The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is in the process of developing rules governing the commercial use of drones that would integrate drones into the national airspace, while ensuring safety, privacy and national security.

There may be some allowances for Realtors coming out of all that, but given the current FAA prohibition, the National Association of REALTORS® recommends that its members not use this technology for any purpose related to selling property.

That being said, the FAA has recently issued waivers to a small number of approved operators, all of whom apparently have a private pilot’s license, and these operators would be allowed to legally conduct photography for real estate purposes. So it is possible to retain an approved drone operator to take aerial photos, but the door is not currently wide open on this. It is estimated that formal regulations will not be issued until 2017.

Below is a link which connects you to several further resources on this topic:

http://www.realtor.org/topics/drones