Matterport features explained: dollhouse, floor plan, Mattertags

Buyers spend an average of three minutes inside a Matterport tour. What they click on during those three minutes depends entirely on which features you've set up correctly.

Three tools inside every Matterport scan do completely different jobs. Most agents activate all three by default and never think about them again. That's a mistake, because each one speaks to a different buyer mindset. Here's what they actually do.

The dollhouse view

The dollhouse is the exterior shell of the 3D model, rendered as a floating, translucent structure you can rotate 360 degrees. It shows the entire property at once, from above and from the side, with every floor and room visible simultaneously.

What it does for a buyer: it answers the spatial question. Is the master bedroom above the garage or over the living room? Does the open-plan kitchen actually connect to the backyard, or is there a hallway in between? Floor plans can answer those questions too, but the dollhouse answers them visually and without any plan-reading skill required.

It's most valuable for buyers who are relocating and can't visit in person, buyers comparing multiple properties at once, and buyers with families who need to understand how the home functions as a whole before committing to a showing.

For multi-family and new construction, the dollhouse is often the first thing a developer's sales team shows at a presentation. It communicates scale and layout faster than any rendering or floor plan alone.

Schematic floor plan

Matterport generates a 2D schematic floor plan automatically from the scan data. It's not an architectural drawing. It won't replace a surveyed plan for permit purposes. But it is accurate enough to be genuinely useful, and it's included in every scan without extra work.

What it does for a buyer: it answers the measurement question. Buyers want to know if their king bed fits in the master, whether the dining table clears the sliding door, and how the square footage breaks down by room. The schematic gives them labeled rooms with rough dimensions they can screenshot and forward to a mover, a furniture retailer, or a spouse.

For buyers who came up through a more analytical process, who've already toured a dozen homes and are now in serious comparison mode, the floor plan is often the view they spend the most time in. They're not browsing anymore. They're evaluating.

One practical note: the auto-generated plan reads better when the scan was executed with clean, consistent spacing between capture points. Rushed scans with large gaps produce plans with missing wall segments. This is a shooting discipline issue, not a software issue.

Mattertags

Mattertags are clickable annotation points you place anywhere inside the 3D model. They open a small popup that can contain text, a photo, a link, or an embedded video.

What they do for a buyer: they answer the feature question. Which appliances are included and what are the model numbers? Is the radiant floor heating on a timer? Does that outbuilding have electrical service? A buyer touring remotely can't open a cabinet or ask the listing agent standing next to them. Mattertags fill that gap.

Used well, they also reduce the volume of repetitive questions that flow back to the agent. Place a tag on the mechanical room with the age of the furnace, the water heater spec, and the last service date. That information would have generated three separate emails. Now it doesn't.

Used poorly, Mattertags are clutter. Tags on every light fixture, tags that link to the agent's general website, tags with no information worth reading. Buyers ignore them after the first two. Place them where they earn their spot.

How to think about all three together

The three features serve three different stages of the buyer's decision process:

• Dollhouse: orientation. Does this property make spatial sense for my life?
• Floor plan: evaluation. Do the dimensions actually work?
• Mattertags: due diligence. What do I need to know before I book a showing or make an offer?

A buyer can move through all three in a single sitting, or they might only use one depending on where they are in their search. The scan supports all three simultaneously, which is why a well-executed Matterport tour does more selling work per dollar than almost any other single asset in a listing.

Flylisted has delivered Matterport scans across more than 6,953 projects in New England, South Florida, the Caribbean, and California. Every scan includes the dollhouse, floor plan, and Mattertag capability out of the box. Turnaround on residential deliverables is 24 hours.

The features are only as useful as the scan behind them. That part is on the operator.

See what's included in a Flylisted Matterport scan at our pricing page.