so ive been doing real estate aerial work for about a year and a half now and honestly pricing is still the thing that keeps me up at night. started out at like $150 per shoot just to get clients and build a portfolio and now im sitting at $250-275 for a basic package and i still feel like i might be leaving money on the table.

talking to a realtor last week who mentioned offhand that the agency she works for has been paying another pilot $450 for basically the same deliverables im giving. same neighborhood, similar homes, she actually showed me some of his shots and they werent better than mine. i was kind of annoyed at myself honestly.

my current package is like 20-25 edited stills, a simple flyover video edited to about 90 seconds, delivered in 48 hours. i shoot with a mini 4 pro which i know some people will say isnt pro enough but the clients genuinely cannot tell the difference in the final product at this price point. anyway just wondering what other people are charging in their markets and how you even figure out where to set your rates without scaring everyone off

honestly the best thing i ever did was just... stop being afraid to quote higher and see what happened. i was in the exact same spot, charging $200 thinking that was the market rate, and then a client asked me to match a competitor who was at $380 and i realized i had no idea what was actually out there.

what worked for me was reframing it as packages rather than just a flat shoot fee. so i have a base package, a premium package with twilight shots, and then an add-on menu for things like interior walkthrough integration or rush delivery. suddenly people are choosing between options instead of just saying yes or no to one number, and the average job value went way up. also dont underestimate 48hr turnaround as a premium feature, some guys are taking a week and you can honestly charge for speed.

the mini 4 pro thing is totally fine for real estate btw, ive shot jobs that ended up in commercial listings on that camera and nobody said a word. image quality isnt usually the bottleneck at that level.

for pricing im probably not the best to ask because im still figuring it out myself lol but i did read somewhere that you should figure out your actual hourly cost including drive time, editing, the cost of your gear spread over its lifespan, insurance, and then work backwards from there. when i actually did the math i realized $250 was like barely above minimum wage once editing was factored in which was kind of a wake up call