Sunshine Coast Leaders Tackle Fake Property Photos Distorting Real Estate Market

A growing chorus of voices in the property, planning and tourism sectors is pushing Sunshine Coast Council and real estate regulators to crack down on duplicate and deceptive listing images, photographs recycled across multiple properties, or images that bear little resemblance to what tenants and buyers actually find on arrival. The practice, long dismissed as a minor nuisance, is now being flagged as a material problem in one of Queensland's tightest housing markets.

The timing matters. The Sunshine Coast is in the middle of a population surge that has pushed residential vacancy rates to levels that leave renters with almost no leverage. When a listing's photographs misrepresent a property, whether through image duplication across multiple short-term rental platforms, or through the recycling of decade-old photos that predate renovations or deterioration, the consequences fall hardest on people with the fewest alternatives. That context is driving urgency across several local bodies that might otherwise have treated the issue as a consumer affairs footnote.

Where the Pressure Is Coming From

Sunshine Coast Council has been working through its short-term rental regulatory framework since the state government signalled in 2024 that local authorities would carry greater responsibility for platform compliance. Within that framework, image integrity has emerged as a distinct sticking point. Council planning officers reviewing listings on platforms like Airbnb and Stayz have encountered cases where the same set of professional interior photographs appears attached to multiple separate properties, sometimes within the same suburb, occasionally on the same street in areas like Minyama and Buddina, where short-term rental density is high.

The Real Estate Institute of Queensland, which covers agents operating across the Sunshine Coast from its Brisbane base, has standing guidance requiring that listing images be current and accurately representative. That guidance, however, applies to licensed agents, not to private landlords listing directly on holiday platforms, a gap that local advocates say leaves a significant portion of the market effectively unregulated on this point.

The Maroochydore CBD redevelopment precinct adds another dimension. As new apartment towers come online along Cornmeal Creek and the surrounding SunCentral footprint, off-the-plan marketing materials have drawn scrutiny for using renders and images that project finishes, outlooks and amenity that differ from completed units. Property valuation professionals working in the area have noted informally that render-versus-reality discrepancies complicate their assessments, particularly when comparable sales data is thin for a precinct where most stock is newly built.

What a Resolution Looks Like, and When

Consumer advocates point to New South Wales as a partial model. The NSW Fair Trading office has, since 2023, accepted complaints specifically about misleading property images under existing fair trading legislation, treating flagrant duplication as a form of misrepresentation. Queensland's Office of Fair Trading has similar powers on paper, but local housing advocates argue enforcement on image-specific complaints has been rare.

For the short-term rental segment, the most concrete near-term mechanism is Sunshine Coast Council's proposed registration scheme for holiday properties, flagged in council budget discussions for the 2025-26 financial year, which, if adopted, would require owners to submit accurate images as part of registration. That registration process would give council a baseline against which listed images could be compared. No final date for that scheme's introduction has been publicly confirmed.

For buyers and renters navigating the market right now, property advisory services operating out of Maroochydore and Caloundra recommend requesting a video walkthrough or live virtual inspection before committing to any property whose listing images appear professionally styled but undated. Cross-referencing listing photos against Google Street View and historical listing databases, several of which archive Sunshine Coast property records going back to 2015, can surface recycled images within minutes. It is an imperfect workaround, but until a registration or audit mechanism is in place, it remains one of the few tools available to people who cannot afford to be surprised by what they find on moving day.