Drones for Real Estate Marketing

Market With Drone Photography and Videos

My business partner and I invested a bunch of money and time into purchasing a high quality drone, receiving our remote pilots license and learning to fly a drone. We wanted to provide drone services for marketing our home sellers home.

For us, we wanted to bring it drone services in house so we could provide drone photography and drone videography to every home seller where it might seem like a good fit. Because we own the equipment and shoot the footage and stills ourselves we can provide drone services no matter the price point of the listing.

Advancement in Drone Technology Makes Aerial Videos and Stills Easy

While it is not easy for anyone to pick up a drone and get great video and stills of a home for sale, drone technology has come a long way. We can provide aerial photography and video for a fraction of a cost of what it would have been to rent a plane and shoot an aerial. And, the ease and use of the DJI Phantom 4 is unprecedented.

There are complex GPS and crash detection systems that make flying a drone relatively simple. With the new FAA ruling of allowing commercial users to get a remote pilots license, it has allowed drone technology to get into the hands of everyone.

The Key to Great Aerial and Video Photography for Your Home

The key to getting great still photographs and video footage of your home with the drone is the 3 way gimbal that controls the camera. The gimbal use 3 servo motors to stabilize the camera along with other vibration dampening systems.

The gimbal allows for very smooth video footage and photographs.

Before we delve in lets look at this drone statistic from RIS Media.

According to MLS statistics, homes with aerial images sold 68 percent faster than homes with standard images.

Why Use a Drone For Real Estate Marketing

After setting a correct price for your home the image you create for you home through real estate photography and potential videos is the single most important marketing tool you have to sell your home. Most of your home buyers will find your home through the internet.

A study by a Prof. Seiler points out you have seconds to capture a home buyers attention. Once you do the majority of the buyer’s time is looking at the photographs of a home. Over 60%….. his final word are show it don’t tell it!

So first and foremost yo need quality stills if the exterior and interior of the home. But you can enhance your stills and even video marketing by using a drone. What does a drone photography for real estate offer?

Drone Photography and Videography Offer a Unique Perspective

First and foremost drones offer the ability to take a unique perspective of your home that home buyers are not used to seeing. Home buyers are not typically used to seeing aerial views of a home. The mere novelty of it will catch their attention.

Really, that is what marketing is up about. Getting a perspective buyer to notice and eventually buy!

But make no bones about it, aerial shots created by drones equipped with cameras will not be a novelty for long. It will become a standard that most home buyers will expect in the years to come as drone technology simplifies the ease of taking aerial shot and footage of real estate for sale.

Drone Aerials Can Highlight How a Home Sits in its Surroundings

With this particular home, the owners built there dream house on a piece of land that backed up to the tidal marshes. The front view of this home allows to us to highlight a home as it sits in it’s surroundings. You can see the spectacular view this home has on a daily basis. While not really shown with this house you can give an overall view of the neighborhood or how a house sits on it’s lot.

Below you can see how some aerial video footage from a drone can really add to the marketing of your home.

Drone Aerial Video of a Home

How To Use Drone Aerial Stills and Video in Real Estate Marketing

Aerial Stills of Your Home

As I stated before there is nothing is more important than the having quality still photographs of your home. The stills are what is uploaded to the MLS and than distributed across channels like Zillow, Realtor.com etc…

Aerial stills if available should definitely be used to highlight your home and surroundings.

Aerial Videos of Your Home

Your listing agent should be utilizing video of your home on at least You Tube if not other channels. A short video should be like an ad to want to compel home buyers to check out your home. This video can be embedded in websites and shared across social media channels.

Aerial videos is where drone use for real estate can really shine. It hits a home buyer’s on several levels. The motion added by video with quality editing and the music can evoke an emotional response. Again, that is what marketing is all about!!

Final Thoughts On Drones for Real Estate Marketing

Marketing your home with drone aerials is an exciting opportunity for home sellers. It provide unique and exciting ways to make your home stand out from the crowd. Drone photography is a unique way of presenting your home. Drone photography is even more critical if the views or surroundings of your home are a key selling feature.

Seek out a listing agent on your home that offers drone photography. Remember marketing your home is a numbers game the more people who see it the more likely you will get the offer you want. maybe that one drone shot is what grabs a potential buyers attention.

Other Resources on Using Drones to Sell Real Estate:

Anita Clark Using Drones to Sell Homes
Paul Sian Should I have Drone Photography Done of my Home
Seth Williams 5 Things You Should Know Before Buying a Real Estate Drone
FOX News Drone Photography Takes Real Estate to New Heights

Drones for Real Estate Marketing, was provided by Kevin Vitali of EXIT Group One Real Estate of Tewksbury MA. If you would like to sell or buy a home or discuss drone marketing for your home, give me a call at 978-360-0422 and let’s get the process started.

Real Estate Services in the following areas: Northeast Massachusetts, Merrimack Valley, North Shore and Metrowest. Including the following communities and the surrounding area- Amesbury, Andover, Billerica, Burlington, Chelmsford, Dracut, Groveland, Haverhill, Lowell, Melrose, Merrimac, Methuen, Middleton, North Andover, North Reading, Reading, Stoneham, Tewksbury, Tyngsborough, Wakefield, Wilmington, Westford

Interactive Floor Plans Help Get Your House SOLD!!

Interactive floor plans are just one of the tools I use to market a sellers home. Most of my moderately priced to expensive listings get an interactive floor plan to be used on the MLS, property websites and more…. as another virtual tool to help get your home sold in today’s real estate market.

What are the benefits of an Interactive Floor Plan

Provides the potential home buyer with a true sense of the space that your home offers that cannot be felt from photos alone
Links provided to photos of your home showing the angle they were taken from.
Allows potential home buyers to move and size furniture.
Links directly from the Massachusetts MLS.
Its a unique tool that many agents do not utilize.

Watch the video on Interactive Floor Plans

An interactive floor plan can set your listing apart from the competition. It is a great listing tool to help get your house sold. So many buyer’s are using the internet to shop for their new home. What they want is information, so give it to them.

If you would like to know more about a full online presentation of your home and how it can help you sell your house for more money, contact Kevin Vitali at 978-360-0422

Does Your Agents Photography Highlight Your Home?

I quickly went through the Massachusetts Multiple Listing Service for Tewksbury MA. I pulled out just a few photographs that real estate agents took of their clients property. I was amazed at how poor some of the Real Estate Photography that was used to sell homes.

If you are a home seller I think it is important to see what kind of images your real estate agent is providing you. In today’s real estate market, with so much information available online, home sellers must remember home buyers are making decisions of whether they would like to view your home or not before ever contacting an agent. The photographs of your home are vitally important to achieving top dollar and a quick sale on your home.

See what some client s have said about Quality Real Estate Photography…

“Kevin is an extraodinary photographer and we’re sure they are what brought our prospective buyers to our door. He saw us through and we were happy for a quick sale.” Billerica Home Seller

“The photography and marketing Kevin brought to the sale of our home sold are house quickly and for more money!” Dracut Homeseller

When choosing a real estate agent ask to see some of the agents photography. Find out if they hire a professional or do photographs themselves. It is now common in other parts of the country for an agent to hire a professional, here in New England it is not all that common but becoming more common. The difference in photography between agent to agent can cost you thousands of dollars.

Following are a few of my real estate photographs compared to other agents:

Dark Exteriors and Color Shifts

Dark Exteriors- Many times a dark exterior occurs when the home is photographed at the wrong time of the day. I always try to get full sunlight on the front and blue sky in the back and will schedule time to photograph the home when the sun is positioned properly. Continue reading…

Showing Your Home – Is your agent hindering showings?

Showing your home leads to offers. I think that it goes without saying, that in most cases, the more showings you receive on your home the more likely you are to receive an offer.

With that said, I write this post out of a little frustration. Last Saturday, I tried to schedule 7 showings in Haverhill, Massachusetts. It was like pulling teeth to schedule the showings. I had to contact the listing agents directly on 5 of the homes and 2 I had to contact the agency. The 2 agency showings went relatively smoothly, where the other showings that had to be arranged directly with the listing agents went miserably. It took multiple phone calls and lots of my time. I ended up not hearing from one agent and one showing didn’t happen because it was an accompanied showing and the agent couldn’t accommodate us. Guess what? Continue reading…

Can your photography make or break you?

Real Estate Photography- marketing your home — Marketing your home with photography!!

I have posted several real estate photography articles in the past. I think it is important for sellers to look at their listing agents photography and ask themselves two questions:

Is the listing agent taking high quality photographs?

Is the listing agent hiring a professional to take photographs?

The marketing of real estate has changed drastically over the past 10 years with the internet becoming the primary way buyers are discovering properties. Buyers are no longer as reliant on their real estate agent to choose properties for them. The buyers have access to everything right at their finger tips right on line. Your homes photography is in the first line of the marketing of your home. If the buyer does not like what they see they will not call an agent to schedule an appointment.

My Real Estate Listing — My listing photo

Real Estate Photography — Other Listing Photo

Sample Photos: The two photos to the left show identical condominiums that were on the market exactly at the same time. I personally, always try and photograph a home with full sunlight on the front and blue sky in the background. It make for a much more compelling presentation to potential home buyers. Ultimately I sold my condo in half the time and for $15,000 more.

Don’t underestimate the power good listing photographs have in the marketing of your home. When it come to the internet:

good photos= more click thru= more showings!!

Lets look at how buyers choose homes. Buyers usually go on line and are looking at multiple thumbnails of properties at the same time. Your house is competing visually with multiple properties at the same time. Many times their are upwards of 25 properties showing up for a buyer to scroll thru.

If the first image in the line up is not compelling, chances are that a buyer will not investigate your home more. Once you catch the buyers attention it is important to follow up with carefully thought out additional photographs of your home. Many buyers will not talk to an agent until they are compelled to view a property in person.

Hopefully as a homeowner you can see the importance good photography can have in the marketing and sale of your home.