ok so ive been doing real estate aerial work for about 8 months now and honestly i still have no idea if im charging the right amount. started at $150 per shoot which felt ok but now im seeing guys in my area doing it for $75 and i just... cant compete with that without feeling like im working for nothing

my current setup is a mavic 3 pro, fully part 107 certified, editing included, usually deliver 15-20 stills and a short video walkthrough cut together. takes me maybe 3-4 hours total with drive time and editing. at $150 thats already not great money when you break it down and these other guys charging $75 are just making me look overpriced to realtors who dont know the difference

do you just hold the line and let the low ballers have the race to the bottom clients? or is there a smarter way to position this? genuinely curious how other people handle this

yeah this is the classic problem with real estate aerial work, its basically a commodity service at this point in most markets which sucks to say but its true. the $75 guys are usually either not part 107 which is their problem eventually, or theyre shooting volume like 5-6 jobs a day to make it work which sounds exhausting

what worked for me was stopping trying to compete on price with that crowd at all and instead going after the agents who actually care about their listing presentation. there's a tier of realtors who are selling $800k+ homes and they do not want the cheapest option, they want reliability and quality and someone who shows up on time. i started pitching to brokerages directly rather than waiting for individual agents to find me and it made a big difference. my rate is $225 now for a standard package and i stay pretty busy

also bundling in like a quick Matterport integration or twilight shots as an add-on helped justify the higher base rate in conversations

honestly just dont try to match the $75 people, my mentor told me something that stuck which was that the clients who hire on price alone are also the worst clients to work with anyway. late to respond, nitpick everything, want revisions forever

im still kinda new to the commercial side myself but ive been positioning mine as like a premium thing from the start and yeah i get fewer leads but the ones i do get seem to actually respect the work more