Do we need the tenant's consent to photograph an occupied rental?

Entry to photograph is usually the easy part. In Victoria there is an express ground for entering to produce advertising images and videos, on seven days' written notice. The consent duties sit around the images rather than the entry, and the one most offices trip over is the last: an image produced for a purpose other than advertising, such as an inspection photo or a condition report, needs the renter's written consent before it can be used in advertising. Separately, an interior photograph of an occupied home is often personal information under the Privacy Act, because possessions and papers can make the occupant reasonably identifiable once the image is tied to a listed address.

By Jon Oates, Founder of Privaproof · Last updated 31 July 2026 · Start the free 2-min audit →

General information, not legal advice. Your obligations depend on your circumstances.

Does this apply to your agency?

The Privacy Act binds “organisations”. An agency whose annual turnover for the previous financial year was more than A$3 million is one (ss 6C, 6D, 6DA). Turnover is the income the business itself earns in the course of carrying it on, so for an agency that is commission, management and letting fees and referral income. Rent you collect for a landlord and hold in trust is generally the landlord’s money passing through rather than your income, so a large rent roll does not by itself put you near the threshold. If it is close enough to decide the answer, check the figure with your accountant. Note also that once turnover has exceeded A$3 million in a financial year that has ended, the exemption does not return by later dropping below it (s 6D(4)(a)). A smaller agency is generally exempt, but is still covered if any of these apply: it provides AML/CTF designated services, i.e. brokering the sale, purchase or transfer of real estate (from 1 July 2026, for the personal information it handles in connection with those obligations, s 6E(1A)); it is related to a body corporate that is not a small business operator, such as a group or franchise entity (s 6D(9)); it operates a residential tenancy database (s 6E(2)); it is a contracted service provider under a Commonwealth contract (s 6D(4)(e)); it trades in personal information (s 6D(4)(c)–(d), subject to the consent and authorised-by-law carve-outs in s 6D(7)–(8)); or it has opted in (s 6EA). Merely listing a tenant on, or searching, someone else’s database does not automatically make you covered. Work out whether the Privacy Act applies to you. Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) ss 6C, 6D, 6DA, 6E.

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Can we enter the property to take the photographs?

Yes, and this is where most conversations start and stop, which is the problem.

The Victorian Residential Tenancies Act 1997 contains an express ground for entry to produce advertising images and videos, subject to seven days' written notice to the renter. So entry is not the obstacle. The obligations that actually bite come later, when the images are used.

Sources: Residential Tenancies Act 1997 (Vic), s 89A (entry to produce advertising images and videos), read at source · Consumer Affairs Victoria, renting

Victoria's provision has several limbs, and they are narrower and more specific than the version usually passed around an office.

Consent to publish images showing possessions is conditional, not automatic. The duty arises where the renter has first asked for their possessions to be excluded from the images and to review them before they are used. It is not a standing requirement to get written consent for every photograph of an occupied home. If nobody has asked, the duty has not been triggered.
Re-using an old image needs consent where the image displays a renter's possession. The twelve-month rule catches the ordinary re-let, where last year's photographs go back up without anyone asking. Note the qualifier: it attaches to an image displaying the renter's possession, not to every old photograph in the folder.
⭐ Using a non-advertising image for advertising needs written consent, and this is the one to watch. A photograph taken at a routine inspection, or as part of a condition report, was produced for a different purpose. Putting it into a listing, a social post or a brochure is an advertising use of it, and that requires the renter's written consent. This is the limb a busy office contravenes without noticing, because the photograph is already sitting in the file and using it feels like housekeeping rather than publishing.

The practical version: keep advertising photography and inspection photography in separate folders, and treat moving an image between them as a decision that needs consent rather than a drag and drop.

Sources: Residential Tenancies Act 1997 (Vic), s 89A, including the consent limbs at s 89A(4) to (5), (7) and (8), read at source · Consumer Affairs Victoria, renting

Does this apply outside Victoria?

Victoria is the jurisdiction we have read directly, and it is the clearest statement of the position, which is why it is set out above rather than a national summary that would be wrong somewhere.

Residential tenancies law is state and territory law, and the equivalent provisions differ in both structure and strength. Treat the Victorian limbs as the shape of the question to ask about your own jurisdiction, not as the answer for it, and check your own Act before a campaign. We would rather tell you which one we have checked than give you a national rule nobody verified.

Sources: the relevant state or territory Residential Tenancies Act

Is a property photograph personal information at all?

Often yes, and that is a separate question from tenancy law.

The threshold is the definition in section 6 of the Privacy Act 1988: information about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable.

An empty, unfurnished property usually will not meet it, though "usually" is doing real work here, because an image tied to a listed address may still be about a reasonably identifiable owner.

An occupied home frequently will. Interiors show possessions, correspondence on a bench, children's belongings, photographs on a wall. Paired with an address on a public listing, that is information about the people who live there.

⚠️ One step further. Visible medications, health aids or mobility equipment can make an interior image sensitive information, which engages APP 3.3 and its consent requirement. That is a materially different obligation from ordinary collection, and it is easy to walk straight past with a camera in your hand.

Sources: Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), section 6 and APP 3, APP 3.3 (Schedule 1) · OAIC APP Guidelines chapters B and 3 · OAIC APP guidelines

What if we send the images offshore for editing or virtual staging?

Where the images are personal information, sending them to an overseas editor is a cross-border disclosure under APP 8, and the editor is an ordinary overseas supplier rather than a production step.

So: know where they are, contract for it, and disclose overseas disclosure in your privacy policy and collection notices, including the countries where recipients are likely to be located if it is practicable to specify them.

Then reduce what you send:

Photograph occupied homes so that personal effects, documents and photographs are not in frame. That is better marketing anyway.
Strip metadata, and keep tenant names and contact details out of the job brief.
Where images of an occupied home do go offshore, apply the same expectations you would to any other overseas recipient.

Sources: Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), APP 1.4(f) and (g), APP 5.2(i) and (j), APP 8 (Schedule 1) · OAIC APP Guidelines chapter 8 · OAIC APP guidelines · See also overseas disclosure and offshore CRMs

Common questions

Can we re-use last year's photographs for a re-let?

Where the image displays the renter's possession, the twelve-month rule means you need consent again. Where the property was empty when it was shot, or nothing of the renter's is visible, that limb is not engaged. The safe habit is to record, at the time of the shoot, whether a renter's possessions are in the frame, because working that out two years later from the photograph alone is guesswork.

The tenant never objected, so can we publish?

In Victoria, the consent-to-publish duty is triggered by the renter asking for possessions to be excluded and to review the images. If they have not asked, that particular duty has not arisen. But the other limbs stand on their own: the twelve-month re-use rule and, above all, the written consent needed before an inspection or condition-report photograph is used in advertising.

Does "keep possessions out of frame" solve this?

It is good practice and it reduces the Privacy Act exposure, because fewer images are personal information. It does not answer a consent question, and it does nothing about the re-use limb or the non-advertising-image limb, both of which are about how an image is used rather than what is in it.

Sources

This is general information, not legal advice. Privaproof provides privacy tools and general information; it is not a law practice and does not provide legal advice. Residential tenancies law differs in every state and territory; the provisions set out above are Victorian, and you should check the Act that applies to you before relying on them. Last reviewed: 31 July 2026.