IF you see a drone winging its way around your street any time soon, it may not be Big Brother spying on you personally, but your local real estate agent filming a neighbouring property for sale. While drone technology or, simply put, flying cameras, are capable of filming over your back fence or even hovering outside your windows for a sneak peek inside, they are expected to gradually make their way into the lives of everyday Australians. Worldwide drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been used regularly in military exercises, police surveillance, news gathering and to take encapsulating angles of sporting matches. Readily available to the public from retail outlets such as Harvey Norman, now drones are invading the Australian real estate space. That means issues surrounding privacy for home owners, such as just how much of the airspace around your house do you own, and who can film there? The privacy legislation in relation to drones appears to be sketchy at best, and there are anomalies depending on whether you are using them for personal or commercial use. One business quick to embrace the technology for their marketing campaigns is innovative South Australian real estate agency Toop & Toop. General manager, sales and marketing Genevieve Toop, says commercial enterprises need an operator’s licence, but for personal use there are no such requirements. The agency has launched ToopAir – a squadron of three drones or quadcopters with high-definition cameras on board as a tool to assist particularly in marketing hard-to-capture properties. The technology has particular application for acreage properties and waterfronts. Managing director Anthony Toop says showing residential properties from the air is the way forward. ‘‘It’s perfect for capturing those shots over high fences, behind big trees, or simply obtaining the best perspective of our clients’ properties,’’ he says. ‘‘The wide-angle lens is capable of capturing country properties and other homes on a large amount of land. ‘‘The additional capabilities add to our options when selling a property’s features.’’ Toop believes the sky’s the limit when it comes to the cinematic footage we’ll see in the future. “I can’t wait to see how far we can push the aerobatics: 360-degree views of the city, soaring along the beach and gliding down tree-lined boulevards – it’s all just the beginning.” In the Hunter region, no firms contacted by Weekender are using the technology yet, preferring to work with pole cameras and helicopters for difficult-to-photograph properties. However, one agent has experimented with the technology. PRD Newcastle found that Newcastle’s weather itself is a major hurdle to implementation of the technology. Principal Mark Kentwell says trials his agency was involved in around Bar Beach identified issues with wind destabilising the drones themselves. ‘‘Even on the quietest day, at 30 or 40 metres it was starting to blow around,’’ Kentwell says. The other constraint is the time taken to get footage ready for marketing – a factor which could potentially hamper the timing of marketing campaigns, he says. ‘‘We use helicopters for a big property on its own, or when they are next doing something we try and get three properties done at once.’’ But he doesn’t see a problem with the privacy issues, given that neighbouring properties can be edited out of the footage. Genevieve Toop agrees the onus in relation to privacy is on editing post-filming. ‘‘In terms of privacy, with our stills we shade out neighbouring property so that only the property for sale is shown in the photos, and with the video we ensure the final footage is just of the property for sale.’’
