$640 for drone and boundary overlays, closed 19 days later

I ask the dumb questions here so I'll narrate this the same way. I had never sold visual media to anyone before this and I priced it by guessing.

The property was 68 acres of mixed pasture and timber in a market where the buyer pool is mostly people two hours away. It had been listed 210 days with four ground level photos taken from the driveway, which told a buyer nothing about the shape of the parcel or where the creek ran.

What I did: two hours of drone work across a morning and an afternoon so the light differed, then a set of eight stills with the parcel boundary drawn over them from the county GIS layer, plus one 90 second video that flew the road frontage, then the pasture, then the creek, then back up to show the neighbors' tree lines. I charged $640. Cost me a $19 airspace app subscription I already had, about nine hours total, and $0 in new gear because I'd bought the drone the year before for reasons that had nothing to do with real estate.

Went under contract 19 days after the new media went up. I'm not going to claim my photos sold it, the listing agent also dropped the price $12,000 the same week, so two things moved at once.

The part that nearly broke it was the boundary overlay. I traced the parcel lines from the GIS parcel viewer and they were off from the recorded survey by enough to matter on the north edge, maybe 40 feet, which on a creek boundary is a real dispute. The agent caught it. We ended up putting approximate, not a survey on every overlay image and referencing the recorded plat, and I'd have been in an ugly spot if a buyer had relied on my drawing. Whether that disclaimer is enough varies by state and it's a question for the agent's broker and a licensed surveyor, not for me.

What I'd keep: the two light windows, the boundary overlay as the actual product rather than a bonus, and the disclaimer language on every single frame.

5 replies

2jordan_ellis2ActivePRO6

What happens to the story if the price hadn't dropped that week? You said two things moved at once and then kept the win framing anyway. Not saying the media didn't do work, I'm asking how you'd know. Did the agent tell you anything about showing traffic before and after, or is 19 days the only data point you have?

2sonia_alvarez Get yoursPRO6

$640 for nine hours is $71 an hour before you account for the drone you already owned and the years of learning to fly it. That's fine work but it isn't repeatable at that hourly unless the overlay part gets faster, and tracing from GIS is the slow part. Do you have a way to cut the tracing time on the next one, or does every parcel start from zero?

4karen_whitfieldPG4APRO7

The two light windows is the detail I'd underline. Pasture at 11am looks like a green rectangle and pasture at 7pm has shape to it. On long holds I've watched land sit for a year because nobody photographed the topography, and topography is only visible when the sun is low. That alone is worth more than the drone being a drone.

2diane_kowalskiPassivePRO9

pike's question is the right one but I'd flip it. If the media did nothing and the $12,000 drop did all the work, the seller still got a closing and still paid you $640, which is under 6 percent of the price cut. Cheap experiment from the seller's side either way.

What I want to know is whether you can sell the same package to the next land seller without a closed comp to point at. I've watched land listings and the sellers are the most price resistant group I've dealt with, partly because many of them inherited the parcel and have no basis in it. Nine hours of your time on a maybe is a different bet than nine hours on a referral.

$640 for drone and boundary overlays, closed 19 days later

5 replies