Housefishing

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1:00The last show with David Cooper, where we utilize non-linear reverse inverse backward thinking protocols. It sounds like this. We've all been catfished before, okay? 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 and 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. When did we start noticing this happening?

2:01I mean, AI photo generation, AI photo tweaking, AI staging in real estate kind of just came out of nowhere. It just got to 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. And 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, 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% of the listing she sees have used some sort of AI with

3:07this 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. I mean, house, house fishing sounds so dramatic. What kinds of things are being changed? I imagine summer little, they don't seem that unethical or dishonest. And then I imagine summer 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. 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, it's 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.

4:10Tricks 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? 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 is 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.

5:14What 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 to the yell at the agents like what are actual home buyers saying. It's probably similar to what you would do if you walked into a restaurant and your date with 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. 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 the 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. This is a regulated profession being an agent. Are there better rules that we could have or some jurisdictions doing better than others

6:16when it comes to virtual staging or AI touch-ups and stuff? 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. Even if they do posted a dose, 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. 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.

7:16People 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 on her phone, at the fingertips. I did speak with the photographer and I asked her, is this going to, are you going to lose any business from this? And she said, I'm not really worried about it. 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

8:20fictional? Like, we can't trust a photo of a product listing anything now. I think that when you're looking for a home, you should be wary of what you're looking at that probably has always been the case. But when you're looking online, you need to be a little bit more diligent at what you're looking at. I think for the most part, people now are not buying homes without seeing them, although that did happen a lot, especially during the pandemic. People were going to homeside and seen and buying, but it would be a little bit irresponsible to not go to a home and look at it in person, especially as these AI tools have become more and more advanced. I spoke with someone who has his own AI tool that will help him tidy up. If he has clothes on the floor, clothes on the bed, dishes in the sink, the tool just wipe all of that away. So they do small things, they do big things, so you do need to really look out for what's going on. I can't wait for that tool to exist in real life where I take a photo. The robot comes and tidy up for me and does it actually.

9:21You can read more about this in Business Insider. Jordan Pandey's piece is called Homebuyers. Have another thing to worry about this time. It's house-fishing. Jordan's a real estate reporter for BI. Jordan, thanks for joining me. I appreciate you coming on the show. Again. Thanks for having me, Dave. Monster Energy. Everybody knows White Monster, Zero Ultra. That's the OG. It kicked off this whole Zero Sugar Energy drink thing. But Ultra is a whole lineup now. You've got strawberry dreams, blue Hawaiian, sunrise, and vice guava. And they all bring the Monster Energy Punch. So if you've been living in the White Can, branch out. Ultra's got a flavor for every vibe, and every single one is Zero Sugar. Tap the banner to learn more.