What AI tools are you using for real estate listing photos?

Question

I’m curious what other investors and agents are using to improve their listing photos with AI.

I’m the founder of EstateReimagine, so I’m obviously familiar with this space, but I’d genuinely like to hear what tools people are using in their own workflows, including alternatives to EstateReimagine.

There seems to be a lot happening beyond basic photo enhancement. Things like:

• Virtual staging for vacant rooms
• Removing furniture or unwanted objects
• Improving lighting and image quality
• Cleaning up landscaping
• Improving an overcast sky
• Making rooms look more polished for early marketing
• Creating different furniture styles for the same room

Virtual staging in particular seems to have improved a lot recently. A few years ago, the results could look obviously fake. Some of the newer AI tools are getting much better at making furnished rooms look natural while keeping the original room layout intact.

I’m also interested in where people draw the ethical line. For example, is changing a cloudy sky or temporarily improving unfinished landscaping reasonable, as long as the final listing clearly represents the actual property?

EstateReimagine covers virtual staging, photo enhancement, furniture removal, and other listing content, but I’m more interested in the broader discussion here.

What AI tools are you currently using for listing photos, and which ones have actually been useful?

Kevin Sobilo · Answer

Advertise it for what it is!

Eventually, I believe AI modified pics will be banned from the MLS because they are misleading and could create liability.

For example, virtual staging is TERRIBLE! Often it shows furniture that would not at all fit in the space. A buyer could see this "propaganda" AI staging photo and expect a bed to fit in a certain space only to find it does not after purchase.

AI enhancements are not adding any real value for a buyer and possibly not even the seller because if you don't advertise something for what it actually is the right kind of buyer is LESS likely to walk in the door. I have actually seen seller's literally lose their property to foreclosure because of this issue, not because of AI but because a property was not advertised for what it actually was.

Michael Eskenasy · Answer

We do something a little different at ChefreyOS.

For a property, we start by building what we call a house model. The photographs aren’t treated as a collection of unrelated JPEGs. They’re evidence of one physical object, so the system has to understand that the kitchen in image 4 is the same kitchen visible through the doorway in image 7, that the window belongs where it belongs, and that the dimensions, materials and spatial relationships can’t casually change.

Then our imaging process works more like a small production pipeline than “upload photo → enhance with AI.”

We separate the source, the physical subject, composition, environment and finishing decisions, control those independently, and reconcile them back into a finished frame. I’ll leave the exact mechanics inside the black box, but that separation is a big part of why you can push an image pretty hard without the house slowly turning into a different house. That is literally how we think about the system internally: AI as production infrastructure, not a slot machine.

Chefrey’s Sunflower Image Review.png

And that also answers your ethics question for me.

We can render presentation. We cannot render facts.

Change the light. Stage an empty room. Clean visual noise. Show somebody what a space could feel like.

But the wall stays where the wall is. The view stays the view. The countertop doesn’t become marble because marble photographs better. A dead lawn shouldn’t become landscaping the buyer isn’t buying.

The interesting problem now isn’t whether AI can make a listing photo prettier.

It’s whether you can make it substantially better while preserving the property as the source of truth.

That’s where I think this gets really interesting.

Matthew Tregoning · Answer

I use AI for lighting and maybe staging a vacant room. Thats about it. If the room, view or condition looks better than real life you crossed the line. We have had photos get clicks and still hurt the guest experience because they oversold the place. Not worth it.

Oubadi Ahmed · Answer

I agree with you on that. If the AI makes the property look materially better than what someone will actually see in person, it can absolutely hurt the buyer or guest experience.

I think that’s also where the difference between enhancing and misrepresenting matters. Lighting cleanup or staging an empty room can be useful as long as the underlying property stays the same. The goal with virtual staging, at least how I see it, isn’t to make a room look bigger or hide its condition. It’s to help someone visualize how the existing space could be used.

And honestly, the technology is good enough now that you don’t need to change the room itself to achieve that. The problem is more about how people use the tools than the tools themselves.

Oubadi Ahmed · Answer

This is probably the most interesting way to think about it. I really like the distinction between AI as “production infrastructure” and AI as a slot machine.

The house-model approach also gets at one of the biggest problems with AI imaging: consistency. It’s easy to make one photo look great. The harder part is making sure that photo still represents the same house as every other image in the listing.

And I completely agree with “we can render presentation, we cannot render facts.” That’s pretty much where I draw the line too. Staging a vacant room can show potential without changing the underlying property.

The technology is good enough now to do a lot of this while preserving the actual space. The challenge is building workflows that make that preservation a requirement rather than leaving it up to the model.

Oubadi Ahmed · Answer

I agree with the main point that a listing should always represent the property accurately. Where I’d disagree is that virtual staging itself is necessarily misleading.

The technology has improved a lot. When done properly, the original room structure, dimensions, windows, doors, flooring, etc. stay intact. The furniture is there to help someone understand what the space could look like, not to suggest that the furniture is included or that a buyer can fit any specific piece in the room.

I think the key is how it’s used and disclosed. Virtual staging should be clearly labeled, and the original photo should still be available. It should show potential, not create a false impression.

And I agree that bad AI staging can be terrible. If a tool puts an oversized sectional into a tiny room or changes the actual layout, that's not useful marketing. But I don't think that means the technology itself has no value. Good virtual staging can help buyers understand an empty space that is otherwise difficult to visualize.

What AI tools are you using for real estate listing photos?

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