Redfin, one of the largest real estate brokerages in the United States, published a guide on September 22 telling home sellers how to get a property ready for a drone photo shoot. Not whether to hire a pilot. How to prepare for one: clear the roof, move the cars, roll the bins out of sight, leave the airspace to the pilot.
Redfin quoted me on the roof. From 150 feet up it is the biggest surface in the frame, so I told them to treat it like the lawn. The guide ends with a 12-point pre-shoot checklist written for the seller, and its last item tells the seller to confirm the pilot’s Part 107 certificate before the shoot.
Sellers reading a brokerage blog are now being told to check a pilot’s paperwork. Most pilots have never sent a seller a checklist of their own.
Redfin tells sellers the roof, the driveway and the paperwork are their job
Redfin’s guide, written by Carson Sperry, collects prep advice from Justin Phillips of American Guerilla Marketing, Karl Roskamp of Launchpad Home Group, Jeffrey R. Theisler of Imaging in the Sky, and DroneXL. It ends with the checklist the seller works through the evening before the shoot.
The framing is what changes. From the sidewalk a buyer sees the front door and the landscaping. From 150 or 200 feet up, Redfin writes, the roof becomes a continent and the recycling bin beside the garage becomes part of the listing photo. So the guide walks sellers through the surfaces a ground-level shoot never showed them: gutters, moss streaks, tarps and dead satellite dishes on the roof, then the top-down view of driveways, patios, pool decks and side yards, then the branches. On that last point it is blunt: do not go chopping the day before, because fresh cuts and piles of limbs photograph worse than the branches did.
Pilots get their own paragraph. Redfin tells sellers to confirm the operator holds an FAA Part 107 certificate, to ask whether they carry liability insurance, and to leave airspace authorization, weather and safety calls to the pilot. Then it tells them what to look at in a portfolio: “recent real estate listing work, not just scenic clips or social-media reels.”
The advice is not new to anyone who does this for a living. Billy Kyle put a near-identical list (cars out of the driveway, trash cans tucked away, cushions in place, umbrellas up, pool cleaner removed) into his aerial real estate video guide on DroneXL in December 2022. What is new is who is saying it. When the brokerage tells the seller, the pilot no longer has to.
Half of Realtors already use drones, so sellers are catching up to the market
The National Association of Realtors’ 2025 Technology Survey, released September 18, 2025, found that 52 percent of Realtors use drone photography or video. Only e-signature (79 percent) and social media (75 percent) ranked higher, which puts aerials ahead of AI-generated listing text at 46 percent.
At that adoption rate the pilot’s sales problem has flipped. The question an agent asks is no longer whether to add aerials but which of the pilots in her phone to book, and Redfin has just told her clients what to check: a Part 107 certificate, insurance, and a portfolio of listings rather than sunsets. Pilots who cannot show all three will be asked for them by a seller who read a brokerage blog. Pilot Institute, a DroneXL partner, runs the Part 107 course for the first item.
The checklist to paste into your next booking confirmation
The version below rewrites Redfin’s seller list for a pilot to send 48 hours before every shoot, so there is a shared reference when a client asks why the trash cans are in the shot. Two items, pets and the weather line, are additions from the pilot’s side.
Getting your home ready for the drone shoot
Aerial photos show your property from above, so a few things that are invisible from the street become very visible. Please take care of the following before we arrive:
Roof and gutters
- Clear leaves, pine needles and debris from the roof and gutters
- Remove tarps, unused satellite dishes and anything stored on the roof
Driveway and street
- Move all vehicles off the driveway and, if possible, out of the street in front of the house
- Roll trash, recycling and yard-waste bins out of sight
- Close the garage door and any gates
Yard, patio and pool
- Mow and edge the lawn, sweep patios and walkways
- Put away hoses, toys, lawn tools, ladders and pool equipment
- Clean the pool, straighten outdoor furniture, and open umbrellas only if they are in good shape
The morning of
- Turn off sprinklers so pavement and hardscaping are dry
- Let your immediate neighbors know the approximate time
- Keep pets indoors during the flight
I am an FAA Part 107 certified pilot and carry liability insurance. I handle airspace authorization, weather calls and all flight safety. If the weather does not cooperate, I will reschedule at no charge.
Billy Kyle and Ken Dono built businesses on the shoot Redfin describes
Two friends of DroneXL shoot exactly the homes Redfin’s guide is written for. Ken Dono, known online as OriginaldoBo, shoots listings across Tampa Bay and Orlando through Apex Imaging Media. Billy Kyle, a longtime DroneXL contributor, shoots Main Line estates and Jersey Shore properties through his commercial services business.
Both teach the Real Estate Photo and Video course at Pilot Institute, nine hours of video covering the shoot, the edit and the client work behind it. Ken’s photo below is the frame Redfin is telling sellers to prepare for: roof, driveway and the neighbors’ yards in one shot.
DroneXL’s Take
Redfin’s guide is good news for professional pilots and bad news for the guy with a Mini 4 Pro and no certificate undercutting them on Facebook Marketplace. When the brokerage tells sellers to ask for Part 107 and insurance, the amateur end of the market gets squeezed, and it should.
The sharper signal is what Redfin left out. There is no section on whether aerials are worth the money. That argument is over: 52 percent of Realtors already fly, and the seller-facing question has moved to logistics. My read is that the pilot-facing question has moved with it, from price to process. The pilots who keep the agent’s business are the ones who show up with the prep list sent ahead, the reel of actual listings, and the certificate and insurance ready to show. Redfin just wrote the seller’s half of that process. Send them the other half.
Sources: Redfin, National Association of Realtors
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
