Under A4728, photos in New Jersey home sale and rental ads would have to show the home as it looks today and be no more than five years old. AI could still add or remove furniture if the ad says so.
Sellers, landlords and their agents could not use AI or other editing software to "fundamentally alter" the photos in a New Jersey home's sale or rental ads, under a bill that cleared its last Assembly committee last month.
The bill, A4728, would also require every photo in the ad to be no more than five years old and to "reflect the actual, current state" of the home, under the version the Assembly Appropriations Committee approved Oct. 22.
The rule would cover rentals as well as sales, including homes and lots in mobile and manufactured home parks.
Assemblywoman Carmen Theresa Morales (D, 34th District), Assemblywoman Mitchelle Drulis (D, 16th) and Assemblyman Al Abdelaziz (D, 35th) sponsored the bill.
No member voted against the bill in its three committee votes, and members of both parties voted for it, the Legislature's records show.
"There's a significant difference between helping someone visualize furnished rooms versus digitally adding windows where none exist or covering up structural damage," Drulis said in a statement after the Assembly Housing Committee approved the bill in May. "These practices waste people's valuable time and money."
With a few typed prompts, AI tools, some of them free, can remove objects, redo a yard and change parts of a house that are permanent, the National Association of Realtors, the real estate trade group, wrote in an August article.
The article describes a New Jersey couple, more than a year into their home search, who posted examples online of homes that did not match their photos. A kitchen that gleamed in the pictures was messy and dirty in person, and a yard shown with green grass had dirt and weeds instead. Some house hunters have a name for it, the article says: "housefished," a real estate spin on the term "catfished," slang for being fooled by someone's fake online profile.
The trade group's ethics code tells members to "present a true picture" in their ads, and New Jersey's Consumer Fraud Act already makes deception or misrepresentation in selling or advertising real estate unlawful, even if no one ends up misled or harmed. A4728 would add rules aimed only at photos in home ads, including the five-year limit and its own fines.
The bill would allow furniture edits if the ad says so
The bill does not say how big an edit has to be before it is barred, or where everyday touch-ups, such as brightening or cropping, fall. A law in California and a pending bill in New York both spell out that routine fixes like those do not count as altering a photo, so long as they leave the property's condition unchanged.
One exception in the New Jersey bill covers furniture and other movable items, which sellers and agents could add or take out digitally as long as the ad says so and the rest of the photo shows the home as it looks today. Furnishing an empty room this way, often called virtual staging, has spread as photo editing software has become more popular and easier to get, a California Senate Judiciary Committee analysis said in 2025.
A second exception, which the Assembly Appropriations Committee added on Oct. 22, covers affordable housing units that are still being built, before there is a finished home to photograph. Sellers could use AI or edited images to advertise those units as part of the marketing the state's Fair Housing Act requires, according to the committee's statement.
Anyone relying on either exception would have to disclose the editing in every ad and could not use it for "disguising a flaw" in the home. A buyer or renter, or an agent working for one, could ask for the original photos, and the seller or agent would have to provide them.
Agents would face state discipline, and sellers and landlords would face fines
An agent who breaks the rule would face discipline from the New Jersey Real Estate Commission, part of the state Department of Banking and Insurance. A seller or landlord would face a $500 civil penalty for a first offense and up to $1,000 for each offense after that. The state Superior Court and municipal courts would hear those cases, according to the bill.
Several of those rules took shape in committee. The Assembly Science, Innovation and Technology Committee made clear in March that the bill covers rentals and leases as well as sales. In May, the Assembly Housing Committee let sellers remove furniture from a photo, not just add it, and moved agents from fines to discipline by the commission, according to the committees' statements.
A4728 can now go to the full Assembly for a vote, and if the Assembly passes it, the bill would go to the Senate, where the Legislature's records show no Senate version.
If A4728 becomes law, it would take effect at the start of the second month after the governor signs it, and it would only cover homes put on the market after that. From that date, the Real Estate Commission would have a year to adopt regulations, the detailed rules a state agency writes to carry out a law. The bill does not say what they would cover, and it lets the commission start on them before the law takes effect.
The Legislature's Office of Legislative Services could not estimate how many violations would occur, how much the penalties would bring in or what enforcement would cost the commission and the courts, according to its Oct. 29 cost analysis.
California and Wisconsin have also passed labeling laws
New Jersey would not be the first state to write rules for edited listing photos. California and Wisconsin already have laws, and both center on disclosure: they require agents to flag certain altered images.
Since Jan. 1, 2026, real estate agents agents in California must label a digitally altered listing photo and let buyers see the original, according to the National Association of Realtors' August article.
Wisconsin's law, signed in December 2025, takes effect Jan. 1, 2027. It will require licensed agents and brokers to say so in their ads when technology, AI included, has been used to change how a property looks in a way that "creates a false or misleading impression of the property."
A bill introduced in the New York Assembly in July would require a label on or next to each altered photo, and online listings would also have to carry the originals or a link to them.
New Jersey's bill also calls for labels, but only for the edits it allows. Any other edit meant to "fundamentally alter" a photo would be barred, label or not.
The California Association of Realtors opposed that state's bill in 2025 unless lawmakers amended it. The association argued that minor touch-ups should not expose agents to liability and that California law already barred false real estate ads. Among its concerns, quoted in the California Senate committee analysis, were websites outside an agent's control. It also objected to holding agents liable for photos posted on sites outside their control, according to that analysis.
New Jersey Realtors, the state's Realtor trade association, has not posted a position on A4728 on its website.
New Jersey Assemblyman Al Abdelaziz, one of the A4728's sponsors, made his case for the bill in May: "No one should have to walk into a showing only to discover the property looks nothing like what was advertised online, and this bill helps make sure families are making decisions based on reality, not something generated by a computer."
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Sources
California Senate Judiciary Committee, bill analysis, "AB 723 (Pellerin): Real estate: digitally altered images: disclosure," 2025-2026 Regular Session (hearing of July 15, 2025)
Dittmann Tracey, Melissa, National Association of Realtors, REALTOR News, "When Does Enhancing Listing Photos Go Too Far?" (Aug. 17, 2026)
Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, "catfish" (accessed Nov. 5, 2026)
National Association of Realtors, "2026 Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice," effective Jan. 1, 2026 (accessed Nov. 4, 2026)
New Jersey Assembly Democrats, press release, "Morales, Drulis and Abdelaziz Bill Regulating Deceptive AI-Generated Real Estate Ads Clears Housing" (May 15, 2026)
New Jersey Legislature, Assembly Appropriations Committee, "Statement to [Second Reprint] Assembly, No. 4728," with committee amendments, 222nd Legislature (Oct. 22, 2026)
New Jersey Legislature, Assembly Housing Committee, "Statement to [First Reprint] Assembly, No. 4728," with committee amendments, 222nd Legislature (May 14, 2026)
New Jersey Legislature, Assembly Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, "Statement to Assembly, No. 4728," with committee amendments, 222nd Legislature (March 16, 2026)
New Jersey Legislature, Bill No. A4728, bill history, sponsors and committee roll call votes, 222nd Legislature (accessed Nov. 4, 2026)
New Jersey Legislature, Bill No. A4728, "Regulates deceptive use of artificial intelligence in photo advertising of certain dwellings," third reprint, sponsored by Assemblywoman Carmen Theresa Morales, Assemblywoman Mitchelle Drulis and Assemblyman Al Abdelaziz, 222nd Legislature (Oct. 22, 2026)
New Jersey Legislature, New Jersey Statutes, Consumer Fraud Act, N.J.S.A. 56:8-2, "Fraud, etc., in connection with sale or advertisement of merchandise or real estate as unlawful practice" (accessed Nov. 4, 2026)
New Jersey Legislature, Office of Legislative Services, "Legislative Fiscal Estimate, [Third Reprint] Assembly, No. 4728," prepared by Abigail Stoyer, senior fiscal analyst (Oct. 29, 2026)
New Jersey Realtors, website search results for "4728" and State Issues page (accessed Nov. 4, 2026)
New York State Assembly, Bill No. A11635, "An act to amend the real property law, in relation to requiring the disclosure of digitally altered images in an advertisement or other promotional material for the sale or lease of real property," introduced by the Assembly Rules Committee at the request of Assemblymember Rosenthal, 2025-2026 session (July 29, 2026)
Wisconsin Legislature, 2025 Wisconsin Act 69, "relating to: changes regarding the laws governing real estate practice" (Dec. 9, 2025)
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