Why is this condo badly photo-shopped with AI to make it look like a Dentist's waiting room?
I get these mailings from Real Estate Agents all the time, hinting that they want to sell my condo. I may take them up on this, too little, too late. We hung onto the condo because three developers promised to buy us out and demolish the place and build anew, paying us what was, at the time, a premium price for our units.
But then the real estate market took off and "premium price" became reasonable price and then the developers got cold feet because interest rates went up and financing got sketchy and all three of the developers decided to put the project on hold for the time being. Now I see prices have started to drop - slightly - for some of these units. The time to sell was last year. And this is in the hot DC market, too!
But what tickled my fancy was a mailing for a unit just sold with the above photo. I am not sure what Indian Photo-shopping farm or AI did this, but other than the ceiling, the rest of the photo is made up - badly. Check out the Escher-esque laptop on the right side. Salvador Dali couldn't do better!
The artwork on the walls in all photos is a variation on the same generic theme. The furniture appears to be all faked-in. It makes the place look nicer than it is. And apparently this is all legal.
Mark tells me that inserting furniture into an empty property through "virtual staging" is no different than putting in actual rented furniture - at least according to the Real Estate association. Some agents even photoshop a fire in the fireplace to make it look more homey - which I guess is all right if the fireplace is actually functional. Otherwise that would be misrepresentation.
But I think this is a slippery slope. Putting actual furniture in a room and taking a photo is one thing, photo-shopping or using AI to insert furniture might make the place seem bigger than it is (as these photos seem to do) and hide defects like stains in the carpet, holes in the walls, etc.
Then you have photos like this - where chairs seem to come with their own square of carpet, and what appears to have once been a dining area or den is turned into some sort of ersatz office, complete with diagonal laptops.
Having owned in this development for over 25 years, and having been in at last a dozen or more of these units (that either friends lived in or Mark sold) I can say with authority that these pictures exaggerate the size of the units and their layout a bit. Granted, if you actually inspect the unit, you would see reality and be aware of what you are buying. But while not common, some homes are bought "sight unseen" as our present residence was, by the original owners, when it was still under construction in 1970.
Buyer beware. Caveat Emptor. What you see on the Internet has nothing to do with reality and with AI, well, it is getting more unreal every day.
Maybe it is time to get rid of doctored photos, punched-up colors, personal "filters", and AI-voices. At the very least there should be a prominent disclaimer that what you are seeing is not real.
And I suspect that will never happen in my lifetime!
UPDATE: The listing includes "real" pictures (no word on camera angle and lens - it looks distorted) which illustrate why they photo-shopped. Gray walls do not photograph well!