Airspace Insights

Real Estate Marketing • Photography • 3D Tours • Drone

Practical information for real estate professionals.

We created Airspace Insights to share ideas, tips and information about real estate marketing—and explain how professional photography, 3D tours, drone imagery and other media can help agents showcase their listings and connect with today's buyers.

Latest from Airspace Media

Your Listing Has a Drone Photo. But Who's Flying the Drone?

Drone photography can be a great way to showcase a property's lot, location, surrounding area, and features that ground-level photos can't capture. But before hiring someone to fly a drone for your listing, there's one important question worth asking: Are they FAA Part 107 certified?

What is Part 107?

Part 107 is the set of FAA rules governing most commercial small-drone operations. To operate under these rules, a remote pilot generally must hold an FAA Remote Pilot Certificate. Earning that certificate requires demonstrating knowledge of aviation regulations, airspace, weather, and safe operating procedures.

Does it matter if the pilot is doing it for free?

Yes. Not getting paid doesn't automatically make a drone flight recreational.

One common misconception is that a friend can take drone photos of a property without certification simply because they're doing it as a favor.

But if those photos are intended to help market or sell a property, the flight generally falls under FAA Part 107 requirements, even if no money changes hands. The purpose of the operation matters, not just whether the pilot receives payment.

So, if an agent asks a friend to take aerial photos of a listing for free, that favor doesn't automatically exempt the flight from the applicable commercial drone rules.

What should real estate agents ask?

Before hiring someone for drone photography, ask whether they hold an FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate. It's a simple way to start a conversation about their qualifications and how they'll handle your property shoot.

A qualified pilot also needs to understand airspace restrictions and other operating requirements. Depending on the property's location, additional authorization may be necessary before a flight can take place.

At Airspace Media, we've taken that step. Our official FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate reflects our commitment to operating responsibly while helping agents present their listings from a different perspective.

Because great aerial photos should come with professional responsibility.

Zillow Showcase and You

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Zillow Showcase.

This one started with a conversation with Nicki about what Trueblood agents could do with Zillow Showcase. Naturally, that got me wondering what it actually meant from the media side.

So I started digging.

Zillow Showcase is an enhanced way to present a property on Zillow. Instead of relying solely on the standard listing photos and information, Showcase brings together professional photography, video, a 3D tour and other interactive elements to give potential buyers a more immersive look at a property.

And that's where it got interesting.

One of the requirements for a Showcase listing is a 3D tour.

Well... that's convenient.

Airspace Media already makes those.

When Nicki moved one of her listings over to Showcase, I got the opportunity to see the process firsthand. I was able to provide the listing photography, 3D tour and listing video and get that media into the Showcase listing.

So what does that mean for an agent?

If you have the opportunity to use Zillow Showcase, you don't have to figure out all of the media yourself.

That's where Airspace Media comes in.

What Airspace Media Can Provide

Professional Listing Photography
Clean, high-quality images designed to showcase the property.

3D Tours
Give potential buyers the ability to virtually move through the property before they ever schedule a showing.

Listing Video
A polished video that helps bring the property to life and can be used as part of the Showcase listing.

Drone Photography & Video
When appropriate and permitted, aerial imagery can add another perspective to the property and its surroundings.

Put those pieces together, and you've got the media needed to create a more immersive listing experience.

And that's really what caught my attention about Showcase.

Airspace Media doesn't create the Zillow Showcase listing itself.

Airspace Media creates the media that helps make that Showcase listing possible.

So if you're an agent with access to Zillow Showcase and you're wondering:

"Okay... now where do I get all this stuff?"

That's where Airspace Media comes in.

You handle the listing.

I'll handle the media.

Zillow 3D Tour + Showcase Video: What Northeast Indiana Agents Should Know About MLS Syndication

When a listing includes both a Zillow 3D Home Tour and a Showcase Video, it is easy to assume that both can simply be entered into the MLS and distributed to the various real-estate websites.

That is not necessarily the case.

MLS systems can be configured differently, even when they use the same Paragon platform. We recently ran into this firsthand while setting up a listing through the Paragon/iMLS system used in our Northeast Indiana market.

The issue we discovered

Airspace Media can provide both:

Zillow 3D Home Tour — an interactive way for buyers to virtually move through the property and understand its layout.
Showcase Video — a traditional property video designed to highlight the home visually and create an engaging marketing piece.

Both are useful, but they serve somewhat different purposes.

The complication comes when trying to distribute both through the MLS.

In our current MLS workflow, there are multiple areas related to virtual tours and media. However, based on our testing, the first unbranded virtual-tour link is effectively the link being distributed through the MLS to the public listing websites.

That means the agent cannot necessarily place a Zillow 3D Tour in one unbranded field and a separate Showcase Video in another and expect both to be independently distributed.

We tested it ourselves

For one of our recent listings, we initially placed the Zillow 3D Home Tour in the primary unbranded virtual-tour field.

The 3D Tour was then being distributed through the MLS as expected.

We then replaced that link with the Showcase Video.

The Showcase Video became the link being distributed through the MLS, while the Zillow 3D Tour was no longer being supplied through that MLS connection. We ultimately had to republish the 3D Tour directly through Zillow.

This helped us understand what was happening: the issue was not that the two types of media could not exist together. The issue was how our particular MLS configuration was handling the links being supplied through the unbranded virtual-tour field.

Is this a limitation of Paragon?

Not necessarily.

This is an important distinction.

Paragon is used by many different MLS organizations, and those organizations can configure their systems and data feeds differently. Other Paragon-based MLS systems have multiple virtual-tour or video fields that can be distributed to outside websites.

So it would be inaccurate to say that "Paragon only allows one virtual tour."

Our experience is specific to the MLS workflow we are using in Northeast Indiana.

In other words, the MLS configuration matters.

What does this mean if you want both?

If your listing includes both a Zillow 3D Home Tour and a Showcase Video, we recommend using them for different purposes.

Zillow 3D Home Tour

Use the unbranded MLS virtual-tour link.

This allows the Zillow 3D Home Tour to be connected through the MLS. Zillow specifically provides an unbranded link for use in MLS listings and says that placing the link in the MLS allows the tour to syndicate to major real-estate websites.

Showcase Video

Use it as a separate marketing asset.

The Showcase Video can be shared through:

Facebook
Instagram
YouTube
The agent's website
Email
Text messages
Other direct marketing

This gives the agent the benefit of having both types of media, without replacing the 3D Tour in the MLS virtual-tour field.

The Bottom Line

A Zillow 3D Tour and a Showcase Video are not necessarily competing products. They are two different ways of marketing the same property.

The challenge is making sure the MLS distributes them the way you expect.

For the Northeast Indiana Paragon/iMLS workflow we tested, our recommendation when using both is:

Zillow 3D Home Tour → MLS unbranded virtual-tour field

Showcase Video → Social media, YouTube, agent website, email, text and other marketing

That approach allows the 3D Tour to remain connected to the MLS listing while giving the agent a separate, engaging video to use in their broader marketing.

*Good to Know: MLS configurations and syndication rules can vary from one market to another. This article is based on Airspace Media's testing of the Paragon/iMLS workflow used in our Northeast Indiana market. Other MLS organizations using Paragon may have different fields and capabilities.

Your Listing Deserves More Than Just Photos

How Zillow 3D Home® tours can give buyers another way to experience your listing

Great photography gets buyers to stop scrolling.

But once you've got their attention, the next question is: Can they actually picture themselves in the home?

That's where a Zillow 3D Home® tour can add another dimension to your listing.

Let buyers explore the home before they ever step through the door

Photos show buyers what a home looks like. A 3D tour lets them explore it.

Using the Zillow app or website, potential buyers can move through the property virtually, explore individual rooms and get a better understanding of how the spaces connect.

An interactive floor plan also helps buyers understand the home's layout and flow—something that can be difficult to communicate with photographs alone.

And let's be honest...

A floor plan can only tell you so much. Sometimes you need to see where things are going before you know where you're going. 😉

Another way to get your listing noticed

There's a benefit beyond simply giving buyers something else to look at.

According to Zillow, listings featuring 3D Home tours and interactive floor plans receive more prominent placement and more engagement within Zillow searches, emails and recommendations.

That's important because today's buyers have a lot of listings competing for their attention.

The more ways a potential buyer can interact with your listing, the more opportunities you have to keep them engaged.

You're not just adding another piece of media. You're giving buyers another reason to stop scrolling.

Which homes can benefit the most?

A 3D tour can be useful for almost any property, but some homes really lend themselves to an immersive tour.

Think about:

🏡 Large homes where photographs don't fully communicate the size
📐 Unique or complicated floor plans
🛋️ Homes with multiple living spaces
✨ Luxury or higher-end properties
🚪 Homes where the relationship between rooms is an important selling point
👀 Properties that simply need to be experienced to appreciate

For these properties, being able to virtually move through the home can give potential buyers a much better sense of the property before deciding whether they want to see it in person.

It's about getting the right buyers through the door

A 3D tour isn't meant to replace an in-person showing.

It's another tool to help buyers decide that your listing is worth seeing.

Someone browsing Zillow might not be ready to schedule a showing after looking at a few photographs.

But give them the ability to explore the home, understand the layout and get a feel for the space?

That extra interaction could be what moves them from "Just looking" to "Let's go see it."

Give your listing another perspective

At Airspace Media, we believe good real estate marketing is about more than making a house look good.

It's about helping potential buyers understand the property.

Professional photography, aerial imagery and immersive 3D tours each show a property from a different perspective—and sometimes that's exactly what a listing needs.