How Much for an Aerial Photo of My House?

How much for an aerial photo of my house? $225 in the Inland Empire — one address, ten edited images, roughly half an hour on site. No interior shoot, no listing attached, nothing to do with selling the place. You own the house and you want a good photograph of it from above.

That is a different product from the drone shot an agent buys, and it is priced differently for a reason worth understanding before you call anyone. Here is where the number comes from, what the rest of the market charges, and the three ways you can actually get an aerial of your own home.

Why standalone costs more than the add-on

On a listing shoot, aerials ride along with everything else. Mine are included in the $329 Standard and $500 Premium real estate sessions and +$125 on the entry tier. Most photographers price them the same way — somewhere between $50 and $100 bolted onto a job they are already driving to.

That add-on price is not what the flight costs. It is what the flight costs once somebody else has paid for the trip. The drive out, the walk of the property, the airspace check, the setup, the pack-down and the drive home are already covered by the listing session. The add-on buys twenty more minutes in the air.

Book an aerial on its own and there is no listing session to carry any of that. The same trip now has one deliverable instead of forty. That is the whole gap between $125 and $225, and a photographer quoting you a standalone aerial at add-on prices is either very close by or hasn't done the arithmetic.

One out-of-state studio publishes both numbers side by side on the same page — $99 as an add-on to a package, $149 standalone for a minimum of three exterior shots. Same photographer, same drone, same town. The standalone carries a premium because it has to.

What the market actually charges

Almost nobody publishes a homeowner-direct rate. Search this question and you get real estate pricing, because agents are who normally buy aerials. The handful of published rates that genuinely sell to homeowners cluster like this:

• A photographer who sells drone home portraits as a named product: $200 for five high-resolution images, or $400 for five images plus one 11x14 framed print.
• A national drone network selling aerial home photography as a gift: $300 basic for twenty photos, $400 with video clips, $600 premium.
• Marketplace listings for a half-hour drone session with five edited photos: $95 to $200, depending on the city.
• Published floors for any flown job at all: $149 to $150 — the point below which operators say they will not start the motors.

For comparison, a drone roof inspection in Southern California — same aircraft, completely different deliverable — runs about $150 on its own. Pricing guides put a set of five to ten edited aerials at $150 to $250 in a mid-tier market and $250 to $400 in an expensive one.

So $225 for ten edited images sits where it should: above the floor, above both add-on prices on my own rate card, and below the gift packages that fold print products into the number.

Three ways to get an aerial of your house

The second most common version of this search is the free one — and that is a fair question with a real answer. Free aerial imagery of your house exists. It just isn't the same object.

Google Earth and your county assessor both hold an overhead of your property, free, and for working out where a fence line runs that is the right tool. What they will not give you is a current image, a chosen angle, a resolution that survives being printed at any size, or the right to use it. Those four things are what you are paying for.

What $225 includes

One address. Roughly thirty to forty-five minutes on site. Ten edited images — front elevation, rear, both obliques, a high straight-down of the whole lot, and whatever else the property asks for while I'm up there. Delivered in an online gallery at full resolution, yours to print and post.

Travel is free inside my service area and $1 a mile beyond it up to fifty miles, so an address in Riverside, Corona, Temecula, Murrieta, Ontario, San Bernardino or Redlands is just the session price.

Two things change the number. A large or awkward lot needs more air time. And if the shot you actually want is the house at dusk with the windows lit, that is a separate trip timed to the light rather than a bolt-on to a daytime flight.

Can you photograph my house without asking the neighbours?

Yes — and the one person whose permission matters is you. The FAA controls the airspace above your property, not your neighbours, and no California statute requires their consent for a flight. I check the airspace over the address before the flight and file FAA authorisation where it's required. The full picture is in do you need permission to fly a drone over a house.

It makes a good gift, and that changes the timing

A fair number of people searching this are not buying it for themselves. An aerial of the house is a housewarming, anniversary or retirement present, and the national operators sell it exactly that way — as gift certificates.

Worth knowing if that's you: book earlier than feels necessary. The shot depends on the weather and on the sun being where it needs to be, and December in the Inland Empire gives a short window of good light. A session booked a fortnight out can be flown on the first clear morning rather than the only one left.

Want one? Get in touch with the address and what you want it for.