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Incorrect and repeated photographs on Central Coast Council's online property and development registers are creating real headaches for homebuyers, renters and small businesses trying to make decisions in one of NSW's most pressured housing markets.
Central Coast Council's online property information portal is carrying duplicate and mismatched images across dozens of development application and address listings, a problem that local real estate agents, planning consultants and community advocates say is sending residents to the wrong properties, delaying purchase decisions and undermining confidence in the region's digital infrastructure at exactly the wrong time.
The issue has surfaced as the Central Coast property market remains under intense pressure. Median house prices in the Gosford–Erina corridor have climbed sharply over recent years as Sydney commuters chase affordability within reach of the M1 Pacific Motorway and the hope of future fast rail. For buyers doing preliminary due diligence online before travelling from Sydney's north shore or the inner west, a wrong photograph attached to a DA listing or a street address can mean a wasted trip, or worse, a misinformed offer.
The problem is not cosmetic. When a property record displays a photograph of a neighbouring site, a demolished structure, or an image duplicated from an entirely different suburb, the practical consequences compound quickly. A prospective buyer researching a site on Mann Street in Gosford CBD may be viewing images that belong to a Terrigal Drive address. A builder checking flood overlays or setback requirements through the council's online mapping tools can pull the wrong site context entirely.
Central Coast Council emerged from NSW Government-appointed administration in May 2022 after a financial crisis that saw it accrue a debt load requiring a sustained recovery program. The administration period froze or delayed a range of digital upgrade projects, and the council's technology infrastructure is still catching up. The duplicate image problem is, in part, a legacy of that period — data migration carried out under pressure, without the quality-control checks that a fully resourced IT team would ordinarily run.
The NSW Government's own property information platform, Spatial Services NSW, feeds data to council portals across the state, and inconsistencies between state-held cadastral records and locally uploaded imagery can create exactly the kind of duplication that residents are now encountering. Property NSW has a standing data-quality protocol that requires councils to flag discrepancies, but the reporting mechanism relies on council staff actively auditing records — a task that competes with the day-to-day workload of a planning department still rebuilding after the administration years.
The practical stakes are clear in suburbs where development activity is highest. Gosford CBD, the focus of the council's own City Centre Revitalisation Strategy, has dozens of active development applications at any given time. The Leagues Club Field precinct redevelopment and the planned activation of the Gosford waterfront area both sit within zones where image duplication on planning documents can create genuine confusion about which parcel of land is subject to which approval.
Residents using the NSW Planning Portal — the state's centralised development application tracking system, which is distinct from council's own property search — have a cleaner and more consistently maintained dataset to work from. For any decision involving money, the Planning Portal address at planningportal.nsw.gov.au should be the first reference, not the council's supplementary tools.
The Australian Institute of Conveyancers NSW Division recommends that buyers obtain a full Section 10.7 Planning Certificate directly from the council before exchanging contracts. That certificate, which costs $133 for a standard issue as of the 2025–26 council fee schedule, draws on the council's primary planning records rather than the portal's imagery layer, and is a legally reliable document even when the portal photographs are wrong.
Central Coast Council's digital services team is listed on the council website as the point of contact for reporting data errors through the online feedback form at centralcoast.nsw.gov.au. Residents who identify a duplicate image attached to their own property's address record are encouraged to lodge a correction request in writing, including the relevant lot and DP number, so the error can be tracked and fixed in the underlying dataset rather than patched at the display layer only.
The broader lesson is about the costs of deferred maintenance on public digital infrastructure. In a region where housing decisions carry enormous financial weight and where planning decisions will shape the Gosford CBD for decades, accurate public data is not a convenience — it is the foundation on which residents, investors and community groups make choices that matter.
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Published by The Daily Central Coast