Making a Property Video for a Non-Existent Property

When it comes to development, redevelopment, and land listings in the commercial real estate business, one of the positive aspects is that there can be so much potential in a specific site. The downside? Trying to share and market that potential when you can’t tour an office, warehouse, or retail space.

While drone videos and aerial photography of existing builds is an easy way to market a listing, undeveloped or vacant land presents a slightly different challenge. While you could take drone video and aerial photography of a redevelopment parcel or undeveloped land, that’s pretty much the path of least resistance. But we can do better, and we know that you want to go above and beyond the typical marketing path.

So, what are your options when it comes to a property like this? How can a property video showcase the complete potential of your listing? Let us count the ways:

Overlay Site Plans:

If the property already has site plans for new uses or a new building, that’s the perfect way to incorporate the potential future uses with the current state of the listing. Site plans can be placed over map imagery or drone footage directly to properly demonstrate the size and placement of future development.

Showcase Geographic Surroundings:

Even if the exact site isn’t much of a looker currently, that isn’t where all the value of a listing is anyway: location, location, location! Using map images or Google Earth video, we like to focus on providing enough context so that people unfamiliar with the area have a solid understanding of the location of the property, and any important landmarks nearby (transportation, retail, neighborhoods, development areas, etc.)

Highlight Renderings:

Some development and land parcels don’t just have site plans—they'll also have renderings to visualize the future use of the property. While renderings are commonly used in static marketing materials, they work very well in the context of a property video by showing the renderings in conjunction with the drone footage. Seeing the property with the rendering right next to it makes it much easier to envision future uses.

Suggest Potential with B-Roll:

What if there aren’t any site plans or renderings to use? Maybe your property is a large, undeveloped land parcel with a laundry list of potential future uses. Here’s where we like to get creative! Property videos tell the story of a property, and when that potential is all in the future, we use sources like b-roll to build a narrative around those future uses.

​ Is ownership looking to develop the land into multi-family? Mixed-use retail and office? Choose a couple of directions and we’ll incorporate b-roll with the drone footage to paint the perfect picture of all the potential that a property contains.

Compare to Similar Properties:

While slightly more specific, if your property is a franchise or additional location, we can use photos and video of other locations to help visualize the potential of a new site. This only works with the explicit permission of the company that owns those assets, but often ownership will provide that permission to help best market their property.