Real Estate Marketing Ideas

Aerial Photography Helps Real Estate Listings Soar Above The Competition

By Lindsay Goebel Last Updated February 3, 2023 5 min read

As a listing agent, you want your seller’s property to stand out. There are plenty of visual marketing enhancements to draw attention to your listing online. Of course, you will always hire a professional real estate photographer to take listing images inside the house. You should also consider a 3D tour, which allows buyers to walk through the listing virtually. Depending on where your listing is, aerial photography, or drone photography, is a great option to increase buyer interest. 

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Drone photography for real estate provides viewers with a literal overview of the property and the surrounding landscape. Buyers get a feel for the position of the house on the property and where it is in relation to roads and neighboring homes. Drone photography offers an exciting new perspective of a location. This photography solution is a higher resolution than images taken by satellites, which is intriguing to buyers. 

While we believe that nearly all properties can benefit from aerial photography, specific listings can see significant advantages to adding aerials to their listing. 

If you are on the fence about whether or not your listing needs aerial photography, keep reading to see if it will help you and your sellers. 

Listings close to the beach

When buyers search for their perfect beach home, they want to understand proximity right away. An ideal solution is to provide aerial images that show how close the listing is to the beach. Whether the property backs right up to the warm sand or is a few blocks away, aerial images can help buyers start dreaming of that slow-paced lifestyle all beaches offer. 

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If your listing is not right on the beach but a few blocks away, know that aerial photography can still benefit you and your sellers. You may think it will deter buyers, but you can sell the location quite nicely with a well-written listing description. For example, highlight your 2-blocks-away beach house listing with aerial images, and in the listing description, say how wonderful it is to take a short bike ride to the beach with the wind in your hair. Buyers will think, “it’s not on the beach, but a bike ride to and from the beach sounds wonderful and exciting!”. 

Listings with a view

Another listing that needs aerial photography is one with an incredible view. You will do a disservice to those sellers if you choose not to include aerial photography for their listing. Properties that provide a panoramic view or even a glimpse of a mountain range, hills, or lush landscape, need to be highlighted with aerial photography!

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A professional real estate photographer can capture what the view looks like from the kitchen, living room, and deck, but showing the landscape’s vastness from above is truly leveling up. 

If your listing is in the mountains, aerial photography is almost a requirement. Not only do buyers want to see what mountain range is viewable from the listing, but they want to see what the environment is directly beside the property. A mountain home offers so much in terms of its landscape. 

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Additionally, mountain home buyers want to know what the roads are like leading up to the property. Is the road winding, and what’s the grade or incline? While an aerial image won’t precisely show elevation change, it gives buyers a better idea than no image at all. Understanding the roads of mountainous terrain is vital for a lot of prospective buyers. 

Listings near a park

If your seller’s house is near a park, that’s a prime opportunity to add aerial photography. Similar to a property near the beach, definitely highlight the property with images from above! Buyers love to see aerial photos of beautiful parks within proximity to a listing. 

The best time to capture aerial photography of a listing near a green space is in either the summer when the grass is vibrant and the trees are verdant or in the fall when all of the foliages are a beautiful mix of warm yellows, reds, and oranges. 

Listings in the heart of a city

Aerial photography is practically essential when you have a client who is selling a listing in the city. Think about it; a city listing has many intricacies to highlight, including spectacular views, parks, roads, interstates, and more. To sell a city listing, you must highlight the property’s value by showing everything it has to offer. 

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You can reveal so much with drone photography. Even if the buyer cannot necessarily see from the listing’s window what a drone captures from above, giving them the feeling of what the city is like helps significantly. The sense of vastness a city holds through the lens of a drone is incredible. 

Here are a few of our favorite aerial photography images we captured in the heart of a city: 

Listings that may attract out-of-state buyers

Lastly, drone photography is an excellent option for sellers trying to attract out-of-state buyers. This niche of buyers may be moving to a new city for work or searching for the perfect vacation home. Out-of-state buyers are less likely to travel to see a property. They want the ability to view the listing in its entirety online. That’s why it is vital to offer buyers the opportunity to see aerial images of a property.

When you list a property using drone photography, you stand out among the other properties in the same vicinity. Capturing aerial photos is an excellent strategy for marketing to out-of-state buyers when other agents only provide the standard interior images. 


It isn’t easy to know precisely which visual marketing enhancements to use to promote your listing online. There are several marketing solutions out there, and it is important to understand the value your listing can offer a buyer. If your listing is near the mountains or the beach, has a view, or is near a park, choose to use aerial photography for real estate. Likewise, if your listing is in the city or appealing to out-of-state buyers, also opt for aerial photography. 

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You really cannot go wrong with using drone photography for real estate regardless of the location of your listing. Aerial images are a fantastic way to stand out from other properties in your market! 

To learn more about aerial photography for real estate, visit this link.