Sarasota Matterport 3D Tour: The One Tool That Markets Your Home and Protects It
- Tomas Caballero
- Nov 10, 2023
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 1
A Matterport 3D Tour Sarasota is not just a virtual walk-through; it is a game-changing tool that creates a precise, immersive digital twin of your property. Buyers, renters, insurers, contractors, and designers can explore your space 24/7, from anywhere in the world, with clarity and confidence.
If you want to market your property at its true worth, protect your investment, and stand out in a crowded market, nothing compares to a professionally executed Matterport tour.
Why a Matterport 3D Tour in Sarasota Is a Must for Selling Your Property
Your property isn’t ordinary, and neither should your marketing be. Matterport tours filter out casual “lookers” by allowing buyers to explore your home virtually, ensuring that only serious buyers schedule in-person visits. This saves your time, protects your privacy, and reduces unnecessary foot traffic—critical if you’re an elderly homeowner, managing health concerns, or simply value your time.
In a market where buyers often shop online before stepping foot on a property, Matterport tours help your listing stand out and sell faster, capturing interest and building emotional connection before a showing even happens.
Insurance, Storm Protection, and Claims Documentation
We’ve lived it ourselves. After the 2024 hurricanes hit Sarasota, FEMA used our Matterport scans to process our claims accurately and quickly, ensuring we received fair compensation without endless back-and-forth.
A Matterport tour captures your property’s exact condition, finishes, layout, and details before storms, fires, or floods occur. This documentation can become your most powerful tool in an insurance claim, providing a clear, time-stamped record of your home’s value and condition.
Supporting Contractors, Designers, and Inspectors
Need a contractor to quote a remodel? A designer to plan a renovation? An inspector to assess a property?
Matterport’s accurate measurements, 3D dollhouse view, and walk-through capability allow professionals to plan, quote, and assess remotely. This reduces repeated visits, speeds up timelines, and prevents costly miscommunications.
Transforming Vacation Rentals
For vacation rentals, Matterport tours let future guests see exactly where they will be staying. It helps them plan, get excited, and commit confidently, reducing questions and increasing booking rates.
At the same time, clear, honest representations protect your property by setting accurate expectations, reducing disputes, and attracting guests who respect your space.
The Power of Presentation: High-End Equipment Matters
Technically, Matterport scans can also be done with a smartphone (as they advertise), but the results look exactly like you’d expect: blurry images, warped layouts, unreliable measurements, and poor lighting. These “cheap” scans can make your property look cheap.
At Bird Real Estate Media, we use Matterport-approved, high-end equipment to deliver premium results:
Matterport Pro2 4K Camera: Captures your property in stunning detail with precise measurements and lifelike clarity.
Insta 360 X5: For versatile, high-quality 360-degree images where needed.
This is not just a scan—it’s a strategic asset that helps your property stand out and sell for what it’s truly worth.
Capture: The process begins with using an Insta360 X5 or Matterport Pro2 3D camera. The camera is placed strategically throughout the space to capture a series of high-resolution images and depth data.
A Matterport tour is primarily an interior scanning system. We capture the inside of the property by scanning floors, walls, and ceilings, which allows the camera to understand depth, geometry, and spatial relationships. This is how Matterport creates an accurate, measurable 3D model of the interior.
For exterior areas, the process is different. Because outdoor spaces do not have continuous walls or ceilings to reference, the camera cannot generate true 3D geometry. In those cases, we provide connected 360-degree exterior photos that are linked to the tour. These allow viewers to visually explore patios, pools, lanais, yards, and exterior spaces while maintaining continuity with the interior tour.
In short: interiors are fully scanned and modeled in 3D; exteriors are represented through high-quality 360 images. This is a limitation of the technology, not the capture process, and it ensures the tour remains accurate rather than artificially generated.
Data Processing: The captured data is uploaded to the Matterport cloud, where specialized algorithms process the information. This processing creates a detailed 3D space model with accurate dimensions, textures, and spatial relationships.
Navigation: Once the 3D model is generated, users can navigate through the space as if physically present. They can move from room to room, look around in any direction, and zoom in on specific details.
Dollhouse View: Matterport tours often include a "Dollhouse" view, which provides an overall perspective of the entire space. In this view, users can see the entire layout in a 3D model that looks like a dollhouse, allowing for a quick overview of the entire property.
Measurement Tools: Users can use measurement tools within the tour to assess distances between objects or understand the dimensions of specific areas.
VR Compatibility: Matterport tours can also be experienced in virtual reality (VR). Users can use VR headsets to get an even more immersive experience, feeling as though they are physically present in the space.
Sharing: The completed Matterport 3D tour can be easily shared with others through links or embedded on websites. This makes it a valuable tool for a range of industries, including real estate, hospitality, event planning, and more.
Pricing: Simple, Transparent, and Affordable
While Matterport was once exclusive to luxury listings, it is now accessible to all serious sellers and investors. However, as popularity continues to grow, prices are expected to rise.
Residential Listings: Flat-fee pricing up to 4,500 sq ft for simplicity.
Above 4,500 sq ft: $0.20 per additional sq ft.
Free Hosting for Residential Sale Listings: Tours remain active for the duration of your listing.
Ongoing Hosting (Rentals, Commercial, Insurance, Documentation): $250 per year ($20 per month) for secure, 24/7 availability, storage, and cyber protection.
Matterport Hosting Fees Explained: What You’re Paying For
Creating a Matterport 3D tour generates a large, living file, not a simple video. It includes a full 3D model, high-resolution imagery, measurements, an interactive floor plan, navigation data, and the cloud infrastructure required to stream it smoothly on any device. Think of it as a digital twin plus a streaming service, all in one.
That is what hosting covers. Your tour is stored on Matterport’s servers and delivered through their secure network so it loads fast, stays stable, and can handle traffic spikes without crashing. It also includes the behind-the-scenes essentials people do not think about until something breaks: uptime, data redundancy, platform security, software updates, and the systems that keep the tour link working inside MLS, your website, and marketing pages.
This is why there is a hosting fee at all. It is not a “photo storage” fee. It is the ongoing cost of keeping a complex, interactive 3D experience live, accessible, and protected.
And here is the important part. We keep it simple and fair. We only charge $250 per year to keep your Matterport tour hosted and active. For what you are getting, that number is very reasonable. You are not paying for fluff. You are paying to keep a high-value digital asset online, working for you 24/7, with the stability and security a business-grade platform requires.
Experience a 3D Matterport Tour below:
Before the Storm, After the Storm, Matterport Shows the Truth.
A Matterport 3D tour is not a luxury. It is a practical tool that pays for itself in multiple ways. It helps buyers and guests trust what they are seeing, and it gives owners something most people only realize they needed after it is too late, proof.
A Matterport tour can:
Help your property sell faster by building trust and connection with buyers who want to understand the layout before they schedule a showing.
Elevate vacation rental listings by reducing uncertainty, improving guest confidence, and increasing bookings.
Support remote quoting and inspections by letting contractors, designers, and service providers measure and evaluate spaces without repeated site visits.
Document and protect your investment against storms, fires, and floods by creating a detailed visual record of what the property looked like before damage happened.
This last point is not theoretical. We were victims ourselves during Hurricane Debby in 2024. Having a Matterport tour helped us prove what we had before the storm. It gave insurance adjusters and contractors a clear, time-stamped record of the condition, contents, and layout, and it helped speed up conversations that otherwise turn into delays, questions, and disputes.
If you want your property to stand out, sell faster, and stay protected, a Matterport tour is one of the smartest investments you can make. It is not just marketing. It is documentation you will be grateful to have when you need it most.
Important Disclaimer
We share this experience because we lived it firsthand. After Hurricane Debby in 2024, having a Matterport 3D tour helped us clearly show insurance adjusters and contractors what existed in the property before the damage. It reduced uncertainty and helped move conversations forward.
That said, we are not attorneys, public adjusters, or insurance professionals. We cannot guarantee insurance outcomes, claim approvals, timelines, or coverage decisions. Every insurance policy, carrier, and claim is different, and results will vary.
Bird Real Estate Media is a local photography business based in Sarasota, Florida. We are Matterport Service Partners and use the Matterport platform as subscribers and members. We do not own, control, or operate the Matterport platform.
We have been on the Matterport platform for nearly 10 years and maintain a legacy subscription. That allows us to offer some of the most competitive hosting and tour pricing available locally. Over that time, we have seen the platform change ownership, pricing structures, hosting models, and terms of service.
Matterport is a third-party technology platform. Bird Real Estate Media does not own, control, or operate it. We are not responsible for platform outages, service interruptions, hosting fees, future price increases, account policy changes, or any decisions made by Matterport or its parent companies.
Our role is simple: we professionally capture your property and deliver high-quality visual documentation using industry-leading tools. Matterport is one of those tools. It is powerful, but it remains a third-party service.
We provide photography and 3D capture services only. How the resulting assets are used or interpreted by insurers, contractors, adjusters, or any other third party is outside of our control.
For questions related to insurance coverage, claims, or legal matters, consult a licensed Florida insurance professional or attorney.
Book your 3D Matterport tour today and let your property shine.
Contact Bird Real Estate Media today for expert vacation rental, commercial, and architectural photography in Sarasota and Manatee counties, Florida.
📞 Call us: 941-217-9139
📧 Email: sales@bird-solutions.com
🌐 Visit: www.bird-solutions.com
We’re here to help — reach out with any questions or to get a custom quote.
The Bird Solutions Team
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