In the current real estate landscape of New York City, finding an apartment has become a test of psychological resilience. Faced with skyrocketing rents, tenants are pulling out all the stops to secure a reasonably priced place to live. However, in addition to battling high rents and rodents, New York tenants now have to contend with a new type of scam: AI virtual staging.
According to digital news media Curbed NY, recently, over twenty people lined up on the street outside a brownstone in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, attracted by what seemed like a perfect listing online: a one-bedroom, two-bathroom duplex apartment with stable rent for just over $2,300 a month. The average monthly rent in Manhattan currently stands at a staggering $5,295, with Brooklyn not far behind at $4,350.
The property photos online could be mistaken for a “showroom” – a modern, newly renovated kitchen, and bedroom decor that looks like it was directly cut from a catalog of designer furniture. However, when the visitors finally squeezed inside the apartment, reality hit them hard.
The cozy bedroom depicted online turned out to be a windowless, gloomy basement. The walls were dirty, the lighting harsh, and an indescribable strange smell lingered in the air.
When the real estate agent asked a prospective tenant for feedback, the response was scathing: “It’s simply abysmal.”
Manipulating photos online is no longer a secret tactic among real estate agents – using wide-angle lenses to make rooms seem larger, enhancing colors to brighten dark spaces. But now, with the widespread availability and affordability of AI tools, agents have started to take more creative liberties.
Some tenants have reported instances where AI staged an office’s window in Astoria as a second large door. On StreetEasy, many well-lit, beautifully furnished rooms turn out to be dark and dilapidated in the last few real photos, with even holes in the ceilings.
It is reported that AI scams are mainly concentrated in lower-end properties. Many agents argue that this is just “helping clients envision the potential space,” and covering up cracks or water stains is just a “minor adjustment,” but it has already amounted to serious false advertising.
For those who are searching for housing remotely across states, this “AI trickery” can be deadly. A girl originally from Los Angeles almost sent a $500 deposit for a dreamy AI-listed property in the Nomad area for $2,650, but was luckily dissuaded by her parents and flew to New York only to find a rundown, dark house with a yard overgrown with weeds and infested with rats.
This chaos has prompted high concern from the New York City government. In a recent proposal to improve the housing market, the mayor included a clause for “mandatory disclosure of AI-generated images.” The mayor emphasized, “Citizens should not have to second-guess whether a property they find online actually exists.”
However, in the severely imbalanced supply and demand of New York’s rental market, even with such blatant deceit, reality remains harsh. When some viewers tried to inform those waiting in line outside the dark basement that all the photos were fake, no one left – in the desperate quest to find a place to call home in New York, they still chose to take a peek inside. According to StreetEasy data, that dreadful basement was successfully rented out by the end of June.