On the surface, two potential areas for marketing misrepresentation in real estate have nothing in common. The first, inaccurate square footage, is a number. The second is an image, the listing photographs that help a buyer “see” a property online. AI-generated photography in real estate listings has been an especially hot issue in the news as of late. Both areas have the potential for making a listing appear more alluring than it really is and both can land agents in regulatory trouble.
Can technology help agents avoid the serious risk of marketing misrepresentation or is it more likely to be the cause of it?
The square footage error perpetuated
Inaccurate square footage is not a new issue, but it is a persistent one. A listing’s square footage is often pulled from local tax assessor records or carried forward from a prior MLS listing and accepted on good faith without independent verification. Tax records are notoriously unreliable for this purpose, since they may not reflect additions, finished basements, or renovations. It’s not difficult to imagine how an inaccurate number travels from a tax record to an old MLS listing to a new one, perpetuating an error no one bothered to check.
Regulators are no longer treating errors in square footage as an innocent mistake. The Real Estate Council of Ontario, for example, issued four discipline decisions in the spring of 2026 against agents who failed to independently verify lot size and square footage before advertising it, with fines running into the thousands of dollars, plus mandatory continuing education. Multiple listing services have also tightened their own rules, and a growing number of local taxing authorities now caution against using their data for anything other than assessment purposes.
There are two best practices agents can follow to protect themselves from unintentionally misrepresenting a property. The first is to know your local real estate board’s measurement standards, such as ANSI Z765, to understand what counts as finished area. The second is to measure a listing every single time.
Ensuring precise measurements is an area where technology can help. LiDAR-based scanning can capture a property’s interior far more precisely than a tape measure or laser rangefinder, especially in irregular or angled rooms. Using time-of-flight LiDAR scanning can deliver high-accuracy property datawith measurement uncertainty with some technology tools as low as 0.5% or better for distance measurement on a floor plan and 1% or better for square footage, giving agents a defensible measurement record. The latter is vital if a property’s square footage is challenged.
The temptation of the perfect photo
The second type of marketing misrepresentation is newer but growing fast: photographs edited or generated by AI can shift a buyer’s overall impression of a property. Brightening a dim room by turning on the lights or removing clutter have long been standard practices in real estate listing photography. What’s changed is how far editing tools can now go. There’s a temptation to make a listing more attractive by swapping out flooring or paint colors or altering what’s visible through a window.
Regulators are lagging behind on AI image misrepresentation, but they are starting to catch up. California was the first state to require that agents disclose digitally altered photos and provide buyers with access to the unaltered photos, but Wisconsin passed similar legislation and other states are considering it.
Earlier this year, the National Association of Exclusive Buyer Agents (NAEBA) issued guidance to home buyers, noting that virtual staging and photo editing aren’t automatically improper, but that they cross a line when the “net impression” of a listing suggests a property is different than reality. NAEBA’s advice suggests that buyers ask for objective information about the property, including information such as detailed floor plans and 3D virtual tours. The latter type of information makes it much harder for a buyer to be misled. Floor plans show dimensions of a space and flow, and 3D virtual tours reveal a property as it is, not as the seller would like it to be.
What’s interesting in this case is that technology is the cause of misrepresentation in AI-retouched photos, but this is also an area where technology can provide a solution.
Property capture technology provides the objective information that helps buyers evaluate a property as NAEBA recommends. Outputs such as detailed floor plans, 3D virtual tours, and, of course, verifiable square footage help a buyer to envision a property as it really is. This kind of information makes a listing complete, giving a full, well-rounded and, most importantly, accurate picture. It grounds a buyer’s impression in verifiable facts rather than on curated images.
Trust is the real issue
Buyers need to trust what they’re seeing before they can picture themselves living somewhere. Once that trust is broken, it’s difficult to rebuild. Agents who lead with transparency align themselves with a core expectation that has not changed in real estate: buyers want a true picture of what they are purchasing.
Technology can distort that picture and diminish trust, or it can be used to establish it. The good news is that the technology many agents already use, or can easily adopt, is the best defense against both kinds of marketing misrepresentation discussed above. Technology can provide the objective information that lets buyers know that what they see is what they get.
Skylar Lawrence-Lebel is Vice President of Growth at Planitar Inc., the makers of the iGUIDE system.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of HousingWire’s editorial department and its owners.
