A former coworker of mine reached out to me about doing a drone inspection of a residential property and I’m just unsure of what to charge. I’ve done several roof inspections through other drone services companies and I’d like to charge a little more than that. I have to send him rates today, should my rates me hourly or a flat fee for the inspection? Is $125-$150 fee for the inspection seem reasonable?
Rates for residential roof and building inspection?
- Thread starter RickMC
- Start date
Depends on whether you’re running a business or participating in a hobby, and the replacement value of your aircraft.
If participating in a hobby and flying a $150.00 aircraft that would be more than adequate.
If running a business and using a $2,000.00+ aircraft you might want to consider what your travel time, vehicle expense, flight planning time prior to take off, actual flight time, aircraft maintenance and depreciation, insurance cost, self employment taxes, business license fees, and post processing time are worth and set your fee schedules accordingly.
If you feel your labor is only worth $5.00 to $10.00/ an hour that would be about right.
If participating in a hobby and flying a $150.00 aircraft that would be more than adequate.
If running a business and using a $2,000.00+ aircraft you might want to consider what your travel time, vehicle expense, flight planning time prior to take off, actual flight time, aircraft maintenance and depreciation, insurance cost, self employment taxes, business license fees, and post processing time are worth and set your fee schedules accordingly.
If you feel your labor is only worth $5.00 to $10.00/ an hour that would be about right.
About how long does it take to do an inspection? Will there be multiple inspections or is this the only one?
That’s just for the inspection itself and didn’t include travel time. I would be adding that cost on. Inspection will only take about 10-15 minutes.
If you're running a business you want to be competitive, not cheap. The business quoting cheap rates is a business that will be taking money out of their pockets to perform every job. In essences they will be paying either a little or a lot of the customers expenses to perform a job and soon learn they are not making any money and go out of business because they spent all they had "doing business". They weren't running a business, instead they were running a charity. Asking what other people are charging for their work is not a good way to run a business. Those replying with a fixed rate might well be running a charity and not turning a profit, and turning a profit is not the same as earning a wage. They might be lying to you. How could you know? You really need to establsih what your actual costs are and base your rates on those, not what someone else might be charging.
It takes a little time but it's not difficult to work out a rate schedule, but you do have to understand your costs to develop overhead.
AAA did our vehicle costs for us, establishing that it costs somewhere between $0.70 to $1.00/mile to drive our cars. Those rates include fuel, insurance, tires, oil, and general wear and tear. The highest costs are for mini vans and pick ups which run from $0.95 to $1.00/mile. That cost should be factored for a round trip as none of us want to walk back to our base of operations from a job location. Note those mileage rates use private insurance rate factors, not commercial rates which cost more than private insurance. If you're using your vehicle for business your private insurance carrier likely will not cover an accident that occurred while conducting business with the vehicle.
Next we need to decide how long our equipment will last while remaining 100% functionality. That time should be computed in hours, not years. We also need to estimate how many flight hours might be flown in a calendar year. 100 hours does not sound like very many but how many flights will you make to achieve 100 hours? If we have a 15 minute flight time we'll fly 4 times to accumulate 1 hour of flight time so 100 hours would equate to 400 flights.
Now establish the average life span of the system in use. Unless you're one of the reckless types that constantly runs into things or crashes a lot your system will likely last at least as long as it takes for the manufacturer to obsolete your system and release another with new technology that will be needed in order to keep up with everyone else. Figure 2 years as average life cycle. So now we've established our system will, with a little care and maintenance, either last or remain effective in the market for 200 hours. Let's say the system cost $2000.00. Divide $2000.00 by 200 and we have $10.00. $10.00 becomes the base for system depreciation. We know that if we fly 200 hours and set aside $10.00 for each flight hour, after accumulating 200 hours we will have enough money to buy another system of the same price. If you are involved in high risk operations, such as those always conducted over water, you'll want to establish a much higher (faster) depreciation rate because you will not be able to recover and repair your aircraft if it goes down.
Now we have to establish a cost factor for things like batteries, lens filters, and propellers. Those fall under flight operation costs as they need to be acquired, serviced, and replaced as needed to keep the flight system functioning. Depending on how you treat your batteries you can expect to obtain 2 to 3 years of use from them. In theory a single battery will provide a full 200 hours of total flight time but rarely do things work out that way. To be safe, figure you will certainly obtain a year's worth of flying from a single battery. Anything more than that is great and money you got to keep in the bank. You know you'll need at least 4 batteries, probably closer to 6 or 8, in order to obtain more than one flight per job site and perform work at second flying site during the work day. If your batteries cost $100/each for 4 batteries you have an annual battery cost of $400.00. If you divide your annual battery cost ($400.00) by your annual flying hours (100) you arrive at an hourly battery cost of $4.00.
Now develop a rate factor for things like battery chargers and small tools you bought to service your system. perhaps you needed to obtain carry cases or other specialized items to assure safe carriage of the flight system. All those are a direct cost and have to be factored into a depreciation schedule in order to set aside money to replace them as they wear out. A two year life cycle works out pretty well for such items.
SD cards, processing programs, cloud data storage services, computers or tablets, and other peripheral equipment that needs to be bought and will be in constant use. A good computer that has the ability to effectively process 4k video is going to set you back $1,000.00 or more. Computers also have a useful life cycle and two to three years is a fair average for a laptop. If you use Adobe processing programs you will have a monthly or annual subscription rate to pay. SD cards will set you back $20.00 or more per card. Do you store and back up all your work files? If so you have data storage devices to purchase. If you use Dropbox to store and transfer your videos you have an annual fee to maintain it. All this stuff ends up costing real money and has to be paid for. Do you pay them out of pocket or do you factor them into your rate schedule for your customers to pay for them? If you're running a business the customers should be paying for them.
Now you have things like a business license and liability insurance to consider. Both of those are easy to deal with because they are fixed annual costs. As we've established we'll be flying 100 hours a year we can add the costof a business license and our insurance together and divide by 100 to establish the hourly cost. Let's use a business license cost of $150.00 and a liability policy cost of $700.00 as an example. $150.00 plus $700.00= $850.00. Divide $850.00 by 100 and you have an hourly costs of $0.85. If you work in locations that require a business license for every city you operate in, every additional license needs to be added to the job or hourly cost. Don't forget to factor in the cost of maintaining Part 107 currency, which works out to $75.00/year for the certificate alone
Now for the one most are interested in; what are you worth? You have to decide what you are. Are you basic, unskilled labor of low value or are you a person that is well trained and educated in multiple disciplines? That's pretty important as someone digging a ditch is usually not paid as much as someone that is fluent in things like WIndows, Apple software, Photoshop, Excel, or other professional computer operations. Those all involved the time and expense of obtaining an education and developing experience. What is the value of being able to perform a site survey, establsih safety protocols, reading aerial charts, and obtaining flight waivers worth? How much is involved in safely and effectively flying an aircraft while dividing your attention between the camera, the aircraft, the surrounding area and all that might be taking place within it? How much value (hours) should be added to perform post processing activities for each job? Is $10.00 and hour all you're worth or might $30.---$50.00 be more appropriate?
Don't forget taxes. Businesses don't pay taxes, they factor them to their costs to let the customers pay them. If you generated $100,000.00 in revenue and deducted $70,000.00 from that as actual expenses you'll have a reported income of $30,000.00. Being self employed your state and federal tax rate will be somewhere between 35% and 50% so add a tax factor into your rate structure.
Now that you've established all the above to arrive at your costs, those things that will let you break even and pay the bills, you get to determine what you need to generate a profit. Profit is what lets you build and expand the business. 10% of the total never works out as there are always unforeseen expenses that eat up a 10% margin very, very fast. 20%-40% is more realistic for a company that wants to make enough money to carry through the bad weather months while also expanding the business.
After all of that, what's a good job or hourly rate?
It takes a little time but it's not difficult to work out a rate schedule, but you do have to understand your costs to develop overhead.
AAA did our vehicle costs for us, establishing that it costs somewhere between $0.70 to $1.00/mile to drive our cars. Those rates include fuel, insurance, tires, oil, and general wear and tear. The highest costs are for mini vans and pick ups which run from $0.95 to $1.00/mile. That cost should be factored for a round trip as none of us want to walk back to our base of operations from a job location. Note those mileage rates use private insurance rate factors, not commercial rates which cost more than private insurance. If you're using your vehicle for business your private insurance carrier likely will not cover an accident that occurred while conducting business with the vehicle.
Next we need to decide how long our equipment will last while remaining 100% functionality. That time should be computed in hours, not years. We also need to estimate how many flight hours might be flown in a calendar year. 100 hours does not sound like very many but how many flights will you make to achieve 100 hours? If we have a 15 minute flight time we'll fly 4 times to accumulate 1 hour of flight time so 100 hours would equate to 400 flights.
Now establish the average life span of the system in use. Unless you're one of the reckless types that constantly runs into things or crashes a lot your system will likely last at least as long as it takes for the manufacturer to obsolete your system and release another with new technology that will be needed in order to keep up with everyone else. Figure 2 years as average life cycle. So now we've established our system will, with a little care and maintenance, either last or remain effective in the market for 200 hours. Let's say the system cost $2000.00. Divide $2000.00 by 200 and we have $10.00. $10.00 becomes the base for system depreciation. We know that if we fly 200 hours and set aside $10.00 for each flight hour, after accumulating 200 hours we will have enough money to buy another system of the same price. If you are involved in high risk operations, such as those always conducted over water, you'll want to establish a much higher (faster) depreciation rate because you will not be able to recover and repair your aircraft if it goes down.
Now we have to establish a cost factor for things like batteries, lens filters, and propellers. Those fall under flight operation costs as they need to be acquired, serviced, and replaced as needed to keep the flight system functioning. Depending on how you treat your batteries you can expect to obtain 2 to 3 years of use from them. In theory a single battery will provide a full 200 hours of total flight time but rarely do things work out that way. To be safe, figure you will certainly obtain a year's worth of flying from a single battery. Anything more than that is great and money you got to keep in the bank. You know you'll need at least 4 batteries, probably closer to 6 or 8, in order to obtain more than one flight per job site and perform work at second flying site during the work day. If your batteries cost $100/each for 4 batteries you have an annual battery cost of $400.00. If you divide your annual battery cost ($400.00) by your annual flying hours (100) you arrive at an hourly battery cost of $4.00.
Now develop a rate factor for things like battery chargers and small tools you bought to service your system. perhaps you needed to obtain carry cases or other specialized items to assure safe carriage of the flight system. All those are a direct cost and have to be factored into a depreciation schedule in order to set aside money to replace them as they wear out. A two year life cycle works out pretty well for such items.
SD cards, processing programs, cloud data storage services, computers or tablets, and other peripheral equipment that needs to be bought and will be in constant use. A good computer that has the ability to effectively process 4k video is going to set you back $1,000.00 or more. Computers also have a useful life cycle and two to three years is a fair average for a laptop. If you use Adobe processing programs you will have a monthly or annual subscription rate to pay. SD cards will set you back $20.00 or more per card. Do you store and back up all your work files? If so you have data storage devices to purchase. If you use Dropbox to store and transfer your videos you have an annual fee to maintain it. All this stuff ends up costing real money and has to be paid for. Do you pay them out of pocket or do you factor them into your rate schedule for your customers to pay for them? If you're running a business the customers should be paying for them.
Now you have things like a business license and liability insurance to consider. Both of those are easy to deal with because they are fixed annual costs. As we've established we'll be flying 100 hours a year we can add the costof a business license and our insurance together and divide by 100 to establish the hourly cost. Let's use a business license cost of $150.00 and a liability policy cost of $700.00 as an example. $150.00 plus $700.00= $850.00. Divide $850.00 by 100 and you have an hourly costs of $0.85. If you work in locations that require a business license for every city you operate in, every additional license needs to be added to the job or hourly cost. Don't forget to factor in the cost of maintaining Part 107 currency, which works out to $75.00/year for the certificate alone
Now for the one most are interested in; what are you worth? You have to decide what you are. Are you basic, unskilled labor of low value or are you a person that is well trained and educated in multiple disciplines? That's pretty important as someone digging a ditch is usually not paid as much as someone that is fluent in things like WIndows, Apple software, Photoshop, Excel, or other professional computer operations. Those all involved the time and expense of obtaining an education and developing experience. What is the value of being able to perform a site survey, establsih safety protocols, reading aerial charts, and obtaining flight waivers worth? How much is involved in safely and effectively flying an aircraft while dividing your attention between the camera, the aircraft, the surrounding area and all that might be taking place within it? How much value (hours) should be added to perform post processing activities for each job? Is $10.00 and hour all you're worth or might $30.---$50.00 be more appropriate?
Don't forget taxes. Businesses don't pay taxes, they factor them to their costs to let the customers pay them. If you generated $100,000.00 in revenue and deducted $70,000.00 from that as actual expenses you'll have a reported income of $30,000.00. Being self employed your state and federal tax rate will be somewhere between 35% and 50% so add a tax factor into your rate structure.
Now that you've established all the above to arrive at your costs, those things that will let you break even and pay the bills, you get to determine what you need to generate a profit. Profit is what lets you build and expand the business. 10% of the total never works out as there are always unforeseen expenses that eat up a 10% margin very, very fast. 20%-40% is more realistic for a company that wants to make enough money to carry through the bad weather months while also expanding the business.
After all of that, what's a good job or hourly rate?
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That’s a lot of good information I need to consider. Thanks.If you're running a business you want to be competitive, not cheap. The business quoting cheap rates is a business that will be taking money out of their pockets to perform every job. In essences they will be paying either a little or a lot of the customers expenses to perform a job and soon learn they are not making any money and go out of business because they spent all they had "doing business". They weren't running a business, instead they were running a charity. Asking what other people are charging for their work is not a good way to run a business. Those replying with a fixed rate might well be running a charity and not turning a profit, and turning a profit is not the same as earning a wage. They might be lying to you. How could you know? You really need to establsih what your actual costs are and base your rates on those, not what someone else might be charging.
It takes a little time but it's not difficult to work out a rate schedule, but you do have to understand your costs to develop overhead.
AAA did our vehicle costs for us, establishing that it costs somewhere between $0.70 to $1.00/mile to drive our cars. Those rates include fuel, insurance, tires, oil, and general wear and tear. The highest costs are for mini vans and pick ups which run from $0.95 to $1.00/mile. That cost should be factored for a round trip as none of us want to walk back to our base of operations from a job location. Note those mileage rates use private insurance rate factors, not commercial rates which cost more than private insurance. If you're using your vehicle for business your private insurance carrier likely will not cover an accident that occurred while conducting business with the vehicle.
Next we need to decide how long our equipment will last while remaining 100% functionality. That time should be computed in hours, not years. We also need to estimate how many flight hours might be flown in a calendar year. 100 hours does not sound like very many but how many flights will you make to achieve 100 hours? If we have a 15 minute flight time we'll fly 4 times to accumulate 1 hour of flight time so 100 hours would equate to 400 flights.
Now establish the average life span of the system in use. Unless you're one of the reckless types that constantly runs into things or crashes a lot your system will likely last at least as long as it takes for the manufacturer to obsolete your system and release another with new technology that will be needed in order to keep up with everyone else. Figure 2 years as average life cycle. So now we've established our system will, with a little care and maintenance, either last or remain effective in the market for 200 hours. Let's say the system cost $2000.00. Divide $2000.00 by 200 and we have $10.00. $10.00 becomes the base for system depreciation. We know that if we fly 200 hours and set aside $10.00 for each flight hour, after accumulating 200 hours we will have enough money to buy another system of the same price. If you are involved in high risk operations, such as those always conducted over water, you'll want to establish a much higher (faster) depreciation rate because you will not be able to recover and repair your aircraft if it goes down.
Now we have to establish a cost factor for things like batteries, lens filters, and propellers. Those fall under flight operation costs as they need to be acquired, serviced, and replaced as needed to keep the flight system functioning. Depending on how you treat your batteries you can expect to obtain 2 to 3 years of use from them. In theory a single battery will provide a full 200 hours of total flight time but rarely do things work out that way. To be safe, figure you will certainly obtain a year's worth of flying from a single battery. Anything more than that is great and money you got to keep in the bank. You know you'll need at least 4 batteries, probably closer to 6 or 8, in order to obtain more than one flight per job site and perform work at second flying site during the work day. If your batteries cost $100/each for 4 batteries you have an annual battery cost of $400.00. If you divide your annual battery cost ($400.00) by your annual flying hours (100) you arrive at an hourly battery cost of $4.00.
Now develop a rate factor for things like battery chargers and small tools you bought to service your system. perhaps you needed to obtain carry cases or other specialized items to assure safe carriage of the flight system. All those are a direct cost and have to be factored into a depreciation schedule in order to set aside money to replace them as they wear out. A two year life cycle works out pretty well for such items.
SD cards, processing programs, cloud data storage services, computers or tablets, and other peripheral equipment that needs to be bought and will be in constant use. A good computer that has the ability to effectively process 4k video is going to set you back $1,000.00 or more. Computers also have a useful life cycle and two to three years is a fair average for a laptop. If you use Adobe processing programs you will have a monthly or annual subscription rate to pay. SD cards will set you back $20.00 or more per card. Do you store and back up all your work files? If so you have data storage devices to purchase. If you use Dropbox to store and transfer your videos you have an annual fee to maintain it. All this stuff ends up costing real money and has to be paid for. Do you pay them out of pocket or do you factor them into your rate schedule for your customers to pay for them? If you're running a business the customers should be paying for them.
Now you have things like a business license and liability insurance to consider. Both of those are easy to deal with because they are fixed annual costs. As we've established we'll be flying 100 hours a year we can add the costof a business license and our insurance together and divide by 100 to establish the hourly cost. Let's use a business license cost of $150.00 and a liability policy cost of $700.00 as an example. $150.00 plus $700.00= $850.00. Divide $850.00 by 100 and you have an hourly costs of $0.85. If you work in locations that require a business license for every city you operate in, every additional license needs to be added to the job or hourly cost. Don't forget to factor in the cost of maintaining Part 107 currency, which works out to $75.00/year for the certificate alone
Now for the one most are interested in; what are you worth? You have to decide what you are. Are you basic, unskilled labor of low value or are you a person that is well trained and educated in multiple disciplines? That's pretty important as someone digging a ditch is usually not paid as much as someone that is fluent in things like WIndows, Apple software, Photoshop, Excel, or other professional computer operations. Those all involved the time and expense of obtaining an education and developing experience. What is the value of being able to perform a site survey, establsih safety protocols, reading aerial charts, and obtaining flight waivers worth? How much is involved in safely and effectively flying an aircraft while dividing your attention between the camera, the aircraft, the surrounding area and all that might be taking place within it? How much value (hours) should be added to perform post processing activities for each job? Is $10.00 and hour all you're worth or might $30.---$50.00 be more appropriate?
Don't forget taxes. Businesses don't pay taxes, they factor them to their costs to let the customers pay them. If you generated $100,000.00 in revenue and deducted $70,000.00 from that as actual expenses you'll have a reported income of $30,000.00. Being self employed your state and federal tax rate will be somewhere between 35% and 50% so add a tax factor into your rate structure.
Now that you've established all the above to arrive at your costs, those things that will let you break even and pay the bills, you get to determine what you need to generate a profit. Profit is what lets you build and expand the business. 10% of the total never works out as there are always unforeseen expenses that eat up a 10% margin very, very fast. 20%-40% is more realistic for a company that wants to make enough money to carry through the bad weather months while also expanding the business.
After all of that, what's a good job or hourly rate?
Dave Pitman
Well-Known Member
That guy over in the Drone Base thread needs to read your post a few times. He figures his total cost for a quick job job 60 miles away at $10 for gas.
Somebody once said there’s a sucker born every minute. The Drone Base people are simply taking advantage of that, along with the premise of “buy cheap and sell dear”. It’s not their fault some people will buy an apple for $1.00 and sell it for $0.50, or drive it across town and sell it for a dollar again thinking they can make money that way.
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I'm a home inspector, be careful calling it an "inspection" as that single word can cost you dearly depending on your state laws. Some states require you to be certified/licensed or carry a minimum G&L and or E&O insurance. The state licensing boards are always looking for an easy fine or penalty (ie VA and MD). Drone inspections are not yet understood by many licensing boards and still somewhat uncharted territory.
Call it roof condition documentation and don't offer a professional opinion on the condition, age or remaining life of the roofing material. Do it for whatever price your time and equipment is worth.
Let the hate messages begin!
Call it roof condition documentation and don't offer a professional opinion on the condition, age or remaining life of the roofing material. Do it for whatever price your time and equipment is worth.
Let the hate messages begin!
Dave Pitman
Well-Known Member
You seem eager for something but I don't know what you are after??
We're here to help !
Good points, and carries over to someone providing aerial mapping or survey services. Choice of words can be critical.
Right, I know I shouldn’t necessarily call it a roof inspection. However, I am going to be met on site with an actual inspector who will be directing me where to take photos, looking at my screen, etc. He’s got a bad back and just had surgery and doesn’t want to climb a roof so that’s why they asked if I could use my drone.
R.Perry
Well-Known Member
I've had a home inspection business for a few years now, California doesn't require licenses for inspectors but you can certainly get sued if you screw up. Using the word inspection means just that, you did a visual inspection, I've done mine with a drone, both residential and commercial, if I note a potential problem I then call for a roof inspection by professional roofers and that covers my liability
Words I try never to use: survey, contractor, "roof inspection", licensed or certified (unless I'm referring to my FAA certificate), registered. Can anyone add to this list?
I would charge double what the drone service companies are paying you. I also would not charge travel time. Build that into your price. If I were being charged travel time, then it would make me think about hiring someone locally. Also, it gives the impression that you don't have much work. You should be doing multiple jobs per day, and any travel costs would be spread out over all those jobs.
I would take with a grain of salt advice to charge according to your time, what you're worth, etc. etc. Also, you don't need all that equipment for roof inspections and can get by with two or three batteries, etc. What the market will bear is the deciding factor. I could go panning for gold and adding all my expense and labor could figure that I should sell my gold for $4,000 per ounce, but it's not worth that, and nobody will pay it. Also, if you're a beginner and part-time, it's not so bad to be cheap at this point while you're acquiring experience.
Well shoot, on that basis we should all be able to get new homes built for pretty much the cost of materials from newly licensed builders.
If you don’t know your costs you cannot develop a rate structure. If you don’t have a rate structure you will go broke. It might take a slow witted person a little while to see their bank balance constantly decreasing while work load increases, but it will happen just the same. That’s just basic business sense; you go into business to make money, not lose money.
My long post was an example of things to consider when developing a rate structure, not an itemized cost breakdown specific to any individual business.
If you don’t know your costs you cannot develop a rate structure. If you don’t have a rate structure you will go broke. It might take a slow witted person a little while to see their bank balance constantly decreasing while work load increases, but it will happen just the same. That’s just basic business sense; you go into business to make money, not lose money.
My long post was an example of things to consider when developing a rate structure, not an itemized cost breakdown specific to any individual business.
Sure you need to know your costs, but your costs are not what determines the market value.
R.Perry
Well-Known Member
True, but if your costs are greater than the market value, then you are in a no win ball game.
Costs do not "determine" market value but if your costs are higher than your estimated market value you're going into the negative and need to find another line of work. You can not continue to operate for less than your costs and needed rates. That's a quick recipe for disaster and debt.
