Flying my own drone over my own gut job, apparently that needs a Part 107

The line the FAA draws is the purpose of the flight, not who signs a check. Recreational flying has its own carve out and it's genuinely for fun. Documenting an asset you intend to sell, or making media that goes into a listing, is treated as furthering a business, which puts it under Part 107 and the remote pilot certificate. Your framer is closer than your other friend. Confirm it against the FAA's own current guidance before you rely on my summary.

The 250 gram thing is about registration, isn't it? I was under the impression anything under that weight was outside the rules entirely.

That's what I thought too. My understanding was you weigh the thing and if it's light enough you just fly.

anchor, marlow, no. The 250 gram threshold is a registration threshold for recreational flying, and even then it's narrow. It has nothing to do with whether the flight is commercial. A 200 gram drone shooting a listing video still sits under Part 107 as far as I can tell from reading the rule text, and Part 107 aircraft get registered regardless of weight. Two separate questions stacked on top of each other, which is why everybody gets it wrong.

There's a third question nobody's raised yet, which is airspace. I've got land where the recreational apps show a hard restriction because of a military route overhead, and the certificate wouldn't have helped me at all. Harrow, before you worry about the paperwork, pull up an airspace map for your address. If you're in class G at 400 feet and below with nothing special going on, the paperwork is the only issue. If you're inside a controlled zone you need authorization on top of everything else, and that's a certificate holder's job.

Insurance is the piece I'd worry about more than the FAA. If you drop 595 grams through a neighbor's sunroom, your homeowner's policy may or may not respond and I wouldn't want to find out during a renovation. Hired operators typically carry liability specifically for this.

I've had a contractor use a drone on a job of mine and the deliverable difference is real. His footage was steady, exposed correctly against a bright sky, and cut to something I could actually put in front of buyers. My own attempts looked like a security camera falling out of a tree. That's a separate issue from legality, but it answers your last question. Hiring someone gets you the certificate, the insurance and footage that doesn't look like footage.

So if harrow just keeps the clips for himself as a build record and hires a pilot for the listing video, does the first part stop being a problem? Or is the intent to eventually sell already baked in?

That's the part I don't follow either. Intent seems impossible to pin down. How would anyone know what the footage was for?

Enforcement isn't really the question. The question is what you'd say if something went wrong and an insurer or an attorney asked what the flight was for, and "I was documenting the property I'm renovating to sell" answers it badly. Getting the certificate is a written exam at a testing center and study material that people work through in a couple of weeks. That's a small price relative to arguing the point later.

pike's framing settles it for me and I'd add one thing from the marketing side. Framing and flashing footage shot at 40 feet on a cloudy Tuesday won't cut into a listing video anyway. Different altitude, different light, different lens. Keep the build record for yourself and pay somebody $200 to $300 for proper aerials at the end. Harrow, do you actually want the roof shots for the sale, or for a warranty argument with the roofer later?