Photographer Sues Realtor.com for Using Her Real Estate Photos of Taylor Swift Engagement Location

Oct 23, 2025

Jeremy Gray

A wooden judge’s gavel rests on a sound block in front of a blurred brass balance scale, symbolizing law and justice on a wooden table.

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s engagement photos broke Instagram records in August and set into motion new photography trends. A photographer alleges that, capitalizing on the buzz, Realtor.com stole her photos of Kelce’s mansion, where he proposed to Swift.

Kansas City real estate photographer Brynn Burns took photos of the mansion in 2022 or 2023, before Kelce bought the home and well before he proposed to Swift on the property. Burns alleges in a new lawsuit that, Realtor.com, capitalizing on the swirl of attention surrounding Swift and Kelce’s engagement and the property, used her photos of the estate without her permission, Housing Wire reports.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Missouri against Realtor.com’s parent company, Move, Inc., and the National Association of Realtors (NAR), who Burns claims did business as Realtor.com. As Housing Wire notes, NAR has not had anything to do with Realtor.com since Move, Inc. was sold to News Corp in 2014.

In any event, Burns alleges that Realtor.com did not have permission to post her photos from inside Kelce’s home.

“Defendants knew these photographs belonged to the Plaintiff. Defendants used and published these photographs without Plaintiff’s permission to drive millions of people to Defendants’ profitable website, Realtor.com, thinking it would be better (and cheaper) to ‘beg forgiveness’ rather than to have sought Plaintiff’s permission,” the lawsuit alleges.

Further, Burns alleges that by publishing her photos, Realtor.com effectively destroyed their commercial value by making “the work available to the world for free via their piracy of the work.”

A large, elegant mansion with tall windows and Chimneys sits behind a spacious, clear swimming pool. The backyard features lounge chairs, manicured greenery, and colorful flowerbeds under a sunny sky. — This image from Web Archive shows that as recently as October 1, 2025, Realtor.com was still using Brynn Burns’ photos. This is one of seven of Burns’ images that were in the article: “Inside Travis Kelce’s Luxe $6 Million Kansas City Mansion Where He Proposed to Taylor Swift ‘2 Weeks Ago’”

Realtor.com had licensed the photos beginning in December 2023, although Burns claims the agreement expired more than half a year before Realtor.com used the images in stories surrounding Swift and Kelce’s engagement.

Realtor.com has removed Burns’ images from articles like this one, but archived versions of the story clearly show seven images that had been credited to Brynn Burns, including on August 28, when the fervor surrounding the engagement was at its peak. Although it is impossible to know precisely when the allegedly stolen images were removed, archived data indicates they were removed sometime after October 1.

Photographer Brynn Burns is demanding a jury trial and is seeking unspecified damages.

A Realtor.com spokesperson told Housing Wire that it does not comment on pending litigation. Meanwhile, a NAR spokesperson noted that NAR is not involved in Move’s editorial decisions and does not own, control, or operate the Realtor.com website.

Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.