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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →In February 2016, advertisements for a house in Penshurst, in Sydney's south, showed the home without the large water tower that stands behind it. The case is recalled in an article the REIQ published on 27 June 2023, which reports NSW Fair Trading's response at the time: digital enhancement of advertising material may be an offence where the enhancements are not disclosed or create a deception for buyers.
Removing a water tower took a skilled retoucher in 2016. Today the same edit is a menu item, and so are a furnished living room, a blue sky and a kitchen that has not been built. This guide explains what those edits are, what Australian law says about altered images in property advertising, how Queensland's position differs from rules adopted elsewhere, what the industry has said about disclosure, and what a buyer can compare when standing in the actual house.
Four kinds of edit, from furniture to "renovation"
The vocabulary is loose, and the same words are used for very different things. Four families of edit cover most of what appears in listings.
Digital or virtual staging places furniture and decoration into a photograph of an empty or sparsely furnished room. Money magazine, in an article of 21 January 2026, defines virtual staging as editing photographs to insert furniture into empty spaces, remove clutter or make a property look lighter and brighter. The room is real; the sofa is not.
Sky replacement swaps the sky in an exterior photograph for another one: a grey afternoon becomes a clear morning, or a daytime shot becomes dusk with the lights on. The house is untouched, but the weather and the mood are borrowed.
Related readAI-written listing descriptions: who answers for the errors?Object removal deletes something from the frame. At one end it is a garden hose or a car in the driveway. At the other it is the kind of thing the REIQ's 2023 article lists as a problem: electricity towers, objects on a neighbouring property, or whatever is obstructing a view.
AI "renovation" images go furthest. The software is given a photograph of a room and asked to show it in another state: new flooring, a different kitchen, walls repainted, a wall taken out. Money's article also reports edits that insert features which do not exist at all, giving pools and water fountains as examples. The result is a picture of a property that nobody can inspect, because it has not been built.
The four differ in a way that matters legally. Staging adds movable things that do not come with the house. Sky replacement changes conditions around the house. Object removal and renovation images change what the property, or its surroundings, appear to be.
Why the edits have spread
Cost explains most of it. Money's January 2026 article puts virtual staging at between $0.23 and more than $45 an image, and physical home staging at between $1,500 and more than $8,000. The same article reports that staging a home can add 5 to 10 per cent to the final sale price, which is the reason sellers stage at all. When a similar visual effect can be had for the price of a coffee, the choice is easy to understand.
Audience explains the rest. The photograph is where most buyers meet a property. Money reports that more than 13 million Australians visited realestate.com.au in October 2025. An image seen by that many people, most of whom will never visit, carries nearly the whole weight of the advertisement.
Related readTenant scoring software: the limits Queensland law puts on rankingThe REIQ's 2023 article adds a point that makes accuracy matter more. Some buyers and tenants commit without ever seeing the property in person, a pattern the article links to the period of pandemic restrictions, and such people rely entirely on the advertising material. For them there is no inspection to correct the picture.
Presentation or alteration: where the line is drawn
Australian sources draw the same line in slightly different words. On one side is presenting the property well. On the other is changing what it appears to be.
The REIQ's 2023 article, written by a special counsel at Carter Newell Lawyers, says a photograph should not be digitally altered or enhanced in a way that materially changes the photograph or the perception it gives. It lists changing the colour of wall paint, removing undesirable elements from the background and disguising an obstructed view as examples of what goes too far. Cleaning the property and adding lighting before the shoot are, in the article's words, not misleading.
A second REIQ article, published on 2 February 2026 and dealing with artificial intelligence, brings the same test to the new tools: AI image alteration that artificially lightens the colour of the paint on the walls may be considered misleading. The table sets the examples from both articles side by side.
| Practice | How the articles treat it |
|---|---|
| Cleaning and tidying before the shoot | Not misleading |
| Adding lighting before photographing | Not misleading |
| Changing or lightening wall paint in the image | May be misleading |
| Removing towers or neighbouring objects | Given as an example of a material change |
| Disguising an obstructed view | Given as an example of a material change |
| Using photographs that are out of date | Warned against: images must show current condition |
Virtual furniture and replaced skies do not appear by name in either list. They are judged by the same test: does the edit materially change the perception the photograph gives? A dining table in an empty room may not. A double bed drawn into a room that only takes a single does, and a sunset behind a house that faces the other way arguably does too. The answer depends on the image, which is why no source reads as a simple permitted list.
Related readCan a chatbot read your Queensland sale contract for you?The Queensland law that applies
Queensland has no rule written specifically for edited photographs. Two general laws do the work.
The first is the Property Occupations Act 2014. According to the REIQ's 2023 article, section 212 prohibits licensees and real estate salespeople from making false or misleading representations about the sale, exchange or letting of property, with a maximum penalty of 540 penalty units. Under section 212(3), as the article sets it out, a representation is misleading if it would reasonably tend to lead to a belief in a state of affairs that does not in fact exist, whether or not it says so expressly. A photograph says nothing expressly. It simply shows, which is why this wording matters for images: a picture of a clear view tends to lead to a belief that the view is clear.
Section 212(4) treats a representation made without reasonable grounds as misleading, and section 212(5) puts the burden on the person who made it to show that the grounds existed.
The second law is the Australian Consumer Law. Section 18 prohibits conduct in trade or commerce that is misleading or deceptive, or likely to mislead or deceive. The REIQ's article describes this as a broad concept that takes in words, actions and pictures, and notes that it is irrelevant whether anyone intended to mislead. An agent who publishes an image edited by a photographer or an outside service, without noticing what was removed, is not protected by not having noticed. The REIQ's February 2026 article says as much about AI in general: an agent can be liable for misrepresentation without knowing the content contained an error, and remains fully accountable for the accuracy of all representations.
Related readDeepfakes and cloned voices: how property identity checks respondThe Queensland Office of Fair Trading's property advertising page gives the consumer law's maximum penalties. For a corporation the maximum is the greatest of $100 million, three times the benefit received, or 30 per cent of annual turnover during the breach period. For an individual it is $2.5 million per breach.
What the regulators publish, and what they leave unsaid
Readers looking for an official Queensland statement on edited photographs will not find a detailed one. The Office of Fair Trading's property advertising page, updated on 1 July 2026, states that licensed agents must not engage in misleading or deceptive conduct and cites the consumer law and the Property Occupations Act. Its detail is about price: it explains bait advertising, the meaning of an "offers over" figure and the minimum selling price recorded on the Form 6 appointment. It does not mention photographs, digital alteration or artificial intelligence.
That silence is not a gap in the law. The prohibition on misleading conduct covers any representation in an advertisement, and the REIQ's articles apply it to images without hesitation. It does mean that, in Queensland, the working guidance on photographs comes from the industry body and its lawyers and not from a regulator's checklist.
At national level, the ACCC's advertising and promotions page states the general principle that binds every advertiser: a business must be able to prove any claim it advertises, and claims should be true, accurate and based on reasonable grounds. The page does not single out property images. It also notes that the ACCC does not resolve individual disputes between consumers and businesses; in Queensland a complaint about an agent's advertising is a matter for the Office of Fair Trading.
Related readGenerative AI on a conveyancing file: what Queensland's rules sayNo specific image rule, but the general prohibitions apply in full
Queensland has not adopted a labelling requirement for edited property photographs. An altered image is judged under section 212 of the Property Occupations Act 2014 and section 18 of the Australian Consumer Law, where the question is the belief the image tends to create.
Other states and countries: their rules, not Queensland's
Rules written for edited images do exist elsewhere. They are reported here strictly as the rules of those places. None of them applies in Queensland.
New South Wales publishes advertising guidelines for property agents through NSW Fair Trading. They say agents must not modify photographs, or allow them to be modified, so that the images no longer truthfully and fairly represent the property, and must not change the appearance of a property by digitally removing or adding features. Adjusting lighting effects only to compensate for poor lighting, the guidelines add, may be acceptable. They also give examples that have nothing to do with software: a photograph of a water view placed beside a photograph of the house so that it is hard to tell whether the view can be seen from it, and pictures of cafes and shops captioned with vague claims of being minutes away.
New South Wales has also moved on rental advertising in particular. Information Age, the Australian Computer Society's publication, reported on 3 July 2025 that the state government had announced the Residential Tenancies (Protection of Personal Information) Amendment Bill 2025. As described in that report, the bill would require landlords and agents to disclose when images in a rental advertisement have been altered in a way that conceals faults or misleads applicants, with proposed penalties of $5,500 for individuals and $22,000 for businesses. The examples given were an AI-generated double bed in a room sized for a single, a kitchen with surfaces smoothed to hide damage, rooms made to look larger, and bare apartments furnished by software. The report concerns a proposal at the date it was written and covers rentals; it does not mention sales listings.
Related readA rent figure from software: what Queensland's Act asks before it runsOutside Australia, Money's January 2026 article reports that California has required real estate professionals, from 1 January 2026, to disclose digitally altered or AI-generated images, from small lighting edits to larger changes such as adding or removing grass.
| Place | Specific image rule | Approach | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Queensland | None found | General ban on misleading representations | Office of Fair Trading; REIQ |
| New South Wales, all listings | Yes, in guidelines | No digital adding or removing of features | NSW Fair Trading guidelines |
| New South Wales, rentals | Bill announced in 2025 | Disclosure of misleading alterations | Information Age, 3 July 2025 |
| California | Yes, from 1 January 2026 | Disclosure of altered or AI-generated images | Money, 21 January 2026 |
The table shows two different regulatory ideas. One forbids the alteration. The other allows it and requires that it be declared. Queensland's general law does neither in terms: it asks whether the advertisement, taken as it is, misleads.
Does a label or disclaimer fix an edited image?
It is common to see "virtually staged" or "artist's impression" in small type on a listing photograph. Whether that is enough is a fair question, and the sources do not give a single answer.
The REIQ's 2023 article recommends that marketing material carry appropriately worded disclaimers and that agents actively encourage buyers and tenants to make their own enquiries. NSW Fair Trading's 2016 statement about the Penshurst advertisements, as the REIQ reports it, described an offence where enhancements are not disclosed or create a deception, which treats disclosure as relevant without treating it as a cure for deception.
Practitioners quoted in the press are cautious. In Money's January 2026 article, a representative of a national real estate network is reported as saying that where AI alters layouts, finishes, fixtures or sightlines in a way a reasonable buyer could rely on, the risk is real even if a disclaimer is included.
The reasoning behind that caution can be read from the Queensland test itself. Section 212(3) asks what belief a representation would reasonably tend to create. A clear label on a furnished image of an empty room can prevent the belief that the furniture is there. A footnote under a photograph from which a neighbouring building has been removed is unlikely to restore the building in the viewer's mind. Labels work best on additions that everyone understands to be temporary, and least on changes to the property and its setting.
What the industry bodies have said about disclosure
The REIQ's published position, across its two articles, is that agents are responsible for what their images convey, that material alterations should be avoided, and that disclaimers and encouragement to investigate belong in marketing material. Its February 2026 article describes AI as a drafting and support tool only, not a substitute for professional judgment or due diligence. Neither article sets out a standard wording for labelling an edited image.
No guidance on edited images from the Real Estate Institute of Australia was found in the research for this guide, and Money's January 2026 article reports no stated position from the national body, the REIQ or the major listing portals on labelling. That records what could be read at the time of writing and no more.
What the sources support, then, is a practice assembled from principles: keep edits to presentation, label staging plainly on the image itself, keep the original photographs, and make sure the first unedited view of each room is available to anyone who asks. Agencies that commission photography can also ask the photographer or editing service to state what was changed in each file, because the agent answers for the published result.
A label can explain a sofa that is not there. It cannot put back a power line that is.
What a buyer can check at inspection
An inspection is the one moment when the advertisement and the property are in the same place. Having the listing photographs open on a phone, and walking through them in order, turns a vague impression into a comparison. The three checks below follow the kinds of edit described at the start of this guide.
- Stand where the camera stoodMatch each exterior photo from the same spot. Look for towers, lines, neighbouring buildings and anything else missing from the picture.
- Measure rooms against the furniture shownCheck whether the bed, table or sofa in the image would fit, and whether walls, floors and benchtops match in colour and condition.
- Ask what was editedAsk the agent which images were staged or altered, and whether the unedited originals can be viewed.
A few further points are worth a minute each. Views should be checked from the windows and decks they were photographed from, and at eye level, because a view shown beside a house is not always a view from it. Light is honest only on the day: a room photographed bright may face away from the sun, and a compass on a phone settles the aspect. Features that would be expensive to add, such as a pool, built-in joinery or a second bathroom, should simply be counted. And a date on the photographs is worth asking for, since the REIQ's 2023 article warns agents against reusing old images that no longer show the property as it is.
Buyers who cannot attend have fewer protections and more reason to ask. A live video walk-through, held on request and not pre-recorded, shows rooms without editing. A building and pest inspector's own photographs, taken for a different purpose, are an independent record of condition. Where the purchase is made without any inspection, the questions in the third step can be put in writing before a contract is signed, so that the answers are on record.
What a seller can ask before the shoot
The seller is the person on whose behalf the images are published, and usually the one paying for them. A short conversation with the agent before the photographer arrives prevents most problems.
It helps to settle which rooms will be staged physically, which virtually, and how virtual staging will be labelled. It helps to ask whether anything will be removed from exterior images, and to say plainly that neighbouring structures and street infrastructure should stay in. If renovation concept images are to be used, they are safest presented apart from the photographs of the property as it stands, and described as concepts. And it is reasonable for a seller to see the final set of images, next to the originals, before the listing goes live.
None of this argues against making a home look its best. The sources draw their line somewhere quite specific: between showing a property at its best and showing a property that is not there. Cleaning, styling, good light and a patient photographer all sit on the first side of it, and they remain the edits that need no label at all.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
