AB 2025 would extend California's altered-image disclosure rule to rental listings for leases longer than a year. A meaningfully edited photo would need a disclosure, with the unaltered original available alongside it. Start keeping your originals now.
AB 2025 would extend real estate's existing digitally-altered-image disclosure rule into the rental market for leases longer than a year. If a photo has been meaningfully altered, meaning more than a basic crop or color correction, the listing would need a disclosure, and in most cases the unaltered original photo would need to be available alongside it. Pure renderings that were never a real photograph are carved out, but anything that started as a picture of the actual unit and got edited is fair game.
Key takeaways from the video
- A pending bill would extend altered-image disclosure rules to rental listings for leases longer than a year.
- The listing would need a disclosure and the unaltered original photo available alongside it.
- Common touch-ups like brightening, clutter removal, or fixing a stained carpet could be in scope.
- Photograph every unit before any editing and file the originals.
Read the full transcript
Who touched up the photos on your last rental listing? And do you still have the originals? A bill in Sacramento would extend the altered image disclosure rule into rentals, for leases longer than a year. That means a disclosure on the listing, and the unaltered original photo available alongside it.
Rental listings get touched up more than people realize. A brightened room, some clutter removed. Even a stained carpet fixed in the photo before the actual carpet gets replaced. All common, all potentially in scope.
It has not passed. But here is the habit worth building now anyway. Photograph every unit before anyone edits anything, and file the originals. Thirty seconds, and you never have to reconstruct one later.
Transcript from the video's narration script. Informational only, not legal advice.
This bill has not passed. It is still moving through committee and floor process, and the final language could change before it lands, if it lands at all. But if you manage your own rentals, or you have a property manager doing your marketing, this is worth putting on your radar now.
Here is the practical risk. Rental listings get touched up more than people realize. Brightening a dark room, virtually removing clutter, even swapping out a stained carpet in a photo before the actual carpet gets replaced. All common, all reasonable, and all potentially in scope if this bill becomes law as written.
What I would do now regardless of whether this passes: keep the original, unedited photos of every unit on file before any editing happens. It costs nothing, it takes thirty seconds, and it means you are never scrambling to reconstruct an original after the fact. If you are working with us on property management, this is already part of how we handle your listing photos, and we will keep tracking this bill so you are never caught flat if it moves to a final vote.
Questions about how this affects your rental?
Tony Self has owned and managed LA County income property since 1995. Reach out - free consultation, no pressure.
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