[ben7799]

So many of these small businesses are certified but break the law like crazy.

Part 107 means you can apply for waivers with the FAA for specific activities. They almost never do for routine stuff because it would be a huge extra cost for them.

My town is in a no-fly zone. Almost every house for sale still gets a drone video overfly. I highly doubt the guy doing them is applying for waivers and getting them approved. It is too trivial of a justification to get an approval.

You can actually look up the waivers on the FAA website, there are orders of magnitude too few of them to explain all the flights that appear illegal.

[subract]

The advent of LAANC for automated airspace authorization has gone a long way towards limiting the number of activities you need a full-on waiver for. If your house is just in controlled airspace (not some type of restricted airspace), it’s possible/likely that the pilots are receiving an automated authorization to fly there up to a certain altitude <400’ AGL.