so this happened last week and its still kind of bugging me. got a inquiry from a local property management company, they want regular aerial shots of their rental properties ? sounds great right, recurring work, multiple locations. then they tell me their budget is $75 per property and they have about 8 properties a month they need done.

i mean on paper $600 a month sounds okay but when i actually broke it down ? drive time, flight time, editing, the wear on my Mavic 3, insurance costs, and the fact that $75 doesnt leave much margin if anything goes wrong ? i just couldnt make the numbers work. i countered at $165 per property and they basically ghosted me.

now im wondering if im overpriced for my market or if i just dodged a bullet. i live in a smaller city not a major metro so maybe rates really are lower here. how do you guys figure out your floor price, like the absolute minimum you can take a job for without actually losing money when you account for everything

you almost certainly dodged a bullet there. clients who open with an insultingly low number and then disappear when you counter with something reasonable are not clients you want. they would have nickled and dimed you on every single shoot and probably argued about edits constantly. $75 for a commercial real estate shoot is not a real offer, thats someone hoping to find a hobbyist who doesnt know any better.

for figuring out your floor ? i basically work backwards from my costs. add up your annual insurance cost, any software subscriptions, equipment depreciation (people always forget this one), and what you want to actually make per hour of your time including drive and editing. then divide by how many billable jobs you realistically do in a year. gives you a real cost per job number and then you know your floor. for most people running a Mavic 3 level setup in a small market its somewhere around $125-150 minimum for anything, and thats not making great money, thats just not losing it

yeah $75 is wild. i charged $125 for my very first real estate shoot when i was brand new with a worse drone and even that felt too low in hindsight. some markets are cheaper but not that cheap. the recurring volume thing sounds nice but volume of low-margin work is just more ways to wear out your equipment for not enough money. i think you priced it right honestly