Virtual staging and photo editing disclosure: what agents need to label

We will say it plainly: an edited listing photo without a label is a liability, even in states with no specific law. The edit is not the problem. A buyer walking into an empty room they saw full of furniture, or a lawn that was green in the photo and brown in October, is a buyer who stops trusting everything else in the listing.

The good news is that the rules almost everywhere boil down to the same habit. Label what you changed, keep the original, and never edit away something a buyer would want to know.

Correcting a photo versus changing the house

Nearly every rule draws this line. Exposure, white balance, straightening verticals and lens correction are photography. Adding, removing or changing physical features is alteration.

California AB 723, in effect since 1 January 2026

AB 723 was signed on 10 October 2025 and added section 10140.8 to the Business and Professions Code. It applies to real estate brokers and salespersons, and anyone acting for them, who use a digitally altered image in advertising or promotional material for selling a property.

Two things are required. A reasonably conspicuous statement that the image has been altered, on or next to the image. And a link, URL or QR code to a publicly accessible page that holds the original, unaltered image and clearly identifies it. The law targets changes to how the property is represented (staging, removing wires, adding grass), not routine lighting or colour work. Read the statute and current California Department of Real Estate guidance for the exact definitions.

One consequence agents miss: the requirement follows the image, not the platform. If an altered photo appears in your listing video, a flyer or an Instagram carousel, the label and the path to the original need to be there too.

Outside California, check three places

Most states have no statute like AB 723 yet, but general rules against misleading advertising still apply to licensees everywhere. So look at your state's licensing law and regulator guidance, then your MLS rules, then your brokerage policy, which is sometimes the strictest of the three.

MLSs have moved faster than legislatures. Many large ones now require a label on each altered image and, increasingly, the unaltered original placed right before or after it in the photo set. CRMLS, for example, asks for the label in that photo's text field and the original next to it. A caption buried in the remarks is being treated as not enough by more MLSs each year.

Put the label on the picture

A label in the caption gets separated from the image the moment someone screenshots it, reposts it or a portal crops the text. Burned onto the image, short and readable (“Virtually staged”, “Digitally enhanced”), it travels with the photo. Do the same in video: the label should be on screen for as long as the edited photo is.

How Property Video Generator handles it

Our photo tools do virtual twilight, blue sky, declutter and virtual staging. Edited photos get a visible “Digitally enhanced” label and staged ones “Virtually staged”, in the film while the photo is on screen and on the listing website. The label cannot be switched off. Your originals are always kept, so you have them ready to link where AB 723 or your MLS asks for the original.

Camera moves are built from depth in the original photo, so walls, windows and fixtures stay where they were photographed. Optional generated hero shots on paid plans are checked against the source photo and labelled in the film. We think that is the honest default, and it happens to be the safe one.

The listing appointment conversation

Sellers ask for edits: a greener lawn, the empty dining room staged, the neighbour's fence gone. Settle it before the shoot. Staging and sky or twilight edits are fine and will be labelled. Edits that hide condition or change permanent features are off the table. Framed as protecting the sale it usually lands well, because a buyer who feels misled at the first showing rarely writes an offer.

Before anything goes live, ask one question of every image: would a buyer standing in that spot feel misled? If yes, fix the image or the label. You can try a labelled twilight edit on one of your exteriors with the free twilight preview, or read more on virtual twilight and real estate photo editing.