A Showing at Midnight, From 700 Miles Away

It's 11:52 on a Tuesday night in Dallas. Maya has a job offer in Loveland, two kids asleep down the hall, and a laptop open on the kitchen counter.

She's standing in a living room in Berthoud. She turns around and looks back at the entry, walks down the hall, and checks whether the second bedroom really shares a wall with the primary. Then she pulls back to see the whole house from above, like a dollhouse with the roof lifted off.

At 12:20 she texts her husband: “We're flying up Saturday. Just this one.” The house is about 700 miles away, and she's already toured it three times.

What is a Matterport in real estate?

A Matterport is a 3D virtual tour of a home, built by scanning each room with a specialized camera. Buyers move through it online as if walking the house themselves, and can switch to a dollhouse view of the whole layout. In real estate, “a Matterport” usually just means that tour.

How is a 3D tour different from photos or video?

Photos show what the photographer chose. Video shows the path the editor chose. A 3D tour lets the buyer choose.

They can stand in a doorway and look back. They can walk to the garage to see how far it is from the kitchen. They can go back to the same room as many times as they want, at any hour, without asking anyone.

Matterport describes the result as a digital twin: an accurate, interactive 3D model of a real space. When CoStar Group completed its acquisition of the company in February 2025, it said Matterport had digitized more than 14 million spaces across 177 countries.

Who actually uses a 3D tour?

Mostly the buyer who can't be there. Relocating families, investors, and second-home shoppers eyeing Estes Park from another state all start their search on a screen.

Agents on the buying side feel it too. In NAR's 2025 Profile of Home Staging, 43% of buyers' agents said virtual tours were highly important to their clients.

Does Zillow not use Matterport anymore?

Right, for now: in October 2025, Zillow removed Matterport 3D tours from its listings, citing restrictions from CoStar, which owns Matterport. CoStar disputes that account, and as of late May 2026 the tours were still off Zillow, which accepts its own Zillow 3D Home tours and some other vendors' tours instead.

What happened between Zillow and Matterport?

The short version: two of the biggest companies in real estate tech are in a fight, and Matterport tours got caught in the middle.

In October 2025, Zillow said CoStar had restricted how Matterport content could be used on outside platforms and declined to renew an API agreement, so it pulled the tours from Zillow and StreetEasy. CoStar denied changing the substance of its terms and said Matterport customers can share their tours anywhere, including on Zillow.

In May 2026, Matterport's president said in a signed declaration that CoStar would not sue Zillow for displaying the tours. Zillow said it still wouldn't host Matterport media without clear, binding terms that authorize it.

Where do Matterport tours still show up?

CoStar's CEO has said that Realtor.com and CoStar's own Homes.com both display Matterport tours. And the tour link itself still works anywhere an agent shares it: a property website, a text to a buyer, an email to a relocation client.

So the tour didn't lose its power. It lost one storefront. A big one, which is why the next question matters.

What is Zillow 3D Home?

Zillow 3D Home is Zillow's own tour tool. It's free for agents, captured with a supported phone or a 360-degree camera, and it builds an interactive floor plan alongside the tour.

Free to use isn't the same as free to do well. Leveling the camera, lighting the rooms, and getting every space covered is the difference between a tour buyers trust and one they close.

Photos show what the photographer chose. A 3D tour lets the buyer choose.

So which tour should a listing get?

Often both, when the buyer pool reaches beyond Northern Colorado. Each one covers a different door.

• Matterport 3D tour, $250. The deepest remote showing, with the dollhouse view, shared on the property website and anywhere else the listing travels.
• Zillow 3D Home tour, $175. The tour that appears on the Zillow listing itself.
• Inside our packages. Plus ($995) and Pro ($5,450) both include a Matterport tour, plus a floor plan and a property website.

For a starter home in Greeley with mostly local buyers, a strong photo set and floor plan may be plenty. For a Berthoud home likely to draw a relocation buyer, a tour stops being an extra and starts being the showing.

Why does a midnight showing matter so much?

Because for a lot of out-of-town buyers, the first showing doesn't happen with an agent at all. It happens late, alone, on a couch, with time to look twice.

Those buyers decide which homes are worth a plane ticket before anyone knows they're interested. The listing that let them walk through gets the Saturday visit.

Maya met the listing agent for the first time at the front door that Saturday. She didn't need the tour. She already knew where the light switches were.