No More Drones For Real Estate Photography
The FAA has proposed some new extremely intense drone (UAS) regulations that will basically change the way that drone pilots and aerial photography & video is handled in the United States. Before anyone freaks out just know that none of this has actually taken effect yet however, regulations will be put into effect and it is something that you should be aware of. Firstly, we must stay that we are not against regulation and reform. We strongly believe that there should be a tighter restriction on flying for everyone’s sake but just to be honest it is annoying knowing that we’ve paid money and have taken the steps to be certified and other photography companies have not and are getting business that they “legally” should not be getting. But that is not what we are here to talk about so let’s get into it.
What should You do?
If you are currently doing any type of aerial photography, either yourself or hiring a drone photography company, then you need to be sure that they/you are in compliance and will not be caught off guard. How can you know that you are dealing with a professional drone pilot? If they have not already heard about the regulations or have not provided you with any of their statements to the FAA on what they would like to see happen in regards to the regulations then you may want to find a new drone photographer. We’ve included our statements that we wrote to the FAA below. The reason why it is important that your drone photographer is actually active in this conversation on regulatory licensing is that it not only will hurt how they do business but it will also hurt how you do business and if they don’t care about your business enough to try to make it better for you then we would suggest not to work with them. Other than just protecting your business from the upcoming regulatory changes there is not much that you can do as a consumer.
How will this affect your business?
“The future of drone innovation in America is at risk,” as stated by DJI, the world’s leading drone manufacturer, in their statements on the FAA regulations. It is a really big deal! We are not just trying to blow this out of proportion and make it something that it is not. If the FAA is allowed to pass the regulations that it has proposed then aerial photography for real estate could be extinct. That’s right, the burden of the proposed FAA regulations will not only put a lot of professional real estate photography companies out of the drone game, it could actually put them out of business altogether. We know for us almost 50% of our revenue from 2019 came in part by aerial photography. So what does this mean for you? All the luxury homes, farm listings, commercial lots, video tours, drone videos, etc. will be no more. Most companies will not be able to afford or maintain the new regulations that the FAA is trying to impose and this will push a lot of drone pilots out of the market. At the same time, those that are flying older drones that do not meet the regulations would have to ground their drones and buy new ones that meet FAA requirements, which drone manufacturers have stated they will have to sell at a higher premium to offset the cost of creating the drones to FAA specifications of compliance. There are still a lot of moving parts on this one but one this is for sure, the FAA is not fully interested in how this will change the drone industry.
So yes real estate agents, you could be without drone photography for the rest of your career or at least for a while. Think about it like this…if the drone manufacturers have to charge higher prices to make the drones and the drone photographers are paying higher prices to buy the drones then they have to charge you higher prices to use their drones…those prices will be too high to pay to justify you using them but at the same time not using aerial photography may or may not cause your production to go down adversely affecting your income. If you feel like drone photography helps you sell listings faster, then this is a big deal for your business.
What is the FAA proposing?
This is our brief synopsis on the 202pg. regulations that the FAA is trying to impose upon the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) industry. In a nutshell it’s three things: Regulations on how drones are manufactured including the need for a Remote ID, more regulations on how drone pilots can fly, regulations on controlling/restricting when and where drone pilots can fly based on those Remote ID’s. So as an example, without warning or notification, with the new regulations, all drones in a certain region can be remotely grounded, without notification or warning all flight capability can be restricted.
The overall goal of the FAA is to have more control of the US airspace and have more knowledge of the data that is being collected by unmanned aircraft across the nation.
Step 1: The FAA would want that all drones that do not have the ability to sync to a wifi network would be permanently grounded. All manufacturers would have to switch how they build drones to accomodate for a device that would allow for the drone to be synced to a newly created “internet” that is controlled by third party suppliers that have FAA contracts.
Step 2: All current drone pilots that are registered would have to get recertified and go through a long process of also (which is currently not mandatory) registering each and every drone that they have that is operational and compliant. This would now sync the pilots data to the drone also making it a compliance issue if another certified drone pilot was to fly a drone not registered to them.
Step 3: Drone pilots would pay a monthly fee to have access to the mandatory “internet” service through third party government contractors who will be tracking all of their flight data for a minimum of 6 months. The proposed cost of the monthly fee would be about 20% annually the cost of each drone in operation making it almost unbearable to even do as a professional real estate photography company
There’s a lot more to it than that however basically we would pay a fee that makes owning and using a drone not make any sense to us little guys, we would be at the mercy of the government on if we could even fly our drones to meet our clients needs, and at any moment we could be permanently grounded because of new compliance regulations that the FAA could roll out in the future, again making it very scary for us to even attempt to build our businesses around this service.
We want to reiterate that we are not against regulation and we think of this FAA regulation very much like how DJI, the world’s largest manufacturer of drone technology, surmised in their statements, “Everyone understands why cars need license plates: drivers have to be accountable. But what if instead of just a license plate, your car was also legally required to be connected via the internet to a privately run car-tracking service that charged you an annual fee of about 20% of your car’s value, and stored six months of your driving data for government scrutiny? Would you think the government had gone too far?…” Well, we do think the government is going too far and this may be the end for a lot of us. We plan to continue to provide the easiest solution for management companies, brokers, agents and home owners to get professional real estate photography & video services however, depending on how the FAA approaches these next few weeks of law making, it could eventually be the easiest solution without drone photography.
The worst part…
The worst part is that no other FAA regulations for manned aircraft have been so debilitating for the industry at large. The pilots of manned aircrafts also have regulations that they have to adhere to ONLY in controlled airspace, which most drones don’t enter, by implementing automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B). Controlled airspace is only a limited fraction of the country, and the ADS-B needs just a one-time installation of equipment – for which the FAA offered pilots a rebate yet we as drone pilots will face an ongoing monthly fee, be restricted everywhere we fly, and drone manufacturers have to start from scratch on design and devlopment. Still to this date, there are no reported incidents of unmanned aircraft causing any accidents, harm or damage to manned aircraft yet it seems that we are being penalized as though they have happened. And…we have been talking about drone (UAS) usage in professional real estate photography because this is our area of service however this affects the drone industry at large. Drones being used for movies, rescue missions, roof inspections, etc. will all be in jeopardy. These regulations could have a massive ripple effect on multiple industries. Just imagine budgets for movies skyrocketing because flight restrictions have been placed meaning projects get elongated by days or weeks, rescue missions being halted because of temporary grounding without warning or notification (which by the way there is a reported 1 life saving drone rescue mission weekly) and so many other scenarios.
Our comments to the FAA
To whom it may concern,
As a professional drone pilot, I understand the need for regulations and laws on any industry, tool, device, etc., however, I do believe that this proposed regulation has less benefit and more hindrance on the industry at large. We as a company have already taken steps to fall in line with the DJI compliance standards that they set in motion over 2 years ago and continue to maintain drones that adhere to those regulations and standards. We have been using their Remote ID regulations that help the airspace stay safe without minimizing our ability to do our jobs and create a living. Again, we are not against laws and regulations however we do wish that you all would involve more of the voices of the people who are creating this technology and operating this technology daily. Very much like the roadways, pilots of drones should have “ID’s” or licenses and it makes sense that just like cars have license plates that there would be a unique identifier for each and every drone in the air and DJI, at least, has taken the steps to ensure that this is already the case. Imposing further restrictions on when, where and how we can fly will hurt hundreds of businesses, educational systems, the movie industry and even the growing search and rescue drone industry which is currently saving lives weekly with this type of technology.
To us, the biggest offences in this new regulation are the third-party controlled radio network that we, as drone pilots, would always need to be connected to in order to fly. The fact that these third-party companies would be setting the rules on how we are able to access this network is very unsettling. The cost for access to that service alone could cripple drone photography businesses. Not to mention that in other countries they’ve already implemented the radio broadcast system preferred by us also which would not require a constant paid internet service, and has already been proven to be effective through DJI’s version of it called, “Aerospace.”
It’s not that we do not want regulations or for the FAA to have control of the airspace it is just that this seems really one-sided, not to mention that it is only for consumer technology and not government technology. We just want equal representation when laws and regulations are being made that will affect not just the airways but the way we live our lives. We are business owners, husbands, wives, sons, daughters…we are people, passionate about what we get to do and we do want to protect that but this is not the way. We want to work together to find the best possible solution for the safety of the unmanned aircraft systems industry in the US and we believe that we can find a solution that benefits all parties currently involved.
