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Commercial real estate photography: what each property type needs, and what it costs

Commercial listing photos have to answer business questions: frontage and signage for retail, clear height, loading and the truck court for industrial, the layout and common areas for an office, and parking and access for all of them, usually with aerials. Hired, commercial real estate photography costs $200 to $1,500+ a property or $200 to $600 an hour (Fash), published packages start at $199 to $275 in Texas, and if you take the photos included in a LoopNet listing package, CoStar keeps the rights to them.

By Emil Thomsen, Founder of October · Updated October 28, 2026

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What makes commercial photos different

A home buyer looks at a listing to picture living there. A tenant or investor looks at a commercial listing to check whether a business works there, so the photos have to show the facts behind the decision: how the space is laid out, how trucks and customers get in, how much of the building faces the street.

LoopNet's own advice to tenants shows what they check. For a warehouse, its September 2026 checklist asks about clear height, dock-high or grade-level loading, whether the truck court fits an 18-wheeler, sprinklers and overnight parking. For retail, it names parking, street access, frontage, windows and room for signage. For an office, it sizes space by open workstations, private offices, conference rooms, break rooms and reception. Each of those is something a photo can show or hide.

Crexi's advice to listing brokers (August 2025) asks for exterior, interior and aerial views, nearby amenities or landmarks, and optional 3D tours or walkthrough videos, and names blurry or missing photos as a reason listings get skipped.

Shot lists by property type

Start every property with the same three exteriors: the main facade straight on, the building from each corner it is approached from, and the entrance. Then add what the property type needs.

Property type	Must-have shots	Extras worth adding	Typical cost if hired
Office suite or small office	Reception, the open plan from both ends, each private office type, conference room, break room, restrooms, the building lobby and elevator lobby	The view from the best window, a walkthrough video of the route from the lobby to the suite	A package from $199 (Shoot2Sell) or $275 for 15 images (Square Foot Photography), both Texas
Office building	Facade, entrance and lobby, a typical floor empty, amenities (fitness, roof terrace, conference center), parking garage or lot	Aerials of the site and access roads, twilight of the facade	$500 for 40+ images (Square Foot Photography), drone add-on $250 for up to 10 images; a half day costs $600 to $2,000 (Fash)
Retail storefront or center	Frontage straight on with the sign band, the storefront from across the street, parking and entrances from the road, the sales floor from the door and from the back, back of house	Aerial showing parking, road frontage and neighboring tenants; area shots of what draws traffic nearby	Photography $199 to $549 and aerial photos $149 to $199 (Shoot2Sell, Texas)
Industrial or warehouse	Facade and office entrance, dock doors and grade-level doors from the truck court, the truck court itself, the warehouse floor from a corner to show depth and clear height, the office area, yard and trailer parking	Aerials of the yard, truck access and the nearest highway; close-ups of the electrical panel or sprinkler risers if they are selling points	Package plus aerials; multi-building sites are quoted individually (Shoot2Sell); a full day costs $1,000 to $3,500 (Fash)
Multifamily	Exterior and entrance, each unit type (living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom), amenities (pool, fitness, clubhouse, laundry), parking	Aerials of the site, twilight of the exterior, a 3D tour of each unit type	Square Foot Photography's commercial packages ($275 to $500) cover multifamily; Matterport tours from $185 under 1,000 sq ft
Hotel or restaurant for sale or lease	Exterior and sign, lobby or dining room, each room type or the bar, the kitchen line, hood and walk-in, restrooms, patio	Aerials for a hotel site; twilight for a restaurant that trades at night	Commercial photography averages $440 nationally, typically $299 to $645 (Thumbtack)

For a hotel, restaurant or venue that stays open and needs guest-facing photos for Booking.com, Expedia or Google, our phone-first guide for small hotels, venues and restaurants has room-by-room shot lists and each platform's rules. This guide is about selling or leasing the property.

Aerials: when you need them and who can fly

Aerials carry more weight in commercial listings than in homes, because parking, road frontage, truck access and what is next door are part of what is for sale. Crexi lists aerial views alongside exterior and interior views as the basics, and every LoopNet Gold, Platinum and Diamond package includes aerial drone photography.

The pilot needs an FAA Remote Pilot Certificate. The FAA lists "taking photos to help sell a property or service" as a Part 107 operation, whether or not the flight is paid (page updated October 14, 2026). Our drone real estate photography guide covers the rules, airspace near airports and what aerials cost. For a big site, Square Foot Photography also sells fixed-wing aerials from a small airplane at 1,000+ feet, from $755.

Timing, occupied spaces and tenant privacy

Shoot vacant space the day it is empty and clean, before construction or move-in starts. A vacant floor is the easiest commercial shoot there is.
Shoot occupied offices and stores outside business hours, early morning or on a weekend, with the landlord's and the tenant's agreement. Ask the property manager what notice the tenant needs.
Keep people out of the frame. If someone has to be in it, ask first; blurred or cropped strangers look worse than an empty room.
Check screens, whiteboards, desks and walls for client names, prices, plans and anything confidential. Turn monitors off and clear the desks you photograph.
Exteriors in the right light. Shoot each facade when the sun is on it, not behind it, and come back at dusk for twilight if the building is lit.
Parking lots look emptiest early on a weekend. If parking is a selling point, a full lot can be the better photo: it shows demand.

Signage, tenant branding and what not to change

In a multi-tenant retail center, the names on the pylon sign and the anchor tenants are part of the value, so photograph them. In a space being leased after a tenant leaves, the old tenant's sign and branding are a different matter: shoot after it comes down, or ask before you show it.

Correcting light, color and straight lines is normal. Removing a neighbor's sign, a utility pole, a crack in the parking lot or a building next door is not: a tenant or buyer who tours the site will see it, and they have just made the trip because of your photo.

Where the photos go: LoopNet, CoStar and Crexi

Platform	How photos are added	Good to know
LoopNet and CoStar	One Marketing Center for both: photos, floor plans and videos are uploaded in the Attachment Manager, at the property level or per suite on lease listings (CoStar help)	The main photo is whichever photo you drag to the first position. You can also pick images from CoStar's own inventory library for the property, and those come with CoStar's license limits (below)
LoopNet listing packages	Gold, Platinum and Diamond include architectural photography (up to 20 photos), aerial drone photography and one to four Matterport 3D tours; Diamond adds an HD video tour (LoopNet)	LoopNet doesn't publish package prices; it says pricing depends on property type, location and the option you choose
Crexi	Add a listing step by step, upload a PDF for Crexi to extract, or email it to listings@crexi.com (Crexi help)	Videos go in as an embed code, for example from YouTube; Crexi's support offers to extract the code from an MP4 (Crexi help)

Neither CoStar's Marketing Center help nor Crexi's help center lists a minimum pixel size or a file-size limit on its public pages as of October 28, 2026. Deliver landscape JPEGs at full resolution and keep the originals; the upload form tells you if a file is too large.

Who owns the photos: CoStar's rules

CoStar's Media Rights Terms (updated October 9, 2026) define CoStar Group Media as photos, videos, 3D tours and other media "created or acquired by or on behalf of CoStar Group", and say CoStar keeps exclusive ownership of it. As we read them, that covers the photos CoStar's photographers take for a LoopNet package. Media you upload yourself stays yours: customers keep their existing ownership rights in what they submit.

What a CoStar customer may do with CoStar's photos of a property they market, according to the table on that page:

Allowed: CoStar Group products, your own website, your own social media accounts and your own printed materials.
Not allowed: a multiple listing service, or anywhere else. The terms also bar any third-party platform that competes with CoStar, which would include Crexi.
No edits: the media may not be altered, and CoStar's watermark and branding must stay on it.
It ends with the subscription: the license stops when you stop being a CoStar customer or drop the product or tier it came with.

Some brokerages avoid the question altogether. Bull Realty's published policy says it will not accept CoStar photos for external marketing and points its agents to hiring a photographer or taking the photos themselves. CoStar also enforces its photo copyrights in court; our guide to who owns listing photos covers CoStar v. Zillow and what a photographer's license normally lets you do.

If you want one set of photos for LoopNet, Crexi, your MLS, your website and the brochure, use photos you own or license yourself.

What a commercial photographer costs

Source (read October 28, 2026)	What it covers	Published price
Fash cost guide (written October 2023)	Commercial real estate photography: offices, hotels, restaurants, retail, medical	$200 to $1,500+; $200 to $600 an hour; half day $600 to $2,000; full day $1,000 to $3,500
Thumbtack (national averages)	Commercial photography of any kind	$440 average, typically $299 to $645; $198 an hour on average
Thumbtack (national averages)	Real estate and architectural photography	$305 average, typically $236 to $394; $150 an hour on average
Shoot2Sell (Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio)	Office, retail, industrial and medical	Photography $199 to $549; aerial photos $149 to $199; HD video $299 to $449; Matterport $249 to $299; twilight time slot $79
Square Foot Photography (Texas)	Multifamily, hotel, office, retail, medical, mixed-use	15 images $275, 25 images $375, 40+ images $500; drone add-on $250; twilight add-on $250; Matterport from $185

What moves the price is size and the number of buildings, the add-ons (aerials, twilight, video, 3D tours, floor plans) and the license. Shoot2Sell quotes campuses, portfolios and recurring work individually. Ask what the license covers before you book: whether you can use the photos on every listing site, in the offering memorandum and after the listing ends. For how to choose and brief a photographer, see our guide to real estate photography services.

Doing it yourself with a phone

A phone is enough for small spaces: a single office suite, a storefront, a restaurant for lease, a medical office, a flex unit. It isn't enough for aerials, which need a Part 107 pilot, or for a large warehouse floor or an office tower, where a photographer's lenses, lighting and time on site show.

Daylight, lights on. Shoot with blinds open and every light on, and replace dead tubes first: a dark ceiling panel reads as neglect.
Phone upright, 1× not 0.5×. Tilting the phone makes walls and columns lean, and the ultra wide stretches the edges of a small suite. Step back into a corner instead.
Every space on the floor plan. Shoot each room the listing names, in the order a visitor walks through it, so the gallery reads like a tour.
Exteriors from across the street, with the sign and the entrance in frame and the phone level.
Clear it. Boxes, cables, personal items and anything on the desks or counters go before you shoot.

Our guide to how to take pictures of a room covers where to stand and how to fit a room in, step by step.

The room as the iPhone captured it — A test scene, not a customer's property: an office captured with October from a public-domain (CC0) 360° photo, before and after. The after is a new photo drawn by October's AI: the papers, binders and bottles left out and the light evened; the brick, the desk, the chairs and the sample racks kept.

The same room as October delivered it — A test scene, not a customer's property: an office captured with October from a public-domain (CC0) 360° photo, before and after. The after is a new photo drawn by October's AI: the papers, binders and bottles left out and the light evened; the brick, the desk, the chairs and the sample racks kept.

Doing it with October

For offices, shops, restaurants and other small commercial spaces, the October app does the positioning for you: it shows the photographer's spot in each room with an arrow and the distance, keeps the phone level and takes the photos itself, so a broker, a property manager or staff on site can capture a space with an iPhone 12 or newer and no photography experience. Every photo is a new image drawn by an AI image model from that capture, with a daylight look and loose items left out; the model is told to keep walls, floors, windows, fittings and the view, and each photo is checked against the capture. The finished photos, and an optional walkthrough video, usually come back within a few hours. Check each photo before you post it, and check that the listing site you post to accepts AI-generated images.

A place is up to 6 rooms. Photos cost $49 a place and $99 with a walkthrough video, and your first place is free; see pricing. The photos are yours to use wherever you market the space. October doesn't fly drones, shoot real twilight or draw floor plans; for those, and for large industrial sites, hire a photographer. More for offices and commercial space and for restaurants and shops.

Questions

How much does commercial real estate photography cost?

Fash's cost guide puts it at $200 to $1,500+ a property, or $200 to $600 an hour, $600 to $2,000 for a half day and $1,000 to $3,500 for a full day. Published packages in Texas start at $199 (Shoot2Sell) and $275 for 15 images (Square Foot Photography), with aerials from $149 to $250 on top.

How many photos does a commercial listing need?

Neither LoopNet nor Crexi publishes a minimum. LoopNet's paid listing packages include up to 20 architectural photos, and commercial photographers sell packages of 15, 25 and 40+ images. Plan enough to cover every exterior side, the entrance, each space a tenant would use and the aerials.

Can I use LoopNet or CoStar photos on Crexi or my MLS?

Not CoStar's own photos. CoStar's Media Rights Terms (updated October 9, 2026) let customers use CoStar media of a property they market on CoStar products, their own website, social media and printed materials, but not on an MLS, on a platform that competes with CoStar, or anywhere else. Photos you uploaded yourself remain yours.

Do I need a drone license for aerial photos of a commercial property?

Yes. The FAA lists taking photos to help sell a property as a Part 107 operation, paid or not, so the pilot needs a Remote Pilot Certificate and a registered drone. Our drone guide has the details.

Can I photograph an occupied office or store?

Yes, with the landlord's and tenant's agreement and at a time that suits the tenant, usually before opening or on a weekend. Keep people out of the frame, and check screens, whiteboards and desks for anything confidential.

Who owns commercial real estate photos?

Usually the photographer, who sells you a license to use them. Photos CoStar creates stay CoStar's. Check what the license covers before you book, and see our guide to who owns listing photos.

Can I take commercial listing photos with an iPhone?

For small spaces, yes: an office suite, a storefront or a restaurant for lease. Shoot in daylight with the lights on, hold the phone upright at 1× and cover every space. For aerials, large warehouses and office towers, hire a photographer.

Does October work for commercial property?

Yes, for offices, shops, restaurants and other small commercial spaces. The October app guides you room by room with an iPhone 12 or newer, and the finished photos and an optional walkthrough video usually come back within a few hours: $49 a place for photos, $99 with the walkthrough, first place free. It doesn't do drone, twilight or floor plans.