Drone surveys in Budleigh Salterton, flown by the surveyor who writes them

Budleigh is about twenty five minutes from Exeter. The stock is Victorian and Edwardian villas plus a good deal of substantial detached housing in generous plots, with bungalows on the higher ground, and a mature population means many properties are long held and lightly altered.

That last point matters more than it sounds for a survey. A house that has been in one family for forty years often has original coverings, original rainwater goods and original detailing, maintained but not replaced. The faults are therefore age related and gradual rather than the result of a bad recent job, and they are spread evenly across the whole roof rather than concentrated where someone worked last.

It also means the person commissioning the survey often knows the building intimately from the inside and has never seen the top of it. That is a good starting position: the questions are specific and the answers are worth something.

Detached housing in large gardens is close to the easiest survey case there is. There is somewhere on your own land to take off from, the building is not shoulder to shoulder with anyone else's, and the aircraft can get round all four elevations without ever being over a neighbour.

That is a genuine practical difference from a terraced town, and it shows in what can be delivered. Every slope, every stack, every gutter and every abutment, at whatever distance gives the clearest frame, without any of the compromises a tight site imposes.

The bungalows on the higher ground are simpler again, though they carry the same blind spot as bungalows everywhere: the owner sees the front slope from the drive and has never seen the back one at all.

There is thatch on the outskirts, and thatch from the air is one of the more useful things a drone does. Ridge condition, the depth of the coat, wear patterns around chimneys and dormers, netting condition and the state of the fixings at the eaves all read clearly from above and are close to impossible to assess properly from the ground.

A thatch inspection does not replace a master thatcher's opinion and the report says so. What it does is tell an owner whether they need one now or in three years, and give the thatcher something to quote from before they arrive.

Alongside the thatch there is natural slate, clay plain tile and concrete tile on the post-war stock, so a single street can carry three or four coverings with entirely different lifespans and failure modes.

The town is open to the south and south west with no shelter from the sea, though the valley sides take some of the edge off. Salt spray reaches the front ranks of housing in winter storms, so properties on the seaward side get the corrosion questions asked of them and those a few streets back mostly do not.

East of the town the Otter estuary and its reed beds form a nature reserve, and the wooded slopes rise sharply behind the high street. Both are considerations for a flight plan rather than for a roof: wildlife areas are given a wide berth, and the wooded slopes affect how the wind arrives at properties tucked under them.