There's no shortage of realty sites out there, and there's not a huge amount to differentiate them—in the end, they're all built to facilitate property deals. One of the things they have in common is that they all keep details of properties—including listing photos—online, even years after they are sold, rented, or otherwise taken off the market.
In other words, if your home or apartment has ever been listed for sale or rent, there might still be interior and exterior pictures of it online, as well as other sensitive information such as floor plans. This is all useful information for someone who might want to pose as you, or perhaps pay a call to your home in the middle of the night.
The good news is that you can arrange for the images to be scrubbed from these sites, though it does take a little bit of work. You'll first need to claim ownership of a property, and then petition to get the relevant details taken down. Here's how it works for major sites, including the MLS, Zillow, Redfin, and Realtor.
A multiple listing service, or MLS, is where the likes of Zillow and Redfin get a lot of their data, so it makes sense to start here. Generally this is where brokers first upload home information and photos, and where real estate agents get a lot of their details when showing you homes.
Only licensed agents and brokers can access MLS portals (membership fees are involved). If you want to get your information scrubbed at the source, then you need to ask a listing agent (either one you employ or one used by the other party involved in a real estate transaction) to do it on your behalf.
This isn't necessarily a speedy process, and there's no obligation on the part of the listing agent to do it unless it's in the contract (the thinking is that leaving the information there saves a lot of work if the property goes up for sale again, or if interested parties are looking at homes in the area and want to see information on comparable sales).
While you need help removing details from a MLS, that's not the case for sites that pull data from there, including Zillow. To get photos removed from this site, first sign into your account (or create one if you don't have one already). If you haven't already claimed a home as yours, find it on the site, then select More and Claim ownership. You'll be asked a few questions to help verify that you are who you say you are.
Then you can click your account avatar (top right) and Your homes to make changes. Select the property you want to manage, then choose Edit facts from the owner view. To get rid of a photo, select it and click Remove photo. There are options to delete all the images at once, or just hide them from view (so you can still see them). Click Save changes when you're ready.
Note that Zillow won't remove properties and property information completely. "Our mission is to empower consumers with information and tools to make smart decisions about homes, real estate and mortgages. For this reason, we do not remove property pages from Zillow," Zillow says.
If you can find your property on Redfin, the process is the same as it is for ZIllow: Claim your home (if you need to), then edit the listing. After signing in, hover over your profile badge (top right), then click Owner Dashboard and Claim Your Home.
You can then select the property from the owner dashboard, which will give you access to an Edit Photos button. There's no option to delete individual photos here; all you can do is check the box marked Hide listings photos, and then choose Save and confirm your decision.
Only one home photo will then be shown, with a Google Street View picture of your house substituted for whatever was there before. (If you want to scrub images of your property from Google Street View as well, we've got instructions here.) As with Zillow, there's no way to completely remove the listing from the web.
If you've already been through this process for Zillow and Redfin, then you aren't going to come across any surprises with Realtor. Once you're signed into your account, you can click My Home at the top, then enter your home address to find your property, and click Yes, claim it.
You'll need to answer a security question or two to prove you do own the property, and you can then visit the property page as an owner rather than a member of the public. Click the Edit home link, and you're able to make changes to which photos are shown alongside the listing.
There are some extra restrictions on Realtor: After a home is sold, for example, there's a period of six months where changes can't be made to the listing. In some cases, you'll need to contact your listing agent to make the changes instead. And, as with Zillow and Redfin, there's no way to erase the listing completely.
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