Apartment hunters in New York City may soon get a warning when the home they’re scrolling looks a little too good to be true.
The city is moving to require rental listings to disclose photos that have been altered using artificial intelligence or other digital tools, targeting a new version of an old problem: making something look better online than it does in real life.
The practice, sometimes called “housefishing” or “AI real estate slop,” has rapidly evolved in lockstep with AI technology, advancing from simple retouches to what lawmakers have described as “marketing fiction.”
“You shouldn’t have to worry whether or not the apartment you are viewing online is real,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said announcing the rule. “After all, it’s called StreetEasy, not ‘StreetHard.’”
Why NYC is treating altered photos as a renter-protection issue
The rule is one of 23 actions in the city’s new Rental Ripoff Report, developed from the feedback of more than 2,400 New Yorkers in hearings, listening sessions, and online testimony earlier this year.
While misleading real estate advertising is already prohibited in New York, the city is proposing something more direct: telling renters before they have to figure out for themselves whether the changes cross the line into deception.
“Landlords and or brokers regularly use photos that have been altered, either digitally or through artificial intelligence (AI), in their rental listings,” the report says. “These photos are typically not a true representation of the space and cost New Yorkers vital time and money during their apartment search.”
The report frames it as far from a victimless crime. The city’s latest Housing and Vacancy Survey found a rental vacancy rate of just 1.41%—the lowest since 1968. At every rent level below $2,400, vacancy was below 1%. For apartment hunters, that scarcity can necessitate dropping everything when a promising listing appears.
Joyce, a native New Yorker searching for her first apartment on her own, told The Verge in June that she rushed to see a reasonably priced Manhattan studio. In the listing, the apartment appeared large and airy, with a fireplace and recently renovated kitchen. But when she arrived, it was smaller, the kitchen fixtures were different, several stove knobs were missing, and there was no fireplace.
“I get in, and it’s not the same apartment at all,” she said.
Teo Bugbee had a similar experience while apartment hunting in Brooklyn. On a recent weekend, Bugbee waited outside a brownstone with about two dozen other prospective renters to see a rent-stabilized duplex asking just over $2,300 a month. Online, the listing showed a renovated kitchen and polished bedroom. In person, Curbed reported, that bedroom was a windowless basement.
They’re just two examples of a much wider problem. The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) says it has encountered “numerous ads for non-existent rental properties” that brokers allegedly used to draw in apartment hunters, then demand an illegal broker fee to show them apartments that actually existed.
AI is making an old real estate problem harder to spot
Real estate professionals have long staged homes and edited photographs to present properties favorably, and most often, for a legitimate purpose. In a 2025 National Association of Realtors® survey, 83% of agents said staging made it easier for buyers to visualize a property as their future home.
But digitally furnishing an empty room to show how it might be used is very different from removing damage or changing what a room appears able to accommodate. And AI-powered tools have made that second category faster, cheaper, and more realistic.
An official California legislative analysis put the shift bluntly: Digital editing, virtual staging, and AI have spread in part because of their “speed, affordability,” and ability to produce photorealistic results. With some AI tools, the analysis found, someone marketing a property can now “manipulate or completely fabricate images” showing interior or exterior features that are misleading or do not exist.
There are early signs that altered imagery is already widespread, although not every alteration is necessarily deceptive. Of nearly 40,000 primary listing images, almost 11% showed indicators of digital alteration, while more than 90% of those carried no visible disclosure, according to an analysis by real estate technology company Coraly.
The most common alteration was replacing the sky, which accounted for 69% of altered images. Only 4.5% of interior images were altered. And that range—from changing a cloudy sky to inventing parts of a room—gets at the challenge regulators now face.
DCWP says it plans to use its authority under the city’s Consumer Protection Law to require a “clear and conspicuous” disclosure when rental listings contain digitally altered photos. Once the rule is finalized, the agency says it will work with listing platforms on implementation and enforcement.
Exactly where the city draws that line, however, remains one of the biggest and most important unanswered questions. It has not yet specified whether every virtually staged sofa or replaced sky would trigger disclosure, or whether ordinary adjustments such as cropping, brightening, or color correcting would be exempt.
New York City isn’t alone in targeting AI-altered listing photos
Meanwhile, state lawmakers in Albany are already trying to answer that question more explicitly.
Legislation introduced by Democratic state Sen. Rachel May, who represents District 48, would require disclosure when real estate images, videos, or virtual tours have been “materially altered.” The legislation defines that as a change that would affect a reasonable consumer’s understanding of the property’s condition, features, or layout. The bill would also require disclosure of digitally added furnishings or finishes used in virtual staging.
Its sponsor memo describes it in terms similar to Mamdani’s: A prospective buyer might take time off work, travel to a showing, or arrange financing based on what appears online, only to arrive and discover something completely different.
“This gap between representation and reality is more than an inconvenience,” the memo says.
The legislation would still allow ordinary visual enhancements that do not materially change a consumer’s understanding of the property.
California has gone further. A law that took effect this year requires brokers who use digitally altered advertising images to disclose the alteration and provide access to the original image. It focuses on home sales, but lawmakers there are now considering extending similar requirements to rentals.
During hearings on the latest proposal, Assemblymember Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz) showed screenshots from a listing for a Sacramento apartment. In the AI-staged version, digitally added curtains obscured a protrusion in the room, and a generated console table beneath the TV appeared so close to the front door that the door would likely hit it if opened.
“These facts about the property are only revealed because we have access to the original image,” she told lawmakers.
Consumer Reports, which supports the bill, acknowledged the other side of the technology: Generative AI can lower staging costs for landlords and agents. But it can also “fool prospective renters about key features or problems with listings,” the group’s Becca Cramer Mowder told lawmakers.
Or, as May’s sponsor memo puts it, listings should remain “meaningful previews rather than marketing fiction.”
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