Misrepresentation

A client told me recently that it seems our MLS is going to reconsider what they call misrepresentation. Very broadly, too.

I’ve never “fixed” something wrong with a property such as repairing the hole where someone put their fist through a wall, fix a broken window, erased a propane tank, Photoshop-out a power line or power pole, etc. That would be misrepresentation — plain and simple.

But it seems that they’re going to consider making the lawn greener or the sky blue to be misrepresentation, too.

If a lawn looks like an artillery range, making that look like a golf course is misrepresentation, sure. But if the dog likes a certain spot or there’s a bare patch or the seller moved out and doesn’t have the sprinkler on as much as they maybe should, fixing a spot or two to make it look like it did in February does not strike me as misrepresentation. It’s a tweak.

Hell, I’ve had agents ask me to go by and shoot an exterior while a tree is blooming or has leaves when they know we’re not going to do the rest of it until those events have passed. Is that misrepresentation — showing the home as it was a couple of weeks before? If that’s the case, then I guess they’re going to have to hire me to come back every couple of weeks to re-shoot the exteriors. “Sorry, Mrs. Smith, but those flowers aren’t blooming like they were.”

And if those slight tweaks are going to be considered misrepresentation, what about bringing in furniture? What about virtual staging — where furniture is added via Photoshop? What about using strobes to light the interior — that’s probably a grosser example of misrepresenting the property than fixing a patch on the lawn. How about using a wide angle lens?

What about replacing the 80″ black-hole of a television with an image of the front of the house? Is that misrepresentation?

I think this can be taken too far. But if our MLS is going to call replacing skies when it’s smokey or gray or patching up a piece of lawn here and there as misrepresentation, then there’s either going to be a lot of unhappy agents and sellers or there’s going to be a lot of lying.