AI-Enhanced Real Estate Listings: A Double-Edged Sword for Buyers and Sellers

That perfect-looking house for sale may have an owner using AI to virtually enhance the listing

"Virtual staging" of homes for sales can move listings to market more quickly and tailor the look to entice potential buyers, but some agents say transparency remains an issue. Matthew Ping, principal broker with Porcupine Real Estate in New Hampshire, recently came across a listing for a property online with a lawn so lush that it caught his eye, prompting him to click through to the full listing. Once he read the property description, however, he learned the lawn had been "virtually enhanced" in the photo. Then, he realized the roof and façade of the house had also been "virtually enhanced" by the lister. If a buyer wanted to make such changes to the property, it might cost up to $100,000, according to Ping. "So, why are you putting that on a listing?" he said. "I don't think that makes sense. I think it would turn a lot of people away," he added. Most homebuyers today first encounter properties online, making arresting listing photos more important than ever. Those who can afford it often bring in professional stagers to refurnish or decorate a home to make it universally appealing. More than 80 percent of buyers' agents told the National Association of Realtors this year that staging helps their buyers picture a property as their future home. Since the rise of online listings, real estate agents have used lighting and professional photography to create photos that highlight the best features of a property. Now, AI is disrupting that process, with "virtual staging." New tools can digitally redesign interiors to match current trends to target specific audiences -- turning a spare office into a nursery for a young family or furnishing an empty room to make it easier for would-be buyers to envision themselves in it. "AI has really enabled sellers of any price point to leverage staging, whether it's AI or physical, to really help market their property," says Katy Borja, director of marketing at Dickson Realty in Reno, Nevada. "The advantage of AI is speed, flexibility, and how quickly you can go to market," she said. The process of staging a home with AI is fairly straightforward. Realtors or home sellers upload photos of an existing room to an AI-powered virtual staging platform and give it prompts for the style they're seeking The platform analyzes the image and automatically adds digital furniture, décor, and design elements, providing multiple staged options within a few hours with some tools, and in seconds with others. In some cases, users may need additional editing software for final tweaks. Borja says agents in her firm are using AI-staged photos in their marketing materials, including in postcards, on their websites and in photos on listings on the Multiple Listing Service (MLS). "The key there is transparency and making sure the photos are labeled as AI staging, versus what a house really looks like, so that buyers aren't feeling duped into buying a property that doesn't look the way that the AI-staged photo says it will," Borja said. Ping says the sellers agents at his firm haven't used AI for staging yet, primarily because most of their clients live in furnished homes that do not require much staging, as opposed to vacant properties that buyers have a harder time visualizing. But his buyers' agents are seeing AI staged photos more often. "That's where you can bring value to your buyers," he said. "You can say that this might be an AI image, so when we get there, don't be surprised if you see something different." One of the biggest advantages of using AI to stage a home is its cost-effectiveness. Virtual staging can significantly reduce staging expenses compared to physical staging, which can cost several hundred dollars to thousands for luxury properties. It also allows for staging a property that might be in a remote location, making physical staging cost prohibitive. "AI staging really opens up conversations about the possibilities of a home, and it can help the buyer's agent really direct the conversation in terms of what the client is looking for," Borja said. Additionally, real estate agents can complete virtual staging much more quickly than traditional staging. AI tools work almost instantly, while traditional staging can take weeks, or longer, to arrange the right furniture and accents in a home or complete cosmetic fixes such as repainting. While there are many benefits to virtually staging a home, there are some limitations as well. The rules from the MLS that most agents use to post photos vary by location, but most require disclosure of virtual changes to a photo and do not allow alterations that change the dimensions of other physical characteristics of a property or room. Potential buyers who view a property in person after seeing a virtually staged listing may feel disappointment -- or even resentment -- if the home appears significantly different from what they expected based on the listing. Borja says that many of the agents at her firm counter this by posting AI-staged photos side by side with current photos of a home or room. Not everyone agrees that AI staging has a material impact when it comes to the speed of a sale or price of a home. "Virtual staging is cheaper and generally faster to produce, but stagers overwhelmingly report that it has a weaker impact on buyer interest than physical staging," said Felicia Pulley, creative director for the Real Estate Staging Association and host of the Staging Insider Podcast. "The in-person experience still does the heavy lifting when it comes to offers," she said. Still, even stagers are using AI technology to lighten their workload. "Most stagers are using AI behind the scenes to make their businesses more efficient, not to replace in-person staging," Pulley said. "The biggest impact right now is in marketing, writing social captions, blogs, email subject lines, and ad copy in minutes instead of hours. Stagers are also using AI to draft proposals, estimates, and client emails and to create internal [standard operating procedures] and client-ready checklists." Ping and Borja agree that the use of AI in listing photos will likely continue to increase over time. "I definitely think it's an evolution and not a revolution," Borja said. "As technology continues to grow and AI becomes more and more integrated into all aspects of business, it's just going to be another thing that the agents have at their disposal."

This Listing for a Rental House Is Mangled With AI So Badly That You'll Cackle Out Loud

In the age of generative AI, not all is what it seems. From photorealistic videos of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's head grotesquely poking out of a toilet to AI chatbots that can blaze through a Turing Test without raising suspicion, it's never been harder to distinguish between reality and a fiction dreamed up by an AI. Still, some instances of AI use still stand out like a sore thumb. Take, for instance, this Zillow listing for a single-family rental home in Detroit, Michigan. A horribly mangled AI rendition shows the two-story building in a far-too-flattering light. As artist DeAnn Wiley quickly sleuthed out, reality -- as seen in Google Street View -- couldn't be more different. The AI-yassified version of the house is smoothed over to a ridiculous degree, is missing a concrete footpath, misplaces entire trees, and even features an entirely different roofline -- a galling example of real estate and staging companies using AI to lure in customers. "The building structure is completely different," Wiley argued. "This is crazy," another user commented. "We live in an era of house catfishing." Heavily edited images of the house's interior, which are arguably more important to prospective renters than the house's curb appeal, don't fare much better. The images feature nonsensically shaped carpets, among other AI atrocities. "So I'm noticing, as I look at houses to rent, that landlords are using AI to stage the pictures but the AI is also cleaning up the walls, paint, windows, and stuff in the process," Wiley tweeted, "so when you go look in person, it looks way more worn and torn than the pics would show." We've already come across plenty of other real estate listings with suspiciously rendered images. One listing for a fully renovated 3-bedroom in the UK, as spotted by The Register earlier this year, included awnings that don't line up and hedges that inexplicably turn into walls. Virtual staging, or digitally filling rooms with virtual furniture after the fact, has been around for quite some time. However, generative AI has taken the trend to an outrageous conclusion, prompting a heated discussion about whether landlords and real estate agents are misleading the public and potentially even committing fraud. Despite catfishing prospective renters and buyers with misleading pictures, the trend has spawned an entire cottage industry of companies capitalizing on services aimed at landlords and sellers. One company, called Interior AI, offers a service that can transform pictures of interior spaces "completely." "Instantly redesign, furnish, reimagine any home interior, exterior or garden," the company's website reads. In most cases, owners and managers are the ones who benefit from using AI in their listings. Renters, already frustrated with an often highly competitive market, are the ones missing out. At best, prospective buyers could be tricked into wasting their time by realizing too late that they were hoodwinked by an overly imaginative AI while touring the property. At worst, renters who signed a lease sight unseen could be in for a rude awakening.