ISSUE 0003
Last week in real estate media... Fotello, CubiCasa and RealtyEdit are marketing AI tools straight to agents, CoStar agreed to buy aerial imagery company Vexcel for $730 million, California extended its AI-photo disclosure law to rental listings, Ontario's regulator issued AI photo guidance, and New York's OneKey MLS joined the fight against Compass. Here's the rundown.
THE BIG STORY
Your AI editing vendor is also pitching your clients
Fotello, CubiCasa and RealtyEdit market directly to agents. AutoHDR and Autoenhance still pitch their AI editing to photographers.
Most photographers see their AI editing vendor as a trusted partner in their business, but some of those vendors also run apps and marketing campaigns aimed directly at your clients: agents.
Fotello. The AI editing platform runs a separate "Fotello for Agents" site with its own pricing and phone number. It isn't linked from the photographer site. The agent pages sell listing videos made from photos with "no camera, no crew, no filming day." A pricing calculator asks agents, "What would a videographer charge you?" An FAQ says: "You were paying for a videographer, a drone pilot, an editor, and a colourist — per listing. Fotello's AI does those jobs from the photos you already have: crew-level production without the crew, or the invoice." Plans run $49 to $449 a month, and the agent terms were last updated Oct. 28. To put agents on camera, Fotello asks for "a one-time 15-second selfie clip."
Fotello began running ads aimed at agents on Facebook and Instagram today, Nov. 2, according to Meta's Ad Library. One reads, "Type the address. Record ten seconds. Fotello pulls in the photos, price and details, and turns it into a listing reel worth sharing." You can watch Fotello's video ads here.
RealtyEdit. RealtyEdit's site says it was "Created by the team behind RealtyCam," an iPhone app from Serenity Labs. Its App Store listing addresses "Realtors & Real Estate Agents" and says, "Say goodbye to expensive photographers and marketing teams." RealtyCam's website says the app is "Trusted by thousands of agents around the world."
CubiCasa. The floor plan company already sells straight to agents. Its agents page calls floor plans "Every Agent's Marketing Secret" and says, "Use CubiCasa to create them from 5 minutes' work." Its new AI Photo Editing, launched Sept. 15, is pitched "for real estate photographers" on its product page, but a CubiCasa article on AI tools for agents says it launched the service "for real estate agents who want to spend less time editing."
AutoHDR. AutoHDR still pitches to photographers, but it now has a free iPhone app, AutoHDR: AI Real Estate Camera. It shoots HDR photos on your phone and returns AI edits in the app. The listing says it's "Built for real estate photographers" and doesn't mention agents. Still, a phone camera with built-in AI editing is a step toward the kind of tool agents could use themselves, so we'll be watching.
Autoenhance.ai. The London-based editor's main site is pitched to "Real Estate Photographers." It has a history of marketing to estate agents in the UK, but we found no campaign aimed specifically at U.S. agents. Some U.S. apps, such as ListingPix, use Autoenhance's API to offer agents do-it-yourself AI photos.
Some AI editing vendors now market to photographers and agents alike. Would that affect which vendor you choose? Let us know in the comments what you think.
Disclosure: REMW publisher Josh Mais was previously Head of Growth at Autoenhance.ai and still holds an interest in the company, but has no role in its operations or direction.
TECHNOLOGY & SOFTWARE
Insta360's Spatial Capture turns 360 video into walk-through 3D scenes, with a $3,500 challenge
Spatial Capture, a feature in the Insta360 app, turns a 360 video into a 3D Gaussian splat. That's a photoreal scene viewers can move through and see from any angle. It works with the X6, X5 and X4 Air, includes four captures a month, and scenes are shared as a web link. To promote it, Insta360 is running a USA Spatial Capture Challenge for X5 and X6 owners through Dec. 20 with $3,500 in cash prizes.
Roomio, a CubiCasa rival, adds Android support and an API
Roomio, a phone-scan floor plan app from Australia's Phoria, is now on Android as well as iPhone, putting it head to head with CubiCasa, the category leader, which already supports both. You scan in about five minutes and Roomio's drafters return a plan in 12 to 24 hours for US$11 (2D) or US$15 (3D) per plan, with ANSI Z765 measurement for U.S. homes. It also now offers a public API and webhooks to push finished plans into your CRM or delivery system, plus custom room labels you can set per client template. CubiCasa offers a fuller developer kit, including white-label scanning SDKs and an ANSI-aligned GLA report for appraisers, but its developer page doesn't list API or SDK prices.
Learn more: Roomio | WGAN | Roomio on Android (sponsored)
BUSINESS & MARKET
Big brokerages plan a shared listing system as an answer to private listings
On Oct. 26, Keller Williams, AGNT (parent of eXp Realty and NextHome), HomeServices of America and Real REMAX Group announced Open Real Estate, a planned shared system where brokers enter a listing once and it goes out to local MLSs, portals and other sites. It's framed as a counter to private listings. It isn't live yet: the group says it will spend the next six months finalizing governance and technology, and Inman reports a first-quarter 2027 launch target.
Read more: Open Real Estate (free) | Real Estate News (free)
New York's OneKey MLS joins the fight against Compass
More MLSs are taking on Compass. On Oct. 27, New York's OneKey MLS joined a federal lawsuit that CRMLS filed Oct. 5, asking a court to uphold rules requiring publicly marketed listings to go into the MLS. Six more MLSs filed their own suit Oct. 21, and Inman counts eight MLSs now in court against Compass. Compass has sued CRMLS too, and it told Inman that several large MLSs have let agents market office exclusives without fines for years.
Read more: OneKey MLS | OneKey® MLS Joins Federal Lawsuit Against Compass to Defend Cooperation and an Open, Fair Marketplace (free) | CRMLS | Complaint (PDF) | Compass | Complaint (PDF)
CoStar to buy aerial imagery company Vexcel for $730M
CoStar, which owns Homes.com and Matterport, has agreed to buy Vexcel, maker of UltraCam aerial cameras and operator of an aerial imagery program covering 99.6% of the U.S. population, for approximately $730 million in cash. CoStar says it plans to use AI to extract "hundreds of data fields per property" from Vexcel's 7.5 to 15 cm imagery. CoStar expects the deal to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory approvals. CoStar hasn't said whether the imagery will show up on Homes.com listings or alongside Matterport tours.
COMMUNITY PULSE
How do you find clients?
A photographer in the Real Estate Photography Beginners to Advanced group asked how others market themselves after flyers, social posts and open-house goodies fell flat. One camp swore by showing up: realtor events, cold calls and daily Instagram posts that "show you working, not just your work." One member said a month of daily posting plus a few free shoots landed steady realtors and four builders. The other camp said they'd never marketed at all and let great work and word of mouth do it.
Read the thread: Real Estate Photography Beginners to Advanced (Facebook group)
Did your Zillow tour credit just disappear?
A member of the Real Estate Photography group said an Aryeo rep told them Zillow is removing the creator's name and logo from Zillow 3D Home tours. Others said new tours lost the credit in roughly the past week and a half. Some shrugged that few agents ever saw it, while others said any free exposure counts. We couldn't find an announcement from Zillow or Aryeo.
Read the thread: Real Estate Photography (Facebook group)
WATCH & LISTEN
Ep 149 - Be Who You'd Hire | Road to PMRE 2026 #10
Upmarket with Reed Fish | about 56 min
Reed Fish talks with Matt Feddermann of Chicago's Real Snap Media, who grew from solo to a team of three photographers by acting as "a strategic partner versus a vendor." His playbook: relationships first, educational Instagram content that brought in a client who had followed him for more than a year, and following up on listings still on the market after about six weeks with paid re-edits.
Upselling Property Media: How to Boost Your Bottom Line
PropMedia Podcast | about 51 min
The Pixlmob and PropMedia co-founders explain how to present post-production upsells, such as virtual staging, lot line overlays, AI video clips and lawn edits, as problem-solving tools for realtors rather than sales pitches.
Real Estate Photography Pricing: From $150 to a Team
WGAN-TV with Tom Sparks | about 6 min
Tom Sparks explains why $150 a shoot stopped working. As editing, software, gear and taxes ate his margin, he raised existing clients' prices in $25 steps, and he shows that on a $290 photo-only shoot, a $100 photographer and $35 of editing leave $155 before overhead. His point is that tools that cut per-job costs add margin without raising prices, though they can't fix bad pricing.
What Should You Charge? Real Estate Media Pricing & First Clients
OUTWORK Podcast with Oliver Ward and Alex Coombs | about 59 min
Oliver Ward and Alex Coombs take on the questions new real estate media owners ask most: what to charge, and how to land your first agents. Their core advice is don't be the cheapest. Price near the middle of your local market, know your true cost per shoot, and sell your service, not just your photos. For first clients, they suggest building a portfolio with free shoots or a rented Airbnb, then emailing small, growth-minded agents directly.
China Prototypes in Days. Why Does the US Take Months?
Drone U with Paul Aitken | about 66 min
Xpece founder Alex Rodriguez tells Drone U's Paul Aitken why China can prototype drones in days while U.S. makers take months, pointing to supply chain constraints and FCC, FAA and NDAA rules. They also ask whether U.S. manufacturers can truly replace DJI.
Eliminating Manual Steps - Featuring Esoft and The Collective
HDPhotoHub webinar | about 65 min
The Collective's founder and CEO, Vince Collura, walks through how connecting HDPhotoHub ordering to Esoft editing removed manual file handling, about 3,000 orders with fewer than five delivery hiccups by his count, and how add-ons like $50 virtual twilights raise revenue per listing. (Vendor webinar from HDPhotoHub featuring partner Esoft.)
RULES & REGULATIONS
California extends its altered-photo disclosure rule to rental listings
Starting Jan. 1, 2027, anyone advertising a California rental with a digitally altered or AI-generated image will have to label it on or next to the photo and, for edited camera photos, include the original or a link or QR code to it. The new law, AB 2025, signed Sept. 27, extends the rule California already applies to sale listings (we covered disclosure rules in Issue 1). Routine fixes like lighting, color correction and cropping don't count if they don't change how the property is represented, but if you shoot or virtually stage apartments, expect property managers to ask for unedited originals alongside your edits.
Ontario's real estate regulator: AI-edited listing photos must be accurate and labeled
On Oct. 22, the Real Estate Council of Ontario (RECO) published AI guidance for agents and brokerages. It says: "Virtual staging and other AI-modified images must accurately reflect the property's permanent features and be clearly labelled as digitally altered." It's guidance on agents' existing duties rather than a new law, but if you edit or stage for Ontario agents, expect them to ask for labels and to steer clear of edits that change a home's permanent features.
Until next week,
Real Estate Media Weekly
