Do You Need Permission to Fly a Drone Over a House?

Do you need permission to fly a drone over a house? Not from the FAA. The airspace above a property is federal, and the FAA has never required a homeowner's authorization to fly through it. What a certified pilot does need is the right certificate, a registered aircraft, and air traffic authorization where the address sits in controlled airspace.

That is the short answer, and it surprises people — including plenty of agents who have read otherwise. Here is what each layer of law actually controls, the California rule that most articles get wrong, and what I do before an aerial on a listing. If you want the service rather than the law, that's drone photography for Inland Empire listings.

Three layers, and people collapse them into one

Almost every confused answer about drones comes from treating this as one body of law. It is three, and they control different things.

Federal: the FAA owns the airspace

Congress put the navigable airspace of the United States under exclusive federal sovereignty, with a public right of transit through it (49 U.S.C. § 40103). When the FAA wrote the Part 107 rules, commenters specifically asked it to require property-owner authorization before flying over private land. It declined, and said plainly that its mission does not include regulating privacy.

So there is no federal permission slip to collect from a homeowner.

What there is instead, for anyone shooting commercially:

• A remote pilot certificate under 14 CFR § 107.12, and a registered aircraft under § 107.13.
• A 400-foot ceiling above ground level (§ 107.51).
• Visual line of sight at all times (§ 107.31).
• No flying over people who aren't part of the operation and aren't under cover (§ 107.39).
• Air traffic authorization before flying in controlled airspace near an airport (§ 107.41), which a pilot requests through the FAA's LAANC system.

That last one is the real gate on a listing shoot. It is not about the house; it is about which airspace the house happens to sit under. More on how certification works in my post on FAA certified drone photography for real estate.

California: the 350-foot rule you have read about does not exist

This is the single most repeated error on this topic. Search it and you will be told that California bans drone flight below 350 feet over private property without the owner's consent, and that doing it is trespass.

That was SB 142, and it was vetoed. The Governor returned it without his signature on 9 September 2015, writing that it "could expose the occasional hobbyist and the FAA-approved commercial user alike to burdensome litigation and new causes of action." It never became law, and California has no general statute requiring an owner's permission to overfly.

What California does have is a privacy statute. Civil Code § 1708.8 makes someone liable who knowingly enters "into the airspace above the land of another person without permission" in order to capture an image of that person engaging in "private, personal, or familial activity" in a way that is "offensive to a reasonable person." Note what it turns on: not overflight, but what you are trying to capture and how intrusive it is. The statute never uses the word "drone". Separately, Penal Code § 647(j)(1) does name unmanned aircraft, in the peeping-tom context.

Photographing a listing from above, with the seller's knowledge, is nowhere near either line. Hovering outside a neighbour's bathroom window is a different activity, and the law treats it differently.

Cities: the ground, not the sky

Cities and counties can set rules for their own property — which park you may launch from, where you may stand, how you behave on the ground. A "no drone zone" sign in a park is a rule about that park, not a closure of the airspace above it. What a city cannot do is license or forbid flight in airspace the FAA controls.

HOAs sit in the same place, with less force. An HOA operating rule has to be consistent with governing law (Civil Code § 4350), and the extent of a homeowner's claim to the airspace above their lot has never been settled. In practice an HOA can make a shoot socially difficult long before it makes it illegal, which is a good reason to tell people what you are doing.

What I actually do before an aerial

The legal picture is one thing; here is the working version.

I look the address up first, every time. Before any shoot with an aerial, I check what the airspace over that address requires. Most of the time, for the properties I shoot across the Inland Empire, nothing special is needed and I can simply fly. Where the location does require it, I get the authorization before I arrive — it is not something to sort out standing in the driveway.

All I need from you is the address. That is genuinely the whole ask. Send it over and the airspace side is handled before shoot day.

I get the owner's permission. Not because the FAA requires it — it doesn't — but because it is the right way to work. The seller knows the aerial is happening, and nobody is surprised by a drone over their roof.

I keep it short and unobtrusive. Aerials on a listing take a few minutes: a top-down of the lot, the front of the house, a couple of angles that show what is around it. I have never had a neighbour or an HOA raise an issue, and being quick and visible about it is most of the reason.

The short version

1. The FAA does not require the homeowner's permission to fly over a house. The airspace is federal.
2. A commercial shoot does require a Part 107 certificate, a registered aircraft, line of sight, a 400 ft ceiling, and ATC authorization in controlled airspace.
3. California's 350-foot permission rule is a myth — SB 142 was vetoed in 2015.
4. California privacy law still applies, and it is about what you capture, not about flying over.
5. Cities control the ground, not the airspace.
6. Ask the owner anyway. It costs nothing and prevents everything.

This is how the rules work and how I run a shoot, not legal advice. For a dispute or an unusual property, talk to an attorney.

Listing a property in Riverside or the wider Inland Empire and want aerials handled properly? Book a shoot — send the address, and the airspace is sorted before I arrive.