of duplicate image fraud that piggybacks on the region's booming short-term rental market. With Maroochydore's new CBD precinct attracting fresh investment and Sunshine Coast Airport expanding its international routes, demand for short-stay accommodation has surged, and with it, the opportunity for scammers to exploit that pressure.

The issue matters right now because Queensland's rental vacancy rate has remained stubbornly low. The Real Estate Institute of Queensland has previously reported vacancy rates below one percent across much of South East Queensland, a figure that creates the exact desperation scammers rely on. Prospective tenants, some relocating from interstate for jobs tied to the Sunshine Coast University Hospital expansion or construction work in Maroochydore's Oceanside precinct, are in a hurry. They book fast. Some transfer deposits before ever setting foot on the property.

What the scam looks like on the ground

The mechanics are straightforward. A scammer scrapes photos from a legitimate listing, often a past rental advertised through a local property management agency on Duplex Street in Nambour, or a beachside unit previously marketed on the Esplanade at Maroochydore, then reposts those images under a fraudulent listing at a below-market rate. The price is the hook. A two-bedroom unit in Mooloolaba that typically rents for around $650 a week short-term might be listed for $380, just plausible enough not to trigger suspicion.

Community members posting in local Facebook groups, including several dedicated to Sunshine Coast housing and community news, describe the moment of realisation in similar terms: arriving at an address to find either the real owners at home or the property vacant and locked. Deposits of between $500 and $2,000 are routinely lost. Complaints lodged with platforms can take weeks to resolve, and by then the fraudulent listing has migrated to a new URL.

Property managers at agencies operating along Kawana Way and in the Noosa Hinterland say the volume of enquiries from victims has increased noticeably since late 2025. They note that image theft is particularly hard to combat because the photos themselves are often legitimately in the public domain, having been published during a legal sales or rental campaign.

What residents and authorities say can be done

The Sunshine Coast Council's local law framework covers some elements of short-term rental regulation, and Queensland's Planning Act 2016 requires certain short-term accommodation operations to meet specific criteria, but neither directly addresses duplicate image fraud as a discrete offence. That gap frustrates residents who say the responsibility is being pushed back to individual platforms.

Queensland Fair Trading accepts complaints about rental scams and has published guidance on verifying listings before transferring money. The agency advises prospective renters to conduct a reverse image search on any property photos before paying a deposit, a step that takes under a minute and can expose a stolen image pulled from a legitimate Harcourts or Ray White campaign.

For homeowners, the practical advice from property managers is to watermark listing photos with the agency's name and the property address, and to set up periodic Google reverse image alerts for key photographs. If you discover your home's photos are being used fraudulently, Fair Trading Queensland asks you to document the listing URL, the platform, and the bank account details shown before reporting, because that chain of evidence is what investigators need to act.

Residents planning to rent or book short-stay accommodation around the Maroochydore CBD construction zone or near Birtinya should treat any listing priced more than 20 percent below comparable properties on verified platforms as a red flag. The pressure of a tight market is real, but a stolen photo and a fake address cost more than time.