Photoshopping

Padstow

Are estate agents allowed to photoshop details?
There's a house for sale that I know well. One of the photos is of the garden and surroundings, except they have been photoshopped. Trees have been added, pylon removed etc. The whole scene is a total lie.

poppysarah

That sounds like it must be against the rules!
Are they a member of a professional body?


One of the major ones photoshops flames into the fire places. Badly.

firstaspect

We viewed a couple of houses which had clearly been photoshopped in the photos, not to that extent though. I'm not sure what they expect to acheive as you'll soon see they are a lie when you go and view anyway. My thoughts would then be that if they are having to photoshop photos then what else are they hiding.

Davesnave

I'm impressed that you've found an estate agent able to understand Photoshop, but this would be an offence under the Property Misdescriptions Act 1991, the preamble to which states:

(b)a statement is misleading if (though not false) what a reasonable person may be expected to infer from it, or from any omission from it, is false,

(c)a statement may be made by pictures or any other method of signifying meaning as well as by words and, if made by words, may be made orally or in writing,

I Photoshopped the main picture of our house for an EA, but only to make it clearer & brighter, so it would have been hard for anyone to notice or prove we'd done that.:cool:

Putting in stuff, like trees, or removing a pylon, would be easy to prove.

Welsh_Totster

I took the pix of our last house we were selling for our EA as I'm a keen amateur photographer and knew I'd take better pix than they could. Anyway all pix bar 1 were as they were taken and straight out if the camera, I photoshopped the pic of the front of the house to remove the back end of a car that was parked in the way. This I think is ok, but adding bits of greenery into gardens and removing pylons is very wrong in my opinion and extremely misleading.

googler

I'd say certainly not allowed under terms of Properties Misdescriptions Act.

Do you know the address/phone no. of your local Trading Standards Office? Start there.

Padstow

The agents are one of the biggest and world wide, the property is on for over a million.:eek: I can't believe the nerve of them, I hope no potential buyer travels a long way, lured by the view.

googler

Padstow wrote: »

The agents are one of the biggest and world wide, the property is on for over a million.:eek: I can't believe the nerve of them, I hope no potential buyer travels a long way, lured by the view.

Don't tell us. Tell Trading Standards.

theartfullodger

Lying and fraud are usually considered unwise and outwith the good old British traditions of decency & fair-play.. But I'm not surprised....

GillsMan7

Welsh_Totster wrote: »

I took the pix of our last house we were selling for our EA as I'm a keen amateur photographer and knew I'd take better pix than they could. Anyway all pix bar 1 were as they were taken and straight out if the camera, I photoshopped the pic of the front of the house to remove the back end of a car that was parked in the way. This I think is ok, but adding bits of greenery into gardens and removing pylons is very wrong in my opinion and extremely misleading.

I agree with this. I think there's a very big difference between tidying up a photograph to remove temporary things such as cars, people, rubbish, and adding/removing permanent fixtures such as trees and pylons.

Carrie_Bloomy

Photoshop can make miracles with picture of old not very attractive house . I have seen photoshop house pictures too and would say you can not believe pictures that real agent showing you.