Getting a Home Ready for Its Matterport 3D Tour Room by Room

Getting a home ready for its Matterport 3D tour means preparing every room as if a buyer will stand in the middle of it and turn all the way around, because on Homes.com, they can. I'm Dennis Mark Interdonato, I lead The Dennis Mark Group at Keller Williams Realty Ocean Living, and I've been a Homes.com member agent since August 2026. Every eligible listing I take gets a Matterport 3D tour through that membership. Here's how I get a home ready for it, room by room.

Why does a 3D tour need more prep than photos?

A photo shows a room from the one spot where the photographer stood. Anything behind the camera stays out of the shot. A 3D tour doesn't work that way. The buyer picks where to stand and which way to look.

Matterport describes its real estate tours as "made for exploration ... from any device." That means the corner behind the door, the top of the fridge and the view down the hallway are all on display. A room that looks great in one photo can show a pile of shoes in the tour.

The tour is also part of the listing for as long as it's on the market. On Homes.com, a listing with a tour carries a "360" button beside the photos, and the same tour can sit on the home's page on my website. You get one shoot, so the house needs to be ready for it.

Where do you start: the entry and the main living space?

Start where the buyer starts. The front door is the first thing they see inside the tour, so the entry needs to be clear. Shoes, coats, mail and keys go away. The floor should be open from the door into the house.

In the living room and the den, pull furniture back from walkways so the path through the room is obvious. Clear the coffee table down to one or two items. Put away remotes, chargers and cords. Open every blind and turn on every light, including lamps. A bright room reads bigger on a screen.

Personal photos, anything with a name on it, and paperwork come down or go into a drawer. The tour is public. It should show the house, not the people who live there.

What does the kitchen need?

The kitchen gets the most time from buyers, so it gets the most time from us. Clear the counters almost completely. Leave one or two things that look good, like a bowl of fruit or a cutting board, and put the rest away: the toaster, the paper towels, the dish rack, the sponges.

Take everything off the front of the fridge. Magnets, calendars and flyers all show up in a tour. Empty the sink and wipe down the faucet. Push the stools in at the island. If a cabinet door or drawer front is loose, it gets fixed before the camera arrives.

I've been building and renovating New Jersey homes since 2003, and I look at a kitchen the way a contractor does. A chipped edge or a missing knob is a small fix that costs very little. In a tour, a buyer can stop and look right at it.

How do you get bedrooms and bathrooms ready?

Make every bed, and make it tight. Clear the nightstands down to a lamp. Close the closet doors, or if a closet is staying open, make sure what's inside is neat. Laundry baskets go somewhere the tour won't see, like the car.

Bathrooms come down to the basics. Toothbrushes, razors, soap bottles and medicine come off the counter and out of the shower. Put the toilet seat down. Hang one set of clean, matching towels. Remove the bath mat if it's worn.

Every bedroom gets the same treatment, including the ones that are used for an office or for storage. A buyer touring the home sees each room for what it can be, so give them a clear room to look at.

What about the basement, the garage and the outside?

The basement and the garage get left out of a lot of prep, and a 3D tour can include them. If the basement or garage is in the tour, it doesn't need to be staged, but it needs to be organized. Stack boxes against one wall, sweep the floor and turn on every light.

Outside, the photos and drone shots carry most of the load. Mow, edge and clear the driveway of cars. Put the trash cans out of sight. Take down anything with a name or a house number on it that isn't part of the home itself.

On my listing at 647 Colts Neck Rd in the Orchard Hills section of Freehold Township, the Matterport 3D tour on Homes.com opens on a drone view. A buyer sees the house and the lot from above before stepping inside. When the tour opens that way, the yard is the first room they see.

Is the prep worth it?

Buyers are using the tours. When I joined Homes.com in August 2026, my listings had 0 Matterport views there. As of October 27, 2026, on my Homes.com dashboard, my listings had 50 Matterport views adding up to 1 hour and 9 minutes inside the tours. 647 Colts Neck Rd had 17 of those views.

That's more than a minute per view, which is a long time for anyone to spend on one home online. The buyer who spends that time is looking closely. I want what they see to be the home at its best.

The cost is mostly time. The tour itself is included with my Homes.com membership for every eligible listing, and Homes.com puts that at an "approximate $450 value per property." The prep is a weekend of putting things away.

No tour sells a house by itself, and I won't promise you a price or a timeline. Price, condition and the first two weeks on the market decide how a home sells. The prep decides how well your home shows online during those two weeks.

Where should you go next?

If your home has years of living in it, my article on decluttering before selling a home in New Jersey walks through how to get it down to the basics. My home staging page covers what staging adds, and How a Photo Shoot, Drone Shots and a 3D Tour Work Together on Homes.com shows how the tour fits with the rest of the media.

My Homes.com partner page lays out the full membership, and some listings also get Zillow Showcase. I sell homes throughout New Jersey, with Monmouth and Ocean County as home base. If you want a starting number before you start clearing counters, my home value page gives you one.

A buyer can walk your home from their couch before they ever pull into the driveway. Let's make that walk count.