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AI hits Estate Agents

D

DGP

pfm Member
I've been viewing a few properties based on Internet searches and Estate Agents PDF brochures. Visited one place today that looked well cared for with neat beds in every room, tasteful furniture and abstract art. The reality was a musty, dirty house that hadn't been lived in for probably a year with worn carpets. The Estate Agent pointed to a paragraph on the brochure that said the images were not representative and had been 'virtually staged'. Every stick of furniture, every wall hanging or picture, every side table and lamp was artificially generated and set into the images of the empty rooms. Frankly I felt cheated as I would not have gone to see the property had it been portrayed realistically - is this common practice now? DGP
 
Lol! Talk about trying to you sell you the vision. Shame it wasn’t a video, as I bet they would have had a Jordan Belfort voiceover to boot :)

…I would feel the same to be honest, a poor state of affairs
 
I see the Photoshop AI Beta is just available - some scary pictures over on the TalkPhotography forum generated from text 'an elephant in my room' - you supply the room, AI supplies the elephant.

I was wondering if this was how the Estate Agent generated their brochure or if they had to created scaled template images of furniture items based on the floorplan. Mrs P was of the opinion that the beds shown in the images were not correctly to scale. Might generate visits to the property but the disappointment was like falling off a cliff edge. DGP
 
It's only a matter of time until most jobs are replaced by AI. Lawyers are definitely going to be replaced fairly soon.
 
DGP said:
Mrs P was of the opinion that the beds shown in the images were not correctly to scale. Might generate visits to the property but the disappointment was like falling off a cliff edge. DGP
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Scaled furniture has always been a cheat, even when it was a real model used in brochure photography before Photoshop days
 
My partner's daughter, a clever, switched on 20 year old which for some reason thinks she has Autism and a myriad other conditions which prevents her from working used an online AI email creation service to turn down an opportunity to do a one year intensive hair dresser apprenticeship.

She proudly came and read out the thing. It sounded so professional that if I were an employer I would have doubted many UK 20 year olds could have created it ... .

I didn't even know such services existed.

The future ...
 
I think the take in the OP is likely to be counterproductive and hopefully a short term fad, quickly abandoned. The OP’s reaction and disappointment means it’s highly unlikely he’d be interested in proceeding further, so hopefully agents will waste a lot of time conducting viewings to disillusioned potential buyers. Once they realise this isn’t helping, it will hopefully be dropped and never spoken of again.

That said, some estate agents are really dumb/lazy and may take a while to come round to this view. Maybe not until the phone stops ringing. So the tactic has to be that the moment you realise the photos don’t represent the reality, you turn on your heels and walk away.
 
It’s misrepresentation. I looked at a house a couple of years ago, the brochure was lovely. Got there and it was clear the photos were at least 15 years old, the place had been rented out since with zero maintenance, it was a wreck. This was a well known, allegedly high end agent. Thanked the woman for wasting my time and drove straight off.
 
DGP said:
I've been viewing a few properties based on Internet searches and Estate Agents PDF brochures. Visited one place today that looked well cared for with neat beds in every room, tasteful furniture and abstract art. The reality was a musty, dirty house that hadn't been lived in for probably a year with worn carpets. The Estate Agent pointed to a paragraph on the brochure that said the images were not representative and had been 'virtually staged'. Every stick of furniture, every wall hanging or picture, every side table and lamp was artificially generated and set into the images of the empty rooms. Frankly I felt cheated as I would not have gone to see the property had it been portrayed realistically - is this common practice now? DGP
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wow not seen that !!! i watch rightmove non stop !! very bad news . we moved someone into a flat in covid on the basis of a video !! not good for virtual viewings . we all know that they make the rooms look bigger through clever camera work but thats outright deception
 
Let's hope this doesn't mean an end to the consistently entertaining Terrible Real Estate Agent Photos.

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DGP said:
I've been viewing a few properties based on Internet searches and Estate Agents PDF brochures. Visited one place today that looked well cared for with neat beds in every room, tasteful furniture and abstract art. The reality was a musty, dirty house that hadn't been lived in for probably a year with worn carpets. The Estate Agent pointed to a paragraph on the brochure that said the images were not representative and had been 'virtually staged'. Every stick of furniture, every wall hanging or picture, every side table and lamp was artificially generated and set into the images of the empty rooms. Frankly I felt cheated as I would not have gone to see the property had it been portrayed realistically - is this common practice now? DGP
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Were you looking to buy the furniture, wall hangings and lamps, or the house?
 
wow, this is news to me but I guess not so surprising.

Agree that it feels like misrepresentation. Adjusting levels so an overcast day looks sunny, or a room appears a bit brighter is one thing, but there's a limit, surely?! We were travelling 2 hours each way to look at places for our last move. I'd be seriously hacked off if the images were nothing like the reality, and leaving reviews/feedback accordingly.

An option to switch between reality and bulls**t mode, might be acceptable.
 
kensalriser said:
Were you looking to buy the furniture, wall hangings and lamps, or the house?
Click to expand...
There was very little of the house on show in the brochure pictures - mainly virtual reality furniture, wall hanging and lamps - when revealed from behind the fakery the house was in a considerably worse state than the lovely set dressing suggested. Worn, dirty or poorly fitted carpets hidden by virtual rugs, blown double glazing behind a flowering plant etc
 
I was furious when my estate agent produced the draft brochure for my house with awful HDR photos. It sold within a week.
 
eternumviti said:
I was furious when my estate agent produced the draft brochure for my house with awful HDR photos. It sold within a week.
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Ditto. One new to me thing they did was a ‘Matterport’ virtual tour, which involves spinning cameras through the house. The stills are taken from it too which means you can select the perfect angles for the photographs. Really cool stuff and of course shows the property as it is on the day…
 
eternumviti said:
I was furious when my estate agent produced the draft brochure for my house with awful HDR photos. It sold within a week.
Click to expand...

As I mentioned before, I do think there's a difference between tweaking the levels/dynamic range, and then superimposing virtual objects, furnishings etc. Real/physical staging requires a great deal more effort, which I would imagine in most cases implies a level of care between the seller and agent, and an underlying amount of care and maintenance that has been applied to the house itself. Even if the objects aren't there when you view, I'd wager the house/rooms are still in pretty decent order - though I'm sure there are exceptions.

The accessibility (low cost) of applying AI to replicate this virtually, is quite different IMO.

But to conclude, I'm not at all surprised.
 
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