Look up! Drones are taking over the real estate industry.
Aside from an interesting description and a cheap price within your budget, what else would you be looking for in a property listing? High-quality photography of an estate is definitely one of the more persuasive elements of a good listing. Potential homeowners and renters would be more interested in listings displaying nice pictures of a house over blurry, darkened images showing a nondescript part of the property.
With advanced technology, real estate agents have increasingly turned to drones to capture listing pictures. Aerial photography using drones is one of the best ways to make their listings stand out.
This article will tell you all you need to know about drone aerial real estate photography: the what, the why, the when, the who, the where and the how.
What is it?
A drone is an unmanned aircraft. To take real estate pictures, a pilot will be stationed on the ground manning the drone that will fly over a property and its surrounding neighborhood. The pilot will then take videos or still images. The quality of the images and footage can vary depending on the camera and the drone. Nowadays, drones usually come with 4K cameras that are capable of capturing high-resolution pictures and videos.
Why use it?
Having drone-captured aerial imagery on your listings will set you apart from the others. According to research conducted by Multiple Listing Service, a database established by cooperating real estate brokers to provide data about properties for sale, property listings with aerial imagery are 68% more likely to sell than those without.
Drone images are capable of covering wide areas and photographing from unique angles. With such an immersive tool, potential buyers can visualize better a property’s location and its proximity to local facilities. Most buyers nowadays are interested in the lifestyle that its neighborhood can offer them. From nearby parks and beaches, to schools and restaurants, to the general ambience of a district, aerial photography is the ideal tool for real estate agents to impress their potential buyers.
Providing a bird’s-eye view, drone footage can also be an effective way of highlighting the more significant outdoor features of a listing, drawing potential buyers’ attention to a luscious front garden, an adjoined swimming pool and jacuzzi, or solar panels on the roof. With aerial footage, agents can paint a comprehensive picture for their clients of what life in their potential new home could look like.
When to use it?
Not all real estate requires aerial photography. It likely depends on the type of property listed. For example, flats in apartment buildings mostly wouldn’t need it. Typically, it is only utilized when the property has unique outdoor characteristics to be highlighted that would otherwise be hard to illustrate. Therefore, drones usually come into play when real estate agents want to sell bigger or higher-end houses, properties with picturesque views or ones in lively neighborhoods.
Who should use it?
Real estate agents typically do not have drones themselves to take aerial photography. For those who do have one, they would have to get a remote pilot license and register their drones in order to fly drones legally and use them for commercial purposes.
Usually, real estate agencies hire companies that offer such services. They usually have licensed pilots that enable them to fly drones commercially and safely. They have the industry know-how, including the understanding of where they can legally fly drones. As professionals, they would undertake risk and assessment processes for each operation to plan a safe launch and landing. Many of these companies even shoot and edit drone footage as part of the package.
Where to use it?
There are different ways pilots use their drones for real estate photography. They usually aim to capture sweeping views encompassing the whole property to demonstrate any unique features of the property itself and also its surroundings. If the property is waterfront, the sea view would be highlighted by the drone to show the potential buyer the property’s accessibility to the beach. If the house is located within a vibrant neighborhood, the drone would fly over all the nearby features such as restaurants, bars and malls.
A first-person perspective can also be captured where a drone would simulate the buyer’s viewpoint by going down the street, into the driveway and through the front door into their homes.
How to make use of it?
Now that you have aerial photography available, how can we make use of them on the listings? Aerial footage can show listings from every angle and allows agents to embrace all corners of advertising. On listing websites, you can use editing tools to point out important locations, even annotating images to include the dimensions, square meterage and any nearby facilities.
Using drones for aerial real estate photography is rapidly becoming mainstream. Be prepared to see more bird’s-eye view images when you go through property listings.
Header Image Courtesy of Unsplash
