Your ADU listing photos need a disclosure on January 1

Most ADU owners list their own units, and most of the listings I see in Santa Clara County now have at least one photo that's been through something. Virtual furniture in an empty studio. A gray sky swapped for blue. A phone's "enhance" button that quietly widened the room.

From January 1 a lot of that needs a label.

What the law says

AB 2025, from Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, was signed in the last week of September and takes effect January 1, 2027.

It covers rental advertising and promotional material that uses a digitally altered image, meaning an image generated entirely by AI, or an existing photo changed by or at the direction of a person using photo editing software or AI. If you use one, the ad has to say so on or next to the image.

If the image started as a real photograph and was then changed, you also have to include the original, or a link, URL, or QR code that gets a renter to it.

It is the rental counterpart to AB 723, which put the same kind of rule on property-sale listings starting January 1, 2026. Anyone who has bought or sold a house this year has already seen those disclosures. Rentals were the gap, and this closes it.

What's exempt

Routine edits. Cropping, color correction, and adjustments that don't change how the property looks. Brightening a dim room so it reads the way it does in person is fine. Straightening a crooked frame is fine.

What isn't fine without a label is anything that changes what a renter would see on arrival. Virtual furniture, a sofa where there's empty floor. A lawn that's greener than the lawn. A neighbor's trash cans painted out of the frame. A wide-angle stretch that makes a 400 square foot studio read as 600.

The test I'd use is simple. If a tenant walked in and said "that's not what the photo showed," would they be right? If yes, label it.

It isn't a ban

This matters because some owners are going to over-correct and pull every staged photo, which costs them inquiries for no reason.

Virtual staging is still allowed. AI-generated images are still allowed. The law regulates disclosure, not use. A staged photo of your empty ADU with a clear "virtually staged" label next to it and the empty-room original one click away is fully compliant, and it is still a better listing than an empty room alone, because renters struggle to picture scale in an unfurnished unit.

Honestly, I think the disclosed version performs better. Renters who've been burned by a listing that didn't match reality respond to an owner who shows both.

Why I'd take it seriously anyway

For real estate licensees, a violation is also a violation of the licensing law, which is the real teeth here. If you list through an agent or a management company, they are going to be careful, and they should be.

For an owner listing directly, the practical risk is less about an enforcement action and more about the tenant relationship. A disclosure requirement on the books gives an unhappy renter a concrete thing to point at, and you don't want the start of a tenancy to be an argument about a photo.

And the platforms are going to adapt. Listing sites already handle AB 723 disclosures on sales, and I'd expect rental-listing tools to add a disclosure field. Being ahead of that is easy now and annoying later.

What to do before January

Pull up your current listing and go through every photo. Sort them into untouched, routinely edited, and altered. Most owners have fewer in the third pile than they fear, and a couple they'd forgotten about.

For anything altered, either replace it with an honest photo or add a label beside it and keep the original somewhere linkable. A shared album link works. So does a short gallery on your own site if you have one.

Turn off auto-enhance on your phone before you shoot the next turnover. Some of those modes do more than adjust light, and you don't want to discover that after the listing's live.

And keep your originals. Every one. Storage is cheap and the law assumes you can produce them.

Also landing January 1

While you're updating the listing, one more change worth knowing about, since it touches ADUs on longer leases.

SB 1365 extends California's emergency price-gouging limit to rental housing regardless of lease term. Previously, a rental with an initial term longer than one year was outside that rule. From January 1, after a covered emergency declaration, raising the rent by more than 10% is restricted on every lease length, with defenses for increases the tenant agreed to before the declaration. Most ADU leases are a year or less and were already covered, but if you've put a family member or a long-term tenant on a multi-year lease, that's now inside the rule too.

None of this changes what screening you can do or what your ADU should rent for. It changes what your listing has to admit to, which, if the listing is honest, is not much.

Want a second pair of eyes on your listing before January, or a read on what the unit should rent for? Get a free ADU rental analysis. Or call me at (408) 813-8001.

Sources

• New law will require disclosures for digitally altered rental ads — California Apartment Association
• AB 2025 (Pellerin) committee analysis — California State Assembly
• California AB 2025: Tenancy: digitally altered images — GovBuddy bill tracker
• Consumer Reports supports California bill to combat deceptive AI in real estate listings — Consumer Reports
• Governor signs bill expanding emergency rent caps to long-term leases — California Apartment Association