What is Matterport and why is it the standard for commercial real estate?

In short, what is matterport is an American platform for creating interactive 3D tours of real rooms with precise geometry, measurements and layouts. The technology appeared in 2011, and is now used by CBRE, JLL, Knight Frank and thousands of agencies around the world. In Russia, we have been filming at 360° Space on Matterport since 2018 - during this time we have filmed more than 400 objects: from apartments in Khamovniki to warehouse complexes in Podolsk. The main difference from ordinary spherical panoramas is a real 3D model, which you can walk on, measure distances and see the plan from above.

Why do you need a 3D tour - benefits with numbers

• Reduce empty impressions by 60–70%. The client studies the property online and comes only if he is really interested. A broker from the business center on Paveletskaya told us that after the introduction of tours, he stopped spending Saturdays on “let’s see and think.”
• Increase in applications by 1.5–2 times. An ad with a tour on CIAN or Avito collects more responses than the same place with a regular photo - according to statistics from Matterport itself, the increase in engagement is up to 95%.
• Expanding the geography of the deal. A manager from Yekaterinburg rents an office in Moscow through a tour, without a business trip. One of our clients, an oil service company from Tyumen, closed the lease of 800 m² in the City remotely, arriving only for signing.
• Saving broker time. One tour replaces 5-10 live screenings per week at a large venue.
• Accurate measurements online. Architects and contractors take measurements directly on the tour with an error of up to 1%. No need to travel with a tape measure.

For commercial real estate, this is not marketing for the sake of a picture. The management company of a shopping gallery in Krasnodar gave tours to tenants as presentation material - over six months, occupancy increased from 78% to 94%. And no more visits from potential tenants “just to look.”

How it works

Scanning is done with a Matterport Pro2 or Pro3 camera. The operator sets up a tripod, presses a button, the camera rotates 360° and takes a panorama along with infrared distance measurement. Next - a step of 1.5–2 meters, a new point, a new panorama.

An apartment of 80 m² takes 1.5–2 hours of shooting, a restaurant of 600 m² takes us about 4 hours, an office floor of 1200 m² in Moscow City takes one working day. The 5,000 m² warehouse was filmed for a week by two cameramen.

Then the data goes into processing – usually 12–24 hours. The output is:

• Virtual tour with smooth transitions between points
• 3D model “doll house” - view of the room as a layout from the outside
• Floor plan with dimensions and areas of rooms
• Measurement tool directly in the browser - click on point A and point B, get the distance
• Ability to add tags with photos, videos, descriptions and links

We can deliver the finished tour in three ways. The first is in the 360° Space cloud, on high-speed servers with technical support: suitable for most clients, no need to configure anything. The second is to deploy the tour on the customer’s infrastructure if the company has a closed circuit, security requirements or a local storage policy. The third is an offline build for a PC or a separate version for a VR headset: this is what we did for an architectural bureau from Kazan, which takes tours to exhibitions in pavilions without a stable Internet.

Hotel

st. Arkhipova

Font

Nine-story building

Electrovodnaya

School

Cinema Galaxy in Vladivostok

Kissaten

How much does it cost

The price depends on the area and complexity of access. Guide to our tariffs:

• Apartment up to 100 m² - from 8,000 ₽
• Office or store 200–500 m² — from 18,000 ₽
• Object over 1000 m² - from 35,000 ₽ with a reduction factor per square
• Urgent shooting on weekends or at night - extra charge 30–50%
• Travel outside the Moscow Ring Road - from 3,000 ₽ depending on the distance

We separately consider the installation of interactive tags with product descriptions (for showrooms and furniture stores), tour branding in corporate colors, and a navigation map. It is more convenient to calculate the exact amount using a calculator - it will select the coefficients for area, geolocation and urgency.

What about a monthly storage subscription? We don't love her. Therefore, the client always has a choice of three accommodation formats - cloud, own server, offline - and there is no situation of “stopped paying - the tour is lost.”