Do you have to disclose virtually staged photos in Australia?

This guide is general information, not legal advice. Obligations here sit across the Australian Consumer Law and state based property and agency legislation, and they are enforced by different regulators. Before you set a policy for your listings, check the requirements in your own state and check what your agency already requires. If a particular listing worries you, ask your principal or your own legal adviser rather than a guide on a website.

The Australian Consumer Law prohibits conduct that is misleading or deceptive, or likely to mislead or deceive. It is not a rule about staging specifically. It is a rule about the impression your marketing creates.

That framing is more useful than a checklist, because it tells you what the test is. The question is not whether software was involved. It is whether a buyer looking at your listing would come away with a false impression of the property.

An empty room with generated furniture in it can be entirely fine, because buyers understand the furniture is not part of the sale. A photo with a crack edited out is a different thing, because the crack was part of the property.

The major Australian portals expect digitally altered or staged imagery to be identified. In practice that means the disclosure belongs on the listing itself rather than only in your file notes. Portal content rules are set by the portals and do change, so check the current version for each one you publish to rather than relying on what was true last year.

Two habits cover most of it. Say it in the listing copy, and mark it on the image.

In the copy, a plain line does the job: some images are digitally staged. Put it where someone reading the listing will actually see it, not buried at the end of a paragraph about the school catchment.

On the image, a small caption or corner label reading digitally staged travels with the photo when it is screenshotted, shared or reposted. Listing copy does not travel that way.

Use the same wording on every listing so it becomes a process rather than a judgement call you make each time.

Do not alter structural features. Adding, removing, resizing or moving a wall, a window, a door or a room changes what is being sold.

Do not hide defects. Damp, cracking, damage, stains and disrepair are conditions of the property, not styling.

Be careful with removal. Adding furniture to an empty room is the easy case. Taking something out is where staging most often goes wrong, because the thing removed may have been covering a fault, or may have been the fault. Removing a rug is presentation. Removing a rug that was over damaged flooring is not.

Do not stage in a way that misrepresents scale. Furniture sized to make a room look larger than it is creates exactly the false impression the law is concerned with.

Keep the originals, stored with the listing rather than on a phone. If anyone asks what a room actually looked like, the best answer is the file, and being able to produce it straight away is worth more than any wording you choose.

The listing copy states that some images are digitally staged.

Staged images are labelled on the image itself.

Nothing structural has been added, removed or moved.

No defect has been edited out or covered up.

Nothing was removed that was concealing a fault.

The unstaged originals are saved with the listing.

Your agency's policy and the current rules of every portal you publish to have both been checked.

DomeAgent stages empty rooms from a photo, and it does not add the disclosure for you. That is deliberate. The listing copy is yours, the compliance obligation sits with you and your agency, and the wording should not be something a tool decides.

Nothing in the product changes the analysis above. Whether staging was done by a studio, in Photoshop or by generation, the question a buyer would ask is the same one.