Why is aerial photography good for marketing? Quite simply, aerial photography is good for marketing because a picture is worth a thousand words! Aerial photography will not only show what your property looks like, but it will demonstrate site ingress and egress, proximity to important traffic arteries, proximity to major employers and business districts, proximity to popular entertainment venues, etc. In the real estate business, everyone knows that the three most important aspects of any property are location, location, and location. There’s no better way to bring out your property’s unique locational advantages than by supplying potential buyers with a great-looking set of professional aerial photographs. A good aerial photo will not only highlight your property and its key locational advantages, but it will also support and bring to life the demographics which are so important to property types such as retail, office, and multifamily residential uses. When listing a commercial property for sale, you need to present potential buyers with historical and projected net operating income statements, demographics, etc., but it's the aerial photos which bring the numbers to life.
Another reason that aerial photography is good for marketing is that your competition will often have aerial photography in their marketing packages. With most aerial photographs in Houston starting at just a few hundred dollars, you simply can’t afford to skimp on marketing collateral. In the event that competing properties are not marketed with aerial photos, your listing can stand out from the competition with a good, professional set of aerial images. Is it really wise to skimp on marketing collateral for a $1,000,000+ listing just to save a few hundred dollars?
Another great reason to employ aerial photography in your commercial real estate offering memorandum is that current aerial photographs will demonstrate new development in the area of your listing. We sell lots of stock aerial imagery on our website, but more often than not, clients ask for a new flight, because often times, aerial images that are even just a few months old will not show important changes to the area, such as road improvements, new school construction nearby, construction progress on a new major employer or retail shopping center nearby, downtown Houston, etc. All of these factors greatly affect the perceived value and marketability of your real estate listing. You can “tell” prospective buyers about these key value components, or you can “show” them, using high quality, professional aerial photographs.
Many of the reasons previously listed relate primarily to airplane and helicopter-based aerial photos, which allow the view to show much more of the surrounding area. These higher altitude images are great for showing important features which may be a couple of miles or more from your property listing, such as the central business district, or a highway intersection. These higher altitude aerial photos also work best for larger properties, such as large shopping centers, retail shopping malls, or large land tracts which can simply be too large to photograph using a drone. There are many instances, however, when drone-based aerial images are more appropriate or, at least, a nice complement to the traditional airplane-based aerial images. For example, for a small property of, say, one acre or less, the airplane-based aerial photos captured from 1,000’ or higher above ground level may do a great job of highlighting key locational advantages of your property (airplanes are typically not allowed to operate below an altitude of 1,000’ above any building or structure.) However, such a small property may tend to get “swallowed-up” in this type of image. While we can still use our zoom lenses to get a nice, tight shot of a small property, you may want to consider supplementing the airplane-based aerial photos of your site with some lower-altitude, drone-based images, especially if your property is particularly attractive. The difference between a close-up of a small property obtained with a long focal-length zoom lens and a wider angle lens captured from a lower altitude is difficult to explain and is best saved for another blog post, but suffice it to say that a low altitude, drone-based image will seem more “alive” because of the wider angle lens that we can use when in closer to the subject in altitude (drones are typically allowed to operate anywhere from ground level up to as high as 400’ in some cases, but not higher.) The drone-based images will not show nearly the amount of real estate that you’d typically want to show to sell your client on the locational advantages of your site, but will better show the “beauty” of the property. So, while each of the platforms has its place in terms of providing you with valuable marketing collateral, aerial photography should be a key component of any real estate offering memorandum for a Houston property if you are serious about selling the underlying listing.