Wrong House, Wrong Face: Central Coast Residents Speak Out on Property Listing Photo Errors

A growing number of Central Coast property owners say they have discovered photographs of their homes appearing on listings for entirely different properties — sometimes streets away, sometimes suburbs apart — and the problem is landing hardest on people who can least afford the consequences.

The issue of duplicate or misplaced images in real estate portals is not new nationally, but residents along the M1 corridor from Gosford to Wyong say it has become acute as the region's rental and sales markets have tightened sharply over the past two years. With median house prices in Gosford sitting above $800,000 and vacancy rates across the Central Coast Local Government Area remaining well below two percent for most of 2025, prospective tenants and buyers are making decisions fast — sometimes without an in-person inspection.

Front Yards That Belong to Someone Else

In the Gosford CBD renewal precinct, where apartment development along Mann Street and the surrounding blocks has accelerated since 2023, the confusion is particularly acute. Residents in newly built complexes say photos of their buildings have appeared on listings for older walk-up blocks in East Gosford and vice versa, misleading prospective tenants about building age, condition and amenity before they even book an inspection.

Community members posting in local Facebook groups — including the active Central Coast Property Owners and Renters group, which has more than 14,000 members — describe discovering their outdoor spaces, driveways and even interior rooms attached to listings for properties in Woy Woy, Tuggerah and Toukley. Several say they received unsolicited calls or visits from strangers who believed they were attending an open home at that address. One post from late June described a family arriving with a removalist truck at a private Terrigal address after an online listing used photos from that home for a different rental in Bateau Bay.

Landlords managing properties through the Central Coast's self-managed rental market — which NSW Fair Trading figures indicate is proportionally higher in regional areas than inner Sydney — say the errors often originate when property managers reuse photo sets across multiple listings to save on photography costs. A standard professional property shoot on the Coast runs between $180 and $350, according to pricing listed by several Gosford-based photography firms as of mid-2026. Cutting that cost by recycling images is common practice, particularly during high-turnover periods.

What Residents Are Asking For

Community members affected by the problem are calling for clearer accountability from both real estate agencies and the major listing platforms. The Central Coast Tenants' Advice and Advocacy Service, based in Gosford, handles queries related to misleading advertising and points residents toward NSW Fair Trading's complaint process under the Property and Stock Agents Act 2002. That legislation requires agents to ensure advertising is not misleading or deceptive, though enforcement for image-specific errors has historically been inconsistent.

Advocates working with housing affordability programs on the Coast — including those connected to the Central Coast Community Housing organisation — say the practical harm falls disproportionately on low-income renters who cannot take time off work to inspect multiple properties before applying. A person applying for a property in Wyong based on photos that are actually from a house in Kanwal has no practical way to verify the discrepancy without physically attending, and by the time the error surfaces, the application window may have closed.

NSW Fair Trading accepts complaints online and by phone at 13 32 20. Residents who believe a listing image misrepresents a property can also contact the Real Estate Institute of NSW, which maintains a complaints process for member agencies. For renters already in a tenancy who were misled by advertising, the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal at Gosford — located on Donnison Street — handles disputes that may touch on misrepresentation at the point of lease signing.

The practical advice from tenancy advocates is straightforward: before signing anything or paying a holding deposit, request a video walkthrough from the agent or check the listing against publicly available aerial imagery on NSW Spatial Services' SIX Maps platform, which shows property boundaries and structures and is free to access.