AI altered Photos in listings

[alebrewer]

Haha. Baggot has never written a timely and important article... You lost your credibility at sentence two, brother (assuming we consider 'Good' the fist sentence).

 

[glenn walker]

Baggot is a old newspaper man whose kinda like the National Enquirer of extremely old appraisers that are living back in the days when the steel tape and wheel was their high tech equipment. Really the poor guy really needs to hang it up.

 

[jay trotta]

Now, according to a source, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have potentially caused millions of these images to be made available to an artificial-intelligence company headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, known as Restb.AI. The images are then harvested for information with the help of artificial intelligence.

An automated inventory of a property’s contents, cross-referenced with the property’s address, would represent the holy grail for any advertiser, creditor, academic researcher, crime boss, investigator, sexual predator, gerrymanderer or hostile government. It represents the marriage of artificial intelligence, a visual-recognition technology known as “computer vision” and big data in the form of hundreds of millions of interior images for most of the nation’s 82 million single-family homes and 21 million apartment units. Does your home or apartment building have a mortgage? If so, its interior spaces, including all your visible possessions, have almost certainly been captured and uploaded.

The offshore firm is said to be testing, with Freddie and Fannie’s support, a portal that could be repurposed to allow unknown parties, including insiders at any of the partnering companies, to access a tagged catalog of items found in the home. While there’s no indication Restb.AI is tagging anything other than fireplaces, appliances and countertops, the source speculates an organization could simply purchase access to this data, so long as the party were willing to pay for it and integrate with the tool’s application programing interface or “API.” Or the data could be stolen by hackers.

Some years back when they first started "wanting all room photos in the appraisal" I had several people deny the interior photo request. The HO can always refuse the request if the wish, how that would work out is questionable. As far as the GSE goes, we all know they have put their foot in the mouth more often than not, because they know everything, until something goes wrong.

 

[alebrewer]

Restb.AI is no longer an entity. It has been purchased by Clear Capital. The consolidation continues.

 

[Mark K]

Curious, how often did/do you find inconsistencies between what they put in MLS and what they tell you on the phone?

Frequently. One call to an agent I knew well went something like this..."Your MLS says its in good shape. Any repairs needed." Agent laughed and said the house was a piece of crap. I just said that to get buyers in the door." That was his job; he sold the POS house.

FWIW, the consolidation in the brokerage business is going to cause more problems. Remax International is being sold to a larger company and another company, Compass, is buying out everyone they can.

"Compass acquired Century 21 in a $1.6 billion megamerger that closed in January 2026. Compass purchased Anywhere Real Estate, the massive holding company that owned Century 21, Coldwell Banker, Sotheby’s International Realty, and ERA, cementing the combined entities as the largest residential real estate brokerage in the world."

A broker buddy said that Compass is putting listings on its own version of MLS and telling the local MLS's to FO, they do business their way and they don't care about the realtor network or their rules.

The current MLS/realtor system is a joke and a dinosaur. Generally they don't enforce their own rules and their monopoly is being busted from various directions. Pretty soon appraisers will likely have to pay for access to the current MLS and pay to access the listing sites of a few others if they want data for the most sales.

 

[alebrewer]

Frequently. One call to an agent I knew well went something like this..."Your MLS says its in good shape. Any repairs needed." Agent laughed and said the house was a piece of crap. I just said that to get buyers in the door." That was his job; he sold the POS house.

FWIW, the consolidation in the brokerage business is going to cause more problems. Remax International is being sold to a larger company and another company, Compass, is buying out everyone they can.

"Compass acquired Century 21 in a $1.6 billion megamerger that closed in January 2026. Compass purchased Anywhere Real Estate, the massive holding company that owned Century 21, Coldwell Banker, Sotheby’s International Realty, and ERA, cementing the combined entities as the largest residential real estate brokerage in the world."

A broker buddy said that Compass is putting listings on its own version of MLS and telling the local MLS's to FO, they do business their way and they don't care about the realtor network or their rules.

The current MLS/realtor system is a joke and a dinosaur. Generally they don't enforce their own rules and their monopoly is being busted from various directions. Pretty soon appraisers will likely have to pay for access to the current MLS and pay to access the listing sites of a few others if they want data for the most sales.

I never found much benefit from it. I have had decent 'honest' feedback by calling buyers' Realtors, but usually the seller's side stuck to their guns. Interesting how different experiences drive different scopes of work.

 

[Carnivore]

everything is being monetized everything

With consolidation of home data from MLS , other MLS systems and your appraisals

So all your interior, exterior photos are very valuable to retailers. Who then could target market consumers with ads. thus saving money in ad cost increasing their profit/bottom line

Recently on TV I have been seeing ads for Rooms to Go. I did not realize they were still around. It is a pretty good system,
None of your pictures can be copy righted if it is going to F & F

 

[jay trotta]

everything is being monetized everything

With consolidation of home data from MLS , other MLS systems and your appraisals

So all your interior, exterior photos are very valuable to retailers. Who then could target market consumers with ads. thus saving money in ad cost increasing their profit/bottom line

Recently on TV I have been seeing ads for Rooms to Go. I did not realize they were still around. It is a pretty good system,
None of your pictures can be copy righted if it is going to F & F

I don't know about that; IF the Realtor hires a prof. photographer to shoot them, he may have the exclusive rights to those pics. Although I don't believe they would go after a GSE, even tho "To Big To Fail" doesn't apply to them, taxpayers funds are behind them. Just another abuse of power

 

[Bobby Bucks]

Not to worry, 3.6 fixes all of this according to the Buzz approved NAR endorsed UAD boot camp.

 

[Steelers74]

I noticed a little while back the agents started putting fake fires in the fireplaces whether they were actually functional or not. Many older homes in older neighborhoods around here have old decorative only anymore fireplaces while only functional fireplaces have any value in this market. So now I have to waste more time trying to find out if its actually functional or not.