What's New In Proptech: September 18, 202621706
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 Owner,Managing Editor and Publisher of WGAN Forum and WGAN-TV Podcast Fairfield, California |
TomSparks private msg quote post Address this user | |
 Pre-market listings became a two-portal reality this week: Zillow Preview went live on Realtor.com, putting pre-MLS homes in front of roughly three-quarters of major portal traffic at the same time. New York moved to join California and Wisconsin in requiring disclosure on AI-altered listing photos. And INTERGEO in Munich produced the first real wave of new reality capture hardware since the summer, led by XGRIDS, NavVis and FARO. Here is this week's roundup for real estate photographers and 3D capture pros: 1) Zillow Preview listings go live on Realtor.com Zillow Preview listings are now visible on Realtor.com, five months after the two companies announced the partnership. More than 400 brokerages have enrolled since the program launched in March, including Keller Williams, REMAX, HomeServices of America and Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. Preview listings are labeled on both sites and require no login or brokerage relationship to view, and buyers can save a listing, contact the agent or book a tour before the home officially lists. Per Comscore data cited by the companies, Zillow and Realtor.com together reach about three-quarters of major portal visitors. Why this matters to WGAN Members: The deadline for listing media just moved, and most agents have not thought it through yet. Under the old model, photos and tours had to be ready for the MLS go-live date. For a Preview listing, the media has to exist before that, because the home is already being marketed publicly on the two largest portals. If an agent books a shoot for the MLS date and then enrolls the listing in Preview, they have a pre-market listing with no media on it. Ask at booking whether the listing is going into Preview, and build the schedule around the earlier date. Read more: Inman 2) New York moves to require disclosure on AI-edited listing photos New York Assembly Member Linda Rosenthal introduced legislation amending the state's real property law to require disclosure of digitally altered images in ads for the sale or lease of a property, and to require the listing include the unaltered version of the image. Adding, removing or changing elements such as furniture, walls and flooring would trigger disclosure, while ordinary brightness, color correction and cropping would not. California and Wisconsin have already passed disclosure laws and New Jersey is considering one. Separately, New York City's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection plans a rule requiring a clear disclosure on rental listings with digitally altered photos, which the city says it will enforce in coordination with StreetEasy, Zillow and other listing companies. Why this matters to WGAN Members: This is the clearest signal yet that AI image disclosure is becoming a national baseline rather than a California quirk. The line every one of these rules draws is the same: correcting a photo is fine, changing the property is not. Sky replacement, item removal, virtual staging and flooring swaps all sit on the wrong side of that line without a label. The practical move is to build disclosure into the deliverable, not leave it to the agent. Photographers who hand over labeled staged images plus the unaltered originals, and who can explain the rule when asked, become the compliance expert in the transaction rather than a liability in it. Related discussion on WGAN: 20 Questions and Answers: Virtual Staging AI for Real Estate Photos Read more: 6sqft 3) INTERGEO 2026 brings a wave of new reality capture hardware INTERGEO ran September 15 to 17 in Munich and produced the busiest hardware week of the quarter. XGRIDS introduced the Lixel L3, a flagship scanner with validated 5 mm relative accuracy and roughly 2.5 cm real-time absolute accuracy, fusing LiDAR, a true-color vision system, integrated RTK and a built-in display into one workflow, and covering about 100 square meters in 10 minutes. NavVis launched the VLX 4 with 3 mm point cloud resolution. FARO added the Focus i.1 and Focus i.1 X terrestrial laser scanners plus the Rovi i.1 reality capture package, and Trimble announced the ST30 smart target. Why this matters to WGAN Members: None of this is residential listing gear, and the pricing reflects that. What is worth watching is the direction: XGRIDS explicitly frames the L3 around 3D Gaussian Splatting moving into mainstream production, pairing survey-grade geometry with photorealistic output in a single device. That combination has been the missing piece for commercial and AEC work, where clients want a tour that looks real and a point cloud that measures. Members who have been eyeing the commercial or AEC side should read this as the category maturing, not as a reason to replace residential gear. Related discussion on WGAN: WOW! What 3D Tech is this? Read more: XGRIDS and LiDAR News 4) Judge denies Zillow's injunction against MRED and Compass U.S. District Judge John Tharp denied Zillow's motion for a preliminary injunction and dissolved the restraining order that had required Midwest Real Estate Data to restore Zillow's listing feeds after the MLS cut them off in May. In a separate ruling, Tharp compelled Zillow's claims against MRED to arbitration and stayed the case against Compass. In a 54-page opinion, the judge wrote that Zillow had not made the required strong showing that MRED and Compass agreed to cut off its access, finding the circumstantial evidence did not sufficiently distinguish an agreement from independent conduct. With the restraining order gone, MRED considers itself free to enforce its rules against Zillow again, which could include another feed cutoff. Zillow says the ruling is not the end of the case. Why this matters to WGAN Members: Chicago-area members watched this play out in May, when thousands of listings disappeared from Zillow overnight. The lesson is that portal visibility is now a variable rather than a constant, and it can change without warning in any market where an MLS and a portal are fighting. That is a reason to make sure the media you deliver lives somewhere you and the agent control, whether that is a branded tour link, the brokerage site or a property URL, rather than depending on a single portal to be the place the work gets seen. Read more: Inman 5) ALTA: seller impersonation fraud attempts have more than doubled The American Land Title Association's 2026 seller impersonation fraud study found that 59 percent of title firms reported at least one attempt in the prior year, up from 28 percent in the 2024 survey. Attempts in the month before the survey jumped from 19 percent to 45 percent, and firms reporting three or more attempts rose from 4 percent to 23 percent. Vacant land remains the top target, but vacation homes, rental properties, farmland and primary residences all saw increased targeting. Spoofed contact information appeared in most schemes, and 58 percent of respondents flagged deepfake image or voice technology as a factor. Half of the firms that disclosed claim costs put them above $100,000. Why this matters to WGAN Members: There is an angle here that nobody writes about: on a vacant land or absentee-owner listing, the photographer is often the only person who physically visits the property before closing. That makes members an accidental verification step in a transaction type that fraudsters are targeting more aggressively every year. It is worth noticing when a listing feels off, such as a rushed remote seller, an address that does not match the property description, or an agent who has never met the owner. It is also a reason to expect more identity friction from title partners on these deals. Read more: Inman 6) Proptech job postings fell nearly 59 percent in three months Open proptech job postings dropped from 1,152 to 478 over roughly three months, according to CRETI analysis of CareerHound and LinkedIn listings. The decline accelerated rather than leveling off, falling 14 percent in July, 33 percent in August and 28 percent in the three weeks before the report. CRETI frames it as an operating leverage shift, with AI, automation and outsourced services substituting for headcount that used to signal startup momentum. The report's summary: proptech is not necessarily becoming smaller, it is becoming leaner. Why this matters to WGAN Members: A leaner vendor market means fewer new tour platforms and editing services chasing your business, more consolidation among the small ones, and thinner support from the survivors. If you are weighing a multi-year commitment to a smaller platform right now, the question to ask is whether its growth comes from actual customer retention or from funding headlines. The tools most likely to still be here in two years are the ones whose revenue does not depend on headcount. Read more: Inman 7) Zillow Preview listings are coming to RealScout Zillow Preview listings will be integrated into RealScout later this year, giving the platform's 100,000-plus agents early access to pre-market homes for their buyers. Preview listings will be labeled within RealScout and replaced with active MLS listings once the pre-market period ends. Why this matters to WGAN Members: This is the agent-tool half of story one. Pre-market listings are no longer just a portal feature, they are becoming part of the search tools agents use with their clients every day. The more places a Preview listing appears, the more the pre-market window behaves like a real launch, and the more the media needs to be finished for it. Read more: Inman WGAN Marketing Partner Spotlight: ImagenAI ImagenAI provides AI-powered photo editing that learns your personal editing style, helping real estate photographers cut post-production time dramatically while keeping a consistent look across every shoot. Learn more: ImagenAI The takeaway Two of this week's biggest stories are really the same story: the rules around listing media are being rewritten by people who are not photographers. Pre-market programs are moving up the deadline for when media has to exist, and state legislatures are defining what you are allowed to do to an image once you have it. Both are conversations worth having with your agents before they become problems. Meanwhile the capture platforms have now been quiet for eight straight weeks, and the hardware energy has moved to the survey and AEC side of the industry. What caught your eye this week? Did I miss a story WGAN Members should know about? Reply below. |
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 CaptureMember Coeur DAlene, Idaho |
daviddemilo private msg quote post Address this user | |
| First off, I really enjoy this format of reporting, summary and analysis (why it matters). Very informative and incisive. I've been watching the development of Gaussian splatting carefully, because right now using a Pro3 to capture a 40,000 sq. ft. building with confirming measurements is feeling old. My only concern is the up-front investment it will require to make the move into this new tech, given the downward pricing pressure on capture technicians. As for Zillow Preview, I find it surprising that Realtor.com is doing anything in partnership with Zillow, or promoting Zillow's mediocre (at best!) tour platform. What is the current state of the Costar/Matterport/Zillow standoff? Most of my real estate clients are selling upscale homes and they could give a fig about Zillow and are not impressed by its tours. Also, it's not just state legislatures that are setting the rules. Here in Idaho, our MLS put disclosure rules in place for AI-altered images, leaving wiggle room for effects like sky replacements and removal of things like trash cans, objects on the lawn, etc., but requiring disclosure of a full de-cluttering of virtual staging treatment. I have no problem with that approach. In fact, as a photographer I am more concerned with the proliferation of AI slop replacing good composition, lighting, and color. I have seen too many listing showing a home on a prairie with a champagne Malibu sunset. Everyone knows its fake, and photographers will not benefit if buyers think their work is AI slop. As a buyer, it makes sense to me: requiring accurate representation of a property is just good, old-fashioned truth-in-advertising. It really has nothing to do with the creativity or craft of a photographer - yet. Better that the industry self-regulates, than leaving it to state legislatures. |
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Owner, Managing Editor and Publisher of WGAN Forum and WGAN-TV Podcast Fairfield, California |
TomSparks private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Thanks @daviddemilo The future is 3DGS... there's some scanners out that are affordable... i've been eyeing the Pocket 3D Take a peek at it. I think Costar/Zillow are still at a standoff unfortunately. I haven't heard anything new since their last round of fighting. Yeah, here in CA we have AB723 that passed. Sounds similar to your MLS rules in Idaho. |
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