New California Law Means Big Changes For Photos of Homes in Real Estate Listings (sfchronicle.com) 38
California house hunters now have legal protection against the kind of real estate photo trickery that has long plagued the home-buying process, as a new state law requiring disclosure of digitally altered listing images took effect on January 1.
Assembly Bill 723 mandates that real estate agents and brokers include a "reasonably conspicuous" statement whenever photos have been altered using editing software or AI to add, remove, or change elements like furniture, appliances, flooring, views or landscaping. Agents must also provide access to the original, unaltered image through a QR code, link, or placement next to the altered photo.
The law does not cover wide-angle lenses -- a perennial complaint among buyers who find rooms smaller than they appeared -- nor does it apply to routine adjustments like cropping, color correction or exposure. California is the first state to require such disclosures, though Wisconsin passed a similar law in December that takes effect next year.
Assembly Bill 723 mandates that real estate agents and brokers include a "reasonably conspicuous" statement whenever photos have been altered using editing software or AI to add, remove, or change elements like furniture, appliances, flooring, views or landscaping. Agents must also provide access to the original, unaltered image through a QR code, link, or placement next to the altered photo.
The law does not cover wide-angle lenses -- a perennial complaint among buyers who find rooms smaller than they appeared -- nor does it apply to routine adjustments like cropping, color correction or exposure. California is the first state to require such disclosures, though Wisconsin passed a similar law in December that takes effect next year.
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There's a truth problem, as in truth in advertising and avoiding fraudulent bait-and-switch problems. Such alterations make people doubt everything, and while suspicion and skepticism is a good thing, it shouldn't come as the result of constant misleading marketing.
Gone is the era of consumer protection from public policy; this might add it back.
Re: shouldn't be doing it anyway (Score:1)
If I had to guess, I'd say it's a case of people buying a house sight unseen. Though this almost sounds more like furnished rental properties.
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I know, that's probably overly cynical, but I can't come up with any other motives past that and "legislators trying to look busy without actually doing anything".
Realtors don't like this sort of thing, and they have their own ways of policing each other. Including being an organized body
Glorious real-estate photos (Score:3)
There was a local forum about houses etc, and a 800+ post thread with "glorious" photos from real estate agents. It wasn't just altered photos but also weird camera angles and odd photos. My favourites:
- TV lying on its side in the basement for storage. With the picture on.
- Several photos of the garden but none that showed the whole thing. In one of the photos inside you could see out of the window that the garden photos avoided a 1 meter tall light-blue concrete snail sculpture.
- Stove top edited to look like kitchen table. They forgot to remove the knobs on the front.
- A brothel with all the equipment (presumably bankrupt due to covid-19)
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- A brothel with all the equipment
Just what a bachelor would call "furnished".
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Nah, it's a pain because they'll have a shower in every room, often added in a weird way on an elevated platform. The plumbing often isn't great quality. Ripping that stuff out is expensive. You can get mould issues if you keep it. There are all sorts of practical issues with trying to repurpose a former brothel.
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I saw one for a vacant lot where they'd electronically added an actual house to the lot. It was labeled "House not included". But no word if the house shown met zoning rules or not!
I do see some around here which show an empty room, and the next photo is the same room with furniture added, so that's obviously a modification, but at least it's obvious what they're doing and why.
Why do we need these laws? (Score:3)
The fools who buy houses like it's something on amazon are why we need laws like this. My neighbor bought his house online without looking at it and it sits empty because they ended up disliking it. They didn't move in just looked at it once and realized they couldn't fit and his wife never has been seen again after that 1st visit.
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The whole point of the fake photos is to get foot traffic. Potential buyers who never walk in the door won't even consider buying the home, so the fake photo moves the buyer to at least consider buying the home.
This is especially important in the areas of California where supply is extremely constrained.
Fake photos are a form of bait and switch, and unfortunately bait and switch does lead to more sales.
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Are people buying just from the photos, or is this is stop agents wasting people's time with viewings that are just an opportunity to try to talk them into it?
It protects sellers too, who are presented with lots of viewings so it looks like the agent is doing a good job for them, when most of them have been mislead and would never have come if they had known the truth.
Re:Why do we need these laws? (Score:4, Informative)
No, the reason laws like this are needed is to stop unscrupulous, dishonest real estate agents trying to rip people off.
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No, the reason laws like this are needed is to stop unscrupulous, dishonest real estate agents trying to rip people off.
Here in Florida you pretty much have to at least Photoshop the lawn on any vacant home, because if it hasn't been actively maintained it'll either be overgrown or mostly dead, depending on what the weather has been doing.
That, at least, is actually less dishonest than the pictures fast food restaurants use for their menu. If you buy the house and do the necessary yard work, you actually can end up with a lawn that looks like the photo. There's nothing you can do to get McDonald's to give you a burger that
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No, the reason laws like this are needed is to stop unscrupulous, dishonest real estate agents trying to rip people off.
You really shouldn't be buying something like a house sight unseen... but I would be supremely pissed at the House Bastard if they had doctored the photos to the point where what you see is a completely different house. MFer wasted my time and petrol. So yeah, such laws are needed.
Re:Why do we need these laws? (Score:5, Insightful)
I really can’t find fault here. If you doctor photos then you have to provide the originals. How is that bad?
Re: Why do we need these laws? (Score:2)
We don't need laws to protect him, obviously, if he can afford to buy a home he doesn't need. In fact we need laws for protection FROM people like him, who are reducing the housing supply. The solution is an empty unit tax.
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Actually, not rich; so he's even more foolish!
He was stuck a few years trying to buy another house and renting the mistake then selling his existing house and juggling the whole mess of debt. He didn't get to build his dream house or buy one as over sized as he said wanted...making it seem even more stupid; but I think if he had the money he'd have torn it down.
Because bait-and-switch is bad for everyone (Score:2)
The real estate agent is happy to have a busy open house. Everyone else suffers from wasted time, inefficient markets, and occasionally being suckered into a bad deal.
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Yeah, your neighbor doesn't sound smart. But that doesn't mean that we should allow other people to post misleading pictures.
Even at the best, fake ai pictures are wasting people's time having to go to the house showing that they wouldn't have otherwise gone to if factual images were posted.
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I went through remote house shopping 5 years ago. Relied on the online pictures and a realtor we found in the area to put together a plan to see as many houses over a 2 day period. If most of those pictures had been manipulated beyond the "standard" tricks of the trade I would have been extremely pissed off.
I know the selling agent often has to put lipstick on the pig.. but maybe being more realistic
Jigsaw puzzle art (Score:2)
They should have added a provision in the law that expressly forbids making any property photo look like a creepy glowing Thomas Kinkade painting. That would cover most of the issues.
Although they should also ban using whatever software straightens out all the curved lines in their ultra-fisheye lens images. It just don't look right.
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Hey! It's a Frank Gehry house.
Should Have Probited Altered Photos (Score:2)
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Should Have Probited Altered Photos
They're trying to, the difficulty is in defining what makes a photo "altered". It's actually surprisingly hard to do, and something journalism struggles with despite over 150 years of clarifications.
In journalism, some elements are explicitly allowed: exposure levels, color balance, a choice for B/W versus color. Some are explicitly prohibited by most outlets, like adding or removing items. Reenacting an event instead of being photos of the actual event are generally prohibited. Even something seemingly
Re: Should Have Probited Altered Photos (Score:2)
Yes, I think the did a decent job of protecting from the worst abuses.
I'm into photography as a hobby, and do software development for a living. Talking with people about the use of AI, how it can be used, or abused is interesting. I do find myself explaining how even the first photos were often manipulated, and how staged photos can be or why they look the way they look.
(The lack of smiles in old photos, missing face tattoos of some aboriginals, etc)
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The use of
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That immediately identifies you as not being qualified to make the distinctions. What you described can't be codified.
You want to not "make rooms look bigger". How exactly? Does that mean you would consider a 35mm too much? 30mm? 20mm? 10mm? What about 25mm with a crop? How about a 360 panoramic view of room that's typically shot at 24mm? What about one shot at 35mm? A difficulty in photography is that exactly the same settings in one room make it look and feel natural, in another room make it look unna
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Agents complain a lot about photos that make rooms look bigger than they are. I never heard anyone complain about a chair having been digitally removed. If
Re: Should Have Probited Altered Photos (Score:2)
wrong law (Score:2)
In some states, the floor plan with dimensions is readily available. That's what you actually need.