I started reading Valley of the Dolls for the first time the other night. It opens in 1945, with Anne Wells landing in New York and securing a job as a secretary at Henry Bellamy’s theatrical agency. She’s been tasked with finding an apartment for Henry’s handsome business partner; something on the East Side with a living room, bedroom, bath, and kitchen, furnished, for around $150 per month. He tells her not to come back to work until she’s found something. “Henry,” his handsome business partner warns, “We may never see this girl again.”
That’s as far as I made it before closing the book and bathing my face in the blue light of my laptop, my left eye twitching as I refreshed Craigslist for the hundredth time that day. I, too, have been tasked with finding an apartment in the city—not by my boss but by my current landlord, who, after mismanaging a bed bug scare for the past six months, is raising our rent by nearly $1,000. For the three years I have lived in this building, she has done little more than collect rent and turn a page a day in the picture book about dogs she has displayed in the mail room.
So. Looking for something in Central Brooklyn with a living room, bath, and kitchen, unfurnished, with fewer than 1,000 open housing code violations. Should an apartment meet these rigorous qualifications, there’s no choice but to move on it immediately. The city’s rental vacancy rate is 1.41 percent. If you don’t drop what you’re doing and beg, you will get left behind. My recent iMessage history looks something like: “Can I apply now? Can I see it RIGHT NOW? Can you draw up a lease? Can I give you everything? Can I give you all that’s in my bank account as a security deposit? Sir? Mr. Agent sir? I am a quiet and respectful tenant who spends most evenings cleaning my floors with a wood-and-bristle scrub while cartoonishly large bubbles float above me to the ceiling Cinderella style!!!!” Concrete jungle where dreams are maaaaaaaade of.
Still, you might be outdone by someone who’s willing to sign a lease without seeing the apartment at all. That’s what happened to me last weekend. Or, you might pay the application fee and be on the brink of signing, only to see the place in person and realize the AI-generated listing photos look nothing like the actual apartment. And before you can even get to these humiliations, you must waste your time trying to find solid listings among heaps and heaps of extremely fake-looking ones. I’ve searched for apartments four times in this city; it’s always fucking sucked, but AI has pushed the indignity to new lows. There was barely a moment to enjoy broker fees being outlawed before a new idiotic scheme rose up to confound hopeful tenants.
Here’s a sampling of what you might encounter:
This is the lead photo on a listing for a “sun-drenched renovated 3BR duplex with dishwasher and in-unit laundry.” Doesn’t look too fake; a little clinical but nothing that posters that aren’t virtually staged New Yorker covers and a color palette that isn’t creamy beige can’t fix. Next photo?
Right. Large planes of light appear to somehow be emitting from what look like domino-sized, basement-style windows—and also a closet. This listing isn’t just AI-furnished, it’s entirely AI.
The question I would love to ask every listing agent who uses AI: What’s the strategy here? This isn’t Hinge, you can’t use pictures that don’t look like you and hope to curb first date disappointment with your charming personality. The natural light is the personality! What is the plan for when someone arrives and sees a below-ground level room standing in the place of their sun-drenched oasis? After I asked the agent for this listing about the clearly fake light, he sent me a video that looked … nothing like the listing! When I pushed him on it, he told me “the pics are original photos, but generally marketing everything is staged AI.”
Well! Good luck with that! I guess if you can get someone to sign a lease no looksies, it’s not your problem. The city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection also alleges that brokers lure tenants with AI ads for non-existent apartments, then charge illegal fees to show them real ones. AI really does remove tedium to free up time for people to use their brains as creatively as possible, if those people happen to be thieving, scamming scoundrels.
There are a few telltale signs of AI in the listings I’ve come across. You could start an entire gallery of AI-generated listing photographs that feature fake Etsy Matisse prints and light that has no origin. This one is pretty obvious, but it’s still sad to imagine hapless bisexuals being entrapped by this fake green velvet couch and bauhaus coffee table book.
Another fake Matisse print, another day that ends in y.
Seriously, what the fuck is up with this?
This one is for a place I actually did go see in person, which ended up being 100 times more dark, cramped, and battered than it looked in the pictures.
Other hallmarks of virtual staging: A bowl of green apples and/or limes. So many apples. And a framed image of a single branch. I will know that my consciousness is persisting in an unreality if I look at the walls of my friend’s apartment and see a framed picture of a twig with leaves.
This may seem a bit boiler plate, but it’s actually totally customizable. Like for instance if you are a doctor with a stethoscope and a lab coat and three posters of human anatomy, a beautifully framed, leafy twig will actually fit right in with the rest of your stuff.
Even if you enjoy sleeping atop the hide of a cow, a framed branch is also for you.
Sometimes agents will forgo the “staging” in virtual staging altogether, and just focus on impossible light and shadows. Clearly this agent asked: What if I used AI to make a mid bedroom still look pretty mid, but also fake? And what if the closet was perfect for your roommate, Gumby?
This photo was included in a listing for a 2-bedroom apartment in Fort Greene, but that may be misleading given that one bedroom clearly fits three elegantly conjoined beds. You thought Russian dolls just stayed like that, even during bed time? Fuck you.
Genuinely, what is a prospective tenant supposed to feel when they look at this? I am a toon? This is toon town?
Thankfully, the days of undisclosed AI listings might be numbered in New York. Earlier this month, Mayor Mamdani included AI-disclosure for rental listings among his 23 proposals to make housing more fair and affordable. “You shouldn’t have to worry whether or not the apartment you are viewing online is real,” he said when he announced the rule. “After all, it’s called StreetEasy, not ‘StreetHard.’” If the rule gets implemented, it’s easy to imagine everything sort of staying the same, except with tiny “virtually staged” disclosures accompanying almost every single listing. Still, the modest proposal is better than nothing. Looking will still suck, but disclosures might help it suck less of your time. And maybe the other 22 proposals will chip away at the rest of the indignities.