Staged photos that follow the rules.

Every MLS sets its own rules for listing photos, and they differ from one MLS to the next. Most share a common core for virtually staged images:

• Disclose the staging. Many MLSs require a virtually staged photo to be identified as virtually staged, in the photo itself, in its caption or in the listing remarks.
• Show the room as it is, too. Some MLSs require the unaltered photo to appear alongside the staged one in the listing, or limit how many photos, or which position (such as the primary photo), may be staged.
• Do not misrepresent the property. Staging may add furniture and decor. It must not remove or hide permanent defects such as cracks, water stains or damaged flooring, change the view from a window, or alter the structure, walls, layout, fixtures, finishes or the size of a room. Many MLSs treat such an image as a violation whether or not it is disclosed.
• Overlays. Some MLSs restrict text, logos, watermarks, QR codes or contact details in photos. Ask how your MLS wants an altered image disclosed if it also limits text in photos.

Advertising rules outside the MLS apply as well, including your brokerage’s policies, the NAR Code of Ethics for REALTOR® members, and state and federal laws against deceptive advertising. Before you publish, read your own MLS’s current photo rules and ask your MLS or broker if anything is unclear.

California Business and Professions Code § 10140.8, added by AB 723 (Chapter 497, Statutes of 2025), has applied since January 1, 2026. When a real estate broker or salesperson, or someone acting for them, uses a digitally altered image in an advertisement for the sale of a property, two things are required:

1. A disclosure statement that the image has been altered, placed on or next to the image where a viewer will notice it.
2. Access to the original. A link, URL or QR code to a publicly accessible page that shows the original, unaltered image and clearly identifies it as the original. Where the listing is on a website the broker controls, the unaltered images belong in the posting itself.

Virtual staging is a digital alteration under the statute. Routine adjustments that do not change what the property is, such as exposure, white balance, color correction, cropping or straightening, are not. Read the enacted text for the exact wording, and see the compliance overview for more.

What the product does, as built today:

• A disclosure mark in every render.Before a render is marked complete, Vesta burns a disclosure chip reading “AB-723 · AI virtual staging · disclosed” into the bottom-right corner of the image itself, at about a quarter of the image width. No plan, setting or request can switch it off, and the version of the mark applied is recorded with the image.
• A public page for each original. Every staged photo has a page at a long, unguessable link showing the photo you uploaded, labelled as the original. Each listing also has one link that shows all of its originals, for an MLS remarks or link field.
• A QR code on exports.By default each export carries a labelled QR code to that photo’s original page in the bottom-left corner. You can switch the QR off at export where your MLS does not allow QR codes in photos, and use the listing’s originals link instead.
• A record of every file. Each disclosed render and each delivered export is fingerprinted with SHA-256 and written to an append-only audit ledger. A render with ledger entries cannot be deleted. Anyone can check a file against the ledger on the compliance page: the file is fingerprinted in the browser and only the fingerprint is sent. A copy recompressed by a listing portal has different bytes and will not match; check the file as exported.

What remains yours.Placing the original-photo link or QR wherever the photo is advertised, following your MLS’s rules on staged photos, and reviewing every render before you publish it. AI renders can contain changes you did not ask for, including to architecture, fixtures or views; do not publish one that misrepresents the property. Re-run it, or report it as defective under section 08 of the Terms. Using Vesta does not by itself make an advertisement compliant.

The full detail is in the Privacy Policy. In summary, Vesta stores:

• account details: name, email address, plan and credit balance (with Sign in with Apple and Hide My Email, the relay address Apple provides);
• the photos you upload, the images produced from them, and the room and listing details you enter;
• Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, never full card numbers;
• any imaging-provider API key you choose to connect;
• audit-ledger entries: a file’s hash, the time and the disclosure applied;
• first-party usage analytics, only where enabled, and never what you type.

Files are held in private storage and served through signed, expiring links. Your uploads and outputs are not used to train AI models unless you opt in. Data is kept while your account is open; when you ask for deletion, personal information is deleted or anonymised except the append-only ledger entries, originals pages (which stay available for 12 months after you close your account or delete a project, unless you ask for earlier removal) and records the law requires us to keep.

This page does not claim any third-party security certification. If your procurement process needs security or data-processing documentation, ask the studio team.

If you believe a photo made with Vesta misrepresents a property, carries a disclosure that has been removed or obscured, or that an originals page shows something it should not, tell us. Include the listing or page link, the image if you have it, and what is wrong.

• Email info@vestastudio.io, or use the contact formwith the topic “Report a compliance concern”.
• Copyright notices go to dmca@vestastudio.io.
• Concerns about a listing’s compliance with MLS rules also belong with that MLS, which enforces its own rules.