What we found
- 73 of 91 left it out. Of 569 Australian homes for sale in September 2026, 91 had something big next door: power lines, bus stops, phone towers, water towers or service stations.
- Power lines, 27 of 31. Bus stops were left out 13 times in 14. The camera simply faced the other way.
- Four in five. That is how often a listing with something big next door kept it out of every photo.
- Public housing, ten times apart on crime. Two Sydney suburbs with public housing differ tenfold on police records from 1995 to 2026.
- Traffic peaks when you are not looking. Most buyers inspect on a Saturday morning. Most roads are busiest on a weekday afternoon.
Our research: Environmental risk around a home, measured
The story: what do listing photos leave out?
We checked 569 Australian homes for sale in September 2026. Each set of listing photos went beside pictures taken from the road outside.
91 of those homes had something big next door. 73 of the 91 kept it out of every photo. Power lines were left out 27 times in 31, and bus stops 13 times in 14.
One was 7 Brokenwood Place, Cherrybrook, in Sydney, photographed for sale on 6 August 2026. A transmission tower stands 63 metres away. None of the agent's photos show it, though the street picture from June 2022 does.
Nothing in the photos was edited. The camera simply faced away from the tower.
Is it bad to buy near public housing?
Our reel: two Sydney suburbs with public housing, ten times apart on recorded crime.
Narraweena, on Sydney's northern beaches, records about two thirds of the typical suburb's crime. Woolloomooloo, beside the Sydney city centre, records about seven times it. Both have public housing, on New South Wales police records from 1995 to 2026.
So the label alone tells a buyer very little. Our suburb report gives the share of public housing for the suburb and for each block. The same report gives the recorded crime beside it. We measured what was recorded and offer no cause.
When is peak hour on my street?
Our reel: Melbourne's traffic by the hour, from every set of traffic lights.
Victoria's traffic lights count every vehicle that crosses them, every 15 minutes. We read all 1,933 sets of lights in Melbourne for September 2026. Seven in ten were busiest in the afternoon, not at the morning rush.
Hoddle Street at the Eastern Freeway carried 9,759 cars an hour at 7am on a weekday. At 5pm it carried 13,346, about a third more. A Saturday inspection at 11am sees the road at its calmest. Our noise map shows how far each busy road carries, block by block.
How we made this reel
- Photos against the street. Each listing's photos, set beside dated pictures taken from the road outside.
- Public records for every block. Power lines, police records and the census, mapped to each block and measured to each home.
- Counts, not guesses. Every set of Melbourne traffic lights, counted every 15 minutes.
What it means for you
- Check the street before you drive out. A property report shows what stands beside the house before the inspection.
- Look past the frame. If every photo faces the same way, ask what is on the other side.
- Walk the street at the inspection. Look up and along the road, not just at the house.
- Visit at the hours you would be home. See the street at 8am and again at 5pm on a weekday.
- Read the block, not the label. A suburb with public housing can still sit below the typical suburb on crime.
Where to see it on Microburbs
- Risks, on every suburb report. Power lines, flood, bushfire, busy roads and public housing, drawn on the map.
- Every property report goes to the address. It names what sits beside that one home and how far away it is.
Get the data
The figures in this reel come from one request: features omitted from Australian listing photos. We checked 569 Australian homes for sale in September 2026 against street pictures. 91 had something big next door, and 73 of those kept it out of the photos.
Try it now, free
Live and in our data service. Bondi, Sydney, has 7,152 properties. 3,187 of them, 45%, sit within 250 metres of a recorded contamination site, which no listing photo shows, as at 12 November 2026. This request is free for our sample suburbs and homes, one in each state and territory, with no sign up and no card.
curl "https://api.microburbs.com.au/v1/suburbs/Bondi/risks/property-hazard-counts" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer test"
What it sent back on 12 November 2026, in 1.0 seconds. Fields with no value for this suburb are left out here. See the whole answer (1 KB).
{
"data": {
"area_name": "Bondi",
"area_level": "suburb",
"total_properties": 7152,
"bushfire": {
"count": 0,
"pct": 0.0
},
"flood": {
"count": 0,
"pct": 0.0
},
"mine_subsidence": {
"count": 0,
"pct": 0.0
},
"contamination": {
"within_250m_count": 3187,
"within_250m_pct": 44.56,
"within_500m_count": 6012,
"within_500m_pct": 84.06,
"nearest_m": 0.3
},
"acid_sulfate": {
"any_high_count": 0,
"any_high_pct": 0.0,
"surface_high_count": 0,
"surface_high_pct": 0.0
}
}
}
See the full API docs for every request, the price of each and how to get a key for the rest of Australia.
Check what stands beside a house before you drive there
Risks, on every suburb report. Power lines, flood, bushfire and busy roads, drawn on the map. Every property report measures how far the nearest high voltage line is.
