About 10.8% of nearly 40,000 primary listing photos pulled from Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com, and Homes.com in the first quarter of 2026 showed evidence of digital alteration (roughly 4,330 images), according to a study by real estate intelligence platform Coraly, reported by HousingWire and RealEstateNews.com.
The industry has started calling the phenomenon “housefishing” — a play on catfishing, for listings where the photos oversell what a buyer actually finds at the door. Sky replacement was by far the most common edit, showing up in 69% of the altered images Coraly found, followed by virtual staging at 10% and object removal at roughly 1.5%. More striking than the edits themselves: HousingWire reports more than 90% of the altered images carried no visible disclosure anywhere, not on the image, not in the caption, not in the listing description.
The industry’s own standards are already lagging
The National Association of Realtors addressed the trend directly in an August blog post, writing that AI tools should be used in listing photos only to “show possibilities” in a home, not to “rewrite reality.” It’s a distinction that sounds clean in a press release and gets considerably blurrier once you’re comparing a listing photo to the room you’re standing in.
Zillow has drawn a similar line. In its own blog post on the issue, the company states that its “content standards require that listing photos accurately represent the home,” and says it supports disclosure requirements alongside access to original, unedited photos. The gap both organizations are describing is the same one HousingWire’s disclosure-rate finding puts a number on: photos that imply features, scale, or conditions a buyer won’t actually find once they’re standing in the property.
States are moving faster than the platforms
Regulation is starting to catch up unevenly, state by state. California’s AB 723 took effect in January 2026, requiring licensed brokers and agents to disclose digitally altered images in real estate advertising and provide a public link to the unedited original. Wisconsin’s Act 69 follows suit starting in January 2027, requiring licensees to disclose when technology has materially altered how a property appears in marketing images.
New Jersey lawmakers are weighing similar restrictions on AI-generated images in listings, and in New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has pushed for broker disclosure requirements covering AI use in rental and sale listings specifically.
What this means for house hunters right now
Until disclosure rules are universal, the burden of catching an altered photo sits mostly with the buyer. A roughly one-in-nine hit rate across 40,000 listings means an average buyer scrolling through a weekend’s worth of search results is statistically likely to click into at least a few homes that look meaningfully better online than they will in person, and with sky swaps, virtual staging, and object removal getting harder to spot at thumbnail size, a showing appointment is increasingly the only reliable way to confirm a listing photo is telling the truth.