Real estate pay hits rock bottom!

[Steve Reid]

The first 2 Realtors I contacted has 333's and one of them is in a co op and does the videoing for others, they have 3 Inspires, Florida is a huge real estate market. Unless you have a monopoly in the real estate market you'll never make a living at it. 90% of people can learn to operate a drone because they almost fly themselves and realtors aren't stupid!!

 

[DavoMr2]

Agreed, Its getting worse every week. In Australia we have the under 2kg laws which allow unlienced and uninsured people to fly for money. I am a full time property photographer and we are getting slammed with the $50 drone shots and even now have people doing it for nothing extra to win the photography business. Its killing not only the UAV side but the property photography side.

 

[Later6868]

Tip: On all your email correspondence add the link to the FAA airman certificate inquiry FAA Registry - Airmen - AirmenInquiry - Name Search so clients can easily check if a pilot is licensed and include something about how important it is to verify liability insurance. You can also include that it is against the law to hire an unlicensed drone pilot.

In addition to adding this link, you may also want to consider adding this link with it:
FAA Has Clamped Down on Realtors Using Drones 'for Months'

It talks about real estate agents, agencies and companies being contacted and questioned by the FAA.

Sometimes the scare tactic might work. Other times, maybe not. All we can do is advise our real estate clients and hope they start to understand that what they're getting might be cheap financially, but if they get caught under the FAA sniff test, they'll realize paying a certified and insured pilot might have been the right course of action to take. Once you're on the radar of a three letter federal agency, you'll always be a target.

 

[Donnie Frank]

In case film industry clients get the notion that they want to go "on the cheap," I send them this link:

www.MediaFilmNews.com

You have my permission to use it.

 

[The Editor]

In case film industry clients get the notion that they want to go "on the cheap," I send them this link:

www.MediaFilmNews.com

You have my permission to use it.

Don't think they will lose any sleep over the visit.
The fine is less than 10 seconds out of one 30second commercial slot levy and they make $11m per episode in advertising revenue.

 

[Donnie Frank]

Don't think they will lose any sleep over the visit.
The fine is less than 10 seconds out of one 30second commercial slot levy and they make $11m per episode in advertising revenue.

You missed the point. Local productions, like Longmire or Graves for instance, don't have an $11M/episode budget. $100,000 would be felt and makes them think twice about going "rogue" with their aerial. It's worked more than once.

D

 

[Hammer_155]

This is nothing new. Real estate agents are the cheapest people to deal with. With have a $350 minimum charge to go shoot and that's one hour of shooting. We do quite a bit of real estate work, some being with a production company and others for a few agents. The agents always try and get a deal even though in Vancouver they aren't selling anything less than a million. Most properties average 5-15 million and the agent wants a deal hahaha. What they need to be told is, we have to have insurance, flight certificates, and all sorts to time planning and getting approvals not like a photographer that can walk up with any camera and start to shoot.

The best thing to do is find someone that makes high end real estate films and ask if they want to incorporate drone footage. We work with a great production company that doesn't dicker with price. We show up, fly and do our thing and give them the footage to deal with

 

[Hammer_155]

Yep so true. Every idiot with a drone markets themselves to take "pics" of your house for $100 on craigslist. Commercial and industrial is where it's at. They pay well and seem to do their dodiligence and don't hire people without proper insurance and flight certificates. Let's the mavic and phantom flyers shoot boring little houses. (I have a phantom as well lol)

I realized VERY early on that residential real-estate was a bust. That said, I've done fairly well in the commercial/industrial real-estate market, with most invoices @ 4 figures.

D

Yep so try.

 

[Littleferrhis]

Honestly I’m a college student working to fly for the airlines, but I am very interested in drones as a part time/backup job. The main reason I would never after drones as a career is because there is also a UAS school at my college. Why would that stop me from pursuing flying drones as a career you might ask? Two words, job security. If I can pay 1100 bucks to buy a Mavic, and cram for a part 107 exam like I did for my learners permit when I was 15, I would be just as qualified to fly for a company as those students that spent 4 years studying UAS at an accredited university. The scarier thing is if I could edit footage well enough I could make it hard for a layman to tell the difference between my flying and the college grad. In other words, I would be destined to follow an unsustainable line of work if something doesn’t change, which is why I would never try to do it right now.

Now I do have a solution to this problem, but it’s one many won’t like. In 2008 airline pilot jobs were finding themselves in a similar rut to what you guys are facing right now, aka over saturation,lowered demand, horrid salaries(sometimes down to 17,000 a year), with little hope of getting a better life . However in 2009 one air crash changed all that. Colgan Air 3407 crashed into a home in Buffalo, and the NTSB determined the main cause was pilot error. Now congress took this as lack of experience(which honestly it really wasn’t) and they called for the FAA to make stricter safety standards, which resulted in what was known as the 1500 hour rule, which basically tripled the hiring minimums for pilots entering the airlines. Put on top of this the baby boomers leaving and now you are left with a pilot shortage. This shortage was terrible for the airlines and for a time the pilots living through it, but it was great for future pilots like me, because now I basically can walk into a piloting job with my 1500 hours, get hired, and make 60-70k a year flying regional jets around.

So what does this mean for you? Well if drone pilots call for the FAA to set hiring minimums, require more training(probably flight training),and make the professional drones(like dji products for example) impossible to buy without licensing as well as making it illegal to hire someone who is unqualified, you will suddenly turn what was once a job that anyone could take into a full on technical job, which means hiring will come with greater pay and benefits, and you suddenly won’t have an unsustainable market. Honestly though that’s just my opinion, take it with a grain of salt.

 

[Highrpm955]

Good read. However, the problem is.. there is a problem. You guys are required to set a flight plan, file it, and fly it. You have at least 5-6 other people in the industry that knows where you are, where you are going and at what altitude. Any punk can go buy a Mav, I1, I2, and fly under the radar without anyone else knowing about it, and there is no one monitoring their low level flights. The 107 was not "easy". It took quite a bit of study to the non private/commercial pilot to pass. It would be great if they had the resources to monitor unauthorized flights by non 107's. Also, the trade industry could not stand the loss in sales by selling only to 107 pilots/buyers. The only way they could get away with that would be to sell an I2 at $25000.00 (I pulled that number out of my ***).. but you get the point. It's already illegal to fly without a 107 for hire. Real Estate people are the worst. My best paying jobs are with Law Firms, PBS, and Industrial. That's because they know they have somewhat of a liability to hire a qualified and FAA registered pilot to keep them out of legal hot water.

 

[huskerfan]

I also think good read. I am a licensed real estate agent and can not conduct real estate activities without having a real estate license in my state. Wouldn't that be pretty cool if a person would need a drone license to conduct drone business in my state? Oh wait! It already exists! It's called a part 107 license.

So, here's my idea. Why not license it the same way you do a real estate license. In my state, you pass the original test, pass continuing education, and pay annual license fee and errors and omissions? So for drones-Have a UAS commission (ie Real Estate Commission) that oversee's any infractions or complaints just like we realtors do it. Good idea? or no?