This blog was part of an ongoing series of educational classes and attempts to summarize a class on drone photography in real estate. Nothing in this blog should be used in place of actual legal advice. Please contact a licensed drone photographer with any questions or an attorney if you need help with a real estate closing.
Today our guest speaker is Gerrit Burke, founder of Sparrow Digital Media and an FAA Part 107 Certified Done Pilot. Since 2019, Gerrit has been doing drone photography for local Realtors here in Huntsville but also for the City of Huntsville, the US Space and Rocket Center, local non-profits, and many more. Though he focuses his work mostly in Alabama, he travels across the country and has done some great work at national parks and landmarks all over the US and even outside of the country. You can visit his website for tons of stock imagery and videos of Huntsville that you can purchase a license to and use to promote Huntsville on your own website or in your newsletter.
I primarily started Sparrow because growing up here I saw a huge need for non-profits to be able to tell their stories better, especially those that don’t have the budget for a full-blown video production studio. There are so many people working to make Huntsville a better place, so when I saw that market niche that was unfilled I decided to step in and help. Sparrow has also really helped show Huntsville’s growth in terms of real estate development, both residential and commercial. It has opened a lot of doors for me and allowed me to turn Sparrow into something I never expected to see. I’m a Huntsville kid and I love this city, so it’s amazing to have the opportunity to show it off.
Now, drone photography is very important in real estate and not just because it’s pretty. According to the MLS, homes that are displayed with an aerial shot are 68% likelier to sell (National Association of Realtors, 2023). We’ve got a great growing real estate market here and so many agents may think they’ll sell just about everything they list, but how quickly and how happy will your customers be? It does make a difference in the timeline as well – 83% of home sellers prefer agents who use drone photography in their listings (Colibri Real Estate). There just aren’t a lot of substitutes for a shot like this:
This was from a shoot I did in Guntersville a few years ago. They knew the house needed some work and they were concerned about how they’d sell it, and I said “Um, the view! That’s all you need to sell this house!” And they ended up selling it fairly quickly.
The four shots I always get are:
- Curb appeal – attention grabbing, great for social media
- Roof top-down – something high enough to be able to see the backyard, deck, trees, pool, etc.
- Full street/neighborhood – What is parking like? How close are your neighbors?
- Something sexy – walkability, a fantastic backyard, etc.
The other important aspect here is that clients prefer agents who use drone photography. Social media isn’t just a benefit in selling houses; it has become one of the main ways people view properties now. Take popular accounts such as Zillow Gone Wild, for example, where currently 2 million people follow their Instagram account just to look at photos of interesting homes. So clients are going to look for agents who utilize social media in their job and understand the importance of having great photos taken to help sell a property. As the market continues to grow across north Alabama, you can use drone photography to effectively sell residential property, commercial property, plots of land, new builds, multi-family homes, mixed-use developments, and more.
Large parcels of land are usually showcased very well with drone photography; when you look at the plat map of land, it’s uninspiring, so how do you convey what that land can be? The answer is to use a couple of drone shots to showcase the land in its entirety and the areas around it – how close is it to infrastructure and highways?
I do a lot of work with new builds and apartment complexes as well because they are typically trying to sell themselves based on their amenities and what’s nearby, and that can be difficult to capture from the ground. Places like MidCity and Bridge Street can use drone photography to showcase how quickly you can walk to your favorite restaurant or to shopping opportunities and fun activities.
I worked with clients recently on selling an older home in an older neighborhood somewhat close to Greenwood Pool, and it’s very close to an elementary school. The client was nervous because the house wasn’t very up-to-date, so I told him to let me get up in the air and see what I could find. It turned out that that particular house had a walking path behind it that led right to the elementary school’s walking track, and a drone picture that showed the house with this close access to the walking track was what the listing needed; the buyer who ended up purchasing the property was a runner and was happy about having easy access to the track.
For a commercial property, it’s still important to consider what else you can sell about the area. For office space, is it walkable to restaurants so tenants can easily grab lunch? How much parking is available? These things can be shown in a second with drone photography and would otherwise be difficult to convey.
NEW BUILDS
This particular development is still under construction and is located in Old Monrovia. The builder here wanted to be able to communicate the progress of the neighborhoods to buyers along the way, so we used drone photography to do this. I’ve been working with this particular builder for a few years and have set up a drone flight plan that flies the exact same way points every single month and takes the same photo from the same spot. (To do this, I use an app called Litchi.) This is great because you get a progress shot every month and it allows the builder to see the progress and make sure everyone is working on schedule, plus you can see how close your home would be to the continued construction taking place in the neighborhood – if you’ve purchased a home closer to the right side of the image, you won’t be hearing the hammering and drilling that comes along with moving into a neighborhood that is still under construction. For buyers, this shot easily shows how close you would be to the neighborhood’s amenities, how walkable the neighborhood is, how much street parking is available, etc. It’s great to be able to tell these stories in just a few easy shots.
On individual homes, I always make sure to also take some functional shots while I’m out there, specifically shots of the roof. This can very quickly alert prospective buyers to the quality of the roof so they know immediately whether it looks like it’s in pretty good condition and likely won’t need to be replaced any time soon or if it looks a bit distressed and needs to be mentioned in the offer. It’s still important to have licensed inspectors go out to a property and properly evaluate it, but drone shots can at least give you an idea of what you’re working with on the forefront before you spend money on an inspection.
PERKS
Drone photography can benefit real estate listings greatly in a number of ways:
- You can get different views of the property that aren’t accessible from the ground
- Enhanced visual storytelling means 29% more engagement than standard
- 68% higher click-through rate on real estate websites
- Emotional impact increases shareability
- Visual content is processed 60,000x faster than text
WHO OWNS THE PHOTOS?
When I work with clients, I give them the option to purchase the full copyright for the package. I put all the photos in Google Drive, so if we’ve worked together a bunch and then years later you tell me you’d like to do a highlight reel featuring work from our previous shoots, I’ve already got it all on hand and you already own the rights to everything, so all you’d need to pay for is edit time for the reel.
Your budget will dictate a lot. There is a lot I can do to help with social media ads and reels and brief sales videos on top of the basic drone photography and videography.
SO WHY DOESN’T EVERYONE DO IT?
People ping me constantly to ask what kind of drone they should get or if I have any tips on flying a drone, and the nice thing about drones now is that they basically fly themselves. If you can hold an Xbox controller, you can fly a drone. I fly a DJI Mavic 3 and if it loses connection with the controller or if I’m just done flying it, I can hit one button and it will fly back and land exactly where it initially took off. There is a lot of autonomy built in, so it isn’t really an intimidating or difficult thing to fly a drone, so why doesn’t everyone do it? The answer is that most people don’t want to deal with all the rules involved, including having to mess with the FAA. The FAA doesn’t really draw a lot of distinctions between being a drone pilot and being a regular pilot. In order for you to fly, they do treat drones as (uncrewed) aircraft and there are a few rules that need to be followed. Now, if you’re just doing this recreationally and all you want is to get some cool shots of your family and such, then all you really need to do is pass a very basic safety certification. But the FAA is very strict about who can fly drones and when you can fly them because there is a lot of air traffic, especially in a town like Huntsville with the Arsenal so close by, so the FAA needs to know which aircraft are being flown at any particular time and that they’re all being flown legally. The FAA does have some great resources online regarding the rules of piloting a drone if anyone is interested.
The FAA isn’t the only thing to contend with in Huntsville – we have an unreasonably complicated airspace for our size. The below chart is an aviation chart that shows the no-fly zones regarding flying a drone in Huntsville.
This shows everything from the Arsenal in red to the airport’s landing strip, as well as a bunch of residential zones. Highway 72 runs horizontally right above the blue bubble here, so you can understand just how many homes would fall under this no-fly rule. The purple bubble is the FAA and is managed by the Huntsville Airport. The numbers shown are how many feet above the ground you’re allowed to fly, and a lot of this area shows 0 ft, which means you cannot fly there at all. Some areas show 50 feet, which basically means you can get up to the roof but probably not over the house. Some areas will allow for 200 or 400 ft, but you still need to get permission to do this. There are areas on here such as Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge, which is federally protected and doesn’t allow for flight above it at all. The one right in the middle of everything here though is the Arsenal, and the Army is very particular about who is flying drones in the area that they own, and I would highly recommend not going against their rules.
Flying anywhere in Huntsville is going to require a lot of planning for things such as permits, Certificates of Authorization (COAs), insurance for commercial shoots (which often requires a specialized drone insurance provider), licenses, weather issues, equipment needs, and so on. So though it is doable to become a drone pilot in Huntsville, it can be difficult and time-consuming.
Some of the tools to help you achieve these authorizations have become more automated, which is nice. LAANC (Low-Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability) is an automated tool created by the FAA to allow you to get approval in minutes. They developed this because it just isn’t feasible for them to have to approve every request for someone who wants to get 2 photos of a house. So this LAANC system allows you to request from your phone, submit some info on where you want to fly and how high you need to go, and the FAA will review your request and decide whether it would interfere with their work. I have done a commercial shoot so close to the airport that I could see the tower, and that one required going through a different system on the FAA’s website through their Southeastern Regional Safety Director because it was right in the cone of where planes approach, which required the airport to land all their planes during that time on the next lane over. Shoots I’ve done for the US Space and Rocket Center have required multiple calls with the Redstone Army Airfield to make sure everything was good to go with them. There are ways to get this done, but it often requires a lot of relationship building to have this all done in a timely manner.
WHAT IF THE DRONE HITS SOMETHING?
There are two safety features on my drone that sense obstacles – it has a camera to take photos but then it also has cameras on all 4 corners and one on the bottom that are constantly looking for obstacles such as a tree or a house, which will help avoid a collision. I don’t know of any cases where a drone has hit an aircraft or anything moving that fast, but one of the ways they try to prevent that from happening is preventing a drone from even taking off at all in a 0-zone airspace; the drone has its own map that shows the restricted airspace where it isn’t allowed to fly at all, so it simply won’t take off in those areas. When I did the airport shoot, I had to upload the signed authorization from the FAA to the portal, and once it was analyzed and approved they specifically unlocked my drone to allow me to fly.
It can be kind of a bummer because there is a lot of cool stuff located underneath these bubbles – Research Park, Campus 805, Stovehouse, MidCity, etc. Oftentimes someone will fly in a restricted airspace without knowing it because their drone will still allow them to take off and they assume that because the drone allowed it that it must be okay. That won’t hold up if the FAA or the Army shoots your drone out of the sky. It’s unlikely this would happen in Huntsville because this is a very populated area, but it is something they can do if they feel it is necessary. I highly recommend doing your research ahead of a flight to ensure you’re able to fly legally – I use Aloft to request authorizations and it has always served me well.
WHAT IS AN FAA PART 107?
This is a commercial license to fly drones for business. There is confusion because often people will think they don’t need this license if they’re just taking photos for a friend but aren’t charging them money or they’re doing an unpaid shoot for a non-profit organization as a volunteer, but the FAA says unless you’re doing it solely for recreational purposes, you need an FAA Part 107. So as a real estate agent, if you’re taking drone photos to post on your own social media which also advertises your real estate services or to post on your own website, you are furthering your business with the photos and that is considered business purposes. Anything done for an organization, even if done pro bono, requires the pilot to have this license. I have been stopped quite a few times by the police and by private security and have had to show my proper authorization.
STEPS TO GET 107 CERTIFIED
- Register online with the FAA IACRA system
- Schedule an appointment at a testing center like Madison County Executive Airport
- Study the FAA Study Guide, especially section charts, emergency procedures, and airport/weather ops
- Pass the test (it’s hard)
- Apply for your license (also through IACRA)
- Take the currency test every 24 months online
Once you do receive this license, it gives you the ability to apply for exceptions to certain rules, such as being able to fly higher than is typically allowed, because you’ve proven that you understand the rules and the safety precautions and can operate accordingly.
If this all sounds like too much work, you can always hire a licensed drone pilot to do your shoots for you!
Gerrit Burke
Founder, Sparrow Digital Media
www.sparrowdigitalmedia.com
256-426-6414
gerrit.burke@sparrowdigitalmedia.com
instagram.com/sparrowdronehsv
