Chapter 1: What is housefishing and how does it relate to real estate?
the last show with David Cooper, where we utilize nonlinear reverse inverse backward thinking protocols. It sounds like this. We've all been catfished before. Okay, maybe not all of us, but catfishing is when, for online dating, the person you meet's photos don't quite match the reality of how they look. Well, now the housing market has its own version.
AI photos can magically fix stains in listings, clutter, even ugly power lines. It's called house fishing, and we're here to discuss it with someone who's recently written about it in Business Insider, where he is a real estate reporter, and his name is Jordan Pandy. Jordan, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, David. It's such a great term, house fishing.
Chapter 2: When did housefishing start becoming a concern for homebuyers?
When did we start noticing this happening? I mean, AI photo generation, AI photo tweaking, AI staging in real estate kind of just came out of nowhere. It just kind of creeped up on us in the last few years.
Yeah, I think you could say that about a lot of AI usage and people's day to day. It kind of just happened. Staging has happened for a very long time. Started out with people renting furniture to put into a home. Then it became virtual staging that you could do in Photoshop. But now anybody can do it at their fingertips. There's some good, there's some bad, just like anything.
Chapter 3: How are AI tools changing real estate photo listings?
But yeah, it is kind of just popped up out of nowhere.
I remember seeing like listings for buildings 10, 15 years ago, the condo developer would do a rendering and it's like, there's no way the building's going to look like that. It's ignoring the ugly building next door. But now that tool is in anyone's hands. How often are people using AI to touch up real estate listing photos that you're seeing out there?
I would say more and more as the days go on. I spoke with a real estate agent in Virginia who said that about 30 to 40 percent of the listings she sees have used some sort of AI with the photos. It kind of happens all the time if you can see it. And it's getting a little bit more egregious in some certain situations, but it's kind of always been there.
Well, we got to dig into the egregious examples.
Chapter 4: What are some examples of egregious housefishing practices?
I mean, house fishing sounds so dramatic. What kinds of things are being changed? I imagine some are little. They don't seem that unethical or dishonest. And then I imagine some are just completely outrageous.
Right. I think all of the real estate professionals I spoke with are kind of in the same boat. Little things... Changing the paint color, changing the furniture in the home is somewhat okay. But when you start to get to structural changes in the home, that's where it becomes a problem.
Chapter 5: How do homebuyers react when they experience housefishing?
Putting a window not where a window is, putting a fireplace where a fireplace is not supposed to be. Things that a contractor would have to do once you buy the home is kind of like the line that should not be crossed.
We've all seen it like in the last, I don't know, 20, 30 years since listings went online. Tricks like using a wide angle lens or cleaning up a little bit more than the tenant in there has cleaned up or maybe some rented furniture. I'm sure real estate agents would say this is just like that. This is just us spoof. What am I spiffing up a listing? That's the word I'm looking for.
But at what point do we go from like good marketing to digital deception? Where is the line?
Chapter 6: What regulations exist to combat housefishing in real estate?
Yeah, there's a line between showing the potential of a home versus completely changing the idea of the home. That's where it gets a little bit tricky. Again, when it comes to small things like maybe even fixing a scratch on a wall, fixing up scratches on the floor, but removing a power line that would obstruct the view from the second floor bedroom. That is something that
It's a little bit disappointing. I spoke with a few different agents and they said it's a pretty big letdown when you bring your client to a home and it looks nothing like the pictures. I mean, that's just a waste of time. People have jobs. They have to take time off to go see this. So anything that would require a lot of work is kind of crossing the line.
Chapter 7: What are the ethical implications of using AI in real estate listings?
What is the feeling amongst a home buyer when they walk into a home, they love the listing, and then it's completely different than what they expected? They've basically been house fished. Do they yell at the agents? What are actual home buyers saying?
It's probably similar to what you would do if you walked into a restaurant and your date looked nothing like the photos. It's pretty disappointing. You might be a little upset. I know one of the agents I spoke with, she went to the home before bringing the client. I think a lot of people are going to have to do that now. because it's a waste of people's time.
Chapter 8: How can buyers protect themselves from being housefished?
People are disappointed. Usually the agents are going to get a lot of flack for it when it could not be their fault. So a lot of people are upset about it, but there are some ways to stop agents from having this happen.
Well, let's talk about that. I think we should be able to regulate or force like real estate brokerages or you can't have a license unless you follow certain rules. I mean, this is a regulated profession being an agent. Sure. Are there better rules that we could have? Are some jurisdictions doing better than others when it comes to virtual staging or AI touch ups and stuff?
Right. So California just passed Assembly Bill number 723, which requires agents to disclose whether or not they've used any AI or any photo enhancing tools. And even if they do post it, they need to also post the original photo side by side. So you can see this is what we think it might look like. But here's what it actually looks like.
And not every state has laws like that, but I would imagine that we will be seeing that in the future. I know that the National Association of Realtors, they have their own ethics code that they need to abide by, which is something similar to that rule in California. But not every agent is a member of the NAR. So you're going to have some people that don't really have any rules to follow.
Fair enough. Yeah, no, I think the side-by-side photo thing is great because there are some positives here, like house staging companies where I live in New York and in other parts of the world, especially expensive cities, like that's a racket. People end up spending tens of thousands of dollars to put fancy furniture in their house.
And if they can just achieve that look with a photo, that's probably a good thing as long as they're not doing anything dishonest. I mean, there are some upsides to this technology, right? Surely.
Absolutely. I think it gives a lot of power to agents. I spoke with another agent in Oklahoma who says she had to pay photographers hundreds of dollars to take photos, to alter the photos afterwards. And now she can just do it at on her phone.
at the fingertips um there i did speak with the photographer and i asked her is this gonna are you gonna lose any business from this and she said i'm not really worried about it um she did add ai enhancing to her repertoire of things that she do does to properties but i think for the most part a lot of the agents are happy with being able to do this on the fly
Zooming out a bit, if AI can rewrite what a home looks like, if we can house fish people, does this hint at a bigger problem where anything we look at online can be just slightly fictional? Like we can't trust a photo of a product listing anything now?
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