Duplicate Images on Council's Property Listings Are Costing Vendors Time and Trust, Officials and Experts Say

Central Coast Council's online property and development application portals are displaying duplicate and incorrectly matched images across dozens of residential listings and DA submissions, drawing complaints from real estate professionals, community advocates and urban planners who say the problem is undermining confidence in an already stretched housing system.

The issue has sharpened in recent weeks as Sydney's record-breaking winter heat — the hottest June since 1859, according to the Bureau of Meteorology — has nudged a fresh cohort of buyers northward along the M1, hunting for affordable alternatives to the city. When those buyers open Central Coast Council's online planning portal or check DA tracker pages and find photographs of the wrong property, some are simply walking away.

What the Region's Key Players Are Saying

Erina-based property advisory firm Central Coast Property Collective has flagged the image duplication problem to council officers on at least three separate occasions since March 2026, according to industry sources familiar with the correspondence. The firm, which operates across the Gosford CBD renewal corridor and out to Woy Woy, has described the error as more than cosmetic: mismatched images on development applications can lead a neighbour to lodge an objection against the wrong parcel, or cause a prospective buyer to miscalculate flood risk by looking at photographs of a different site entirely.

Central Coast Council's planning directorate acknowledged the portal issue in a public notice posted to its website in May 2026, advising applicants to verify images manually through the NSW Planning Portal operated by the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure. The notice did not specify how many records were affected or provide a rectification timeline.

The Real Estate Institute of NSW has, at a state level, been pushing for standardised image verification protocols across all local government DA portals since 2024. For the Central Coast, where median house prices in suburbs like Gosford, Kariong and Umina Beach have climbed to ranges that make accurate listing data essential for buyers making six-figure decisions, the stakes are higher than in more established markets where buyers have multiple data sources to cross-check.

Local Detail and the Practical Fallout

At Gosford's Central Coast Mariners Centre of Excellence on Glennie Street — which has become an informal benchmark for Gosford CBD regeneration progress — planners working on adjoining residential uplift proposals have noted that image errors on publicly visible DA documents create a trust deficit that slows community consultation. When residents attending pop-up engagement sessions on Mann Street are shown portal images that don't match the site under discussion, the sessions lose credibility quickly.

The problem is not unique to the Central Coast, but the region's history makes it particularly sensitive. Central Coast Council only emerged from state-government administration in late 2022 following a financial crisis, and its digital systems have been through multiple upgrades since then. The NSW Government's Local Government Amendment (Financial Recovery) Act underpinned that administration process, and council has been publicly committed to restoring community trust ever since.

Industry data compiled by CoreLogic for the March 2026 quarter placed the Central Coast's median house price at approximately $870,000 — a figure that means buyers and sellers have limited tolerance for administrative errors that could delay a settlement or trigger a dispute.

Council's IT and planning teams are understood to be working through a file audit of records uploaded since January 2025, when a portal migration introduced the duplication fault. Homeowners with active DAs lodged through the NSW Planning Portal are being advised to log into their applicant dashboard, navigate to the documents tab, and manually confirm each attached image matches the correct lot and deposited plan number. Agents marketing properties affected by council portal errors can also request a written clarification letter from council's customer service centre at 2 Hely Street, Wyong, or the Gosford office on Donnison Street, which can be appended to contracts of sale to satisfy conveyancing requirements. The audit is expected to be completed before the end of the July school holidays.