Suksh Technology's My100floors is not your run-of-the-mill real estate search portal. It adds a whole new dimension to the search process, courtesy some map magic.

Real estate is one of the most closely followed sectors in the economy today. People from all walks of life like to keep a close eye on the ebb and flow of property prices and speculation is almost endless. So it is hardly surprising that there are a number of portals dedicated to it, all claiming to make it easy for both buyers and sellers to connect. However, there was no solution for choosing a property and then identifying its exact location via these portals.

My100floors (www.my100floors.com), an online marketplace which lists properties under the 'buy', 'sell' and 'rent' categories, plans to provide just that. With its beta version launched, this portal from the Bangalore-based Suksh Technology Pvt Ltd (STPL), is all set to revolutionise realty search on the Web by providing map-based search information.

Adding a new dimension to realty search

The idea of the portal developed during market research, when the STPL team studied successful portals in developed countries like the US as well as in some European countries. Team members felt maps would be a good experience to offer to the end users in the realty domain.

"Realty search is essentially more of a spatial search problem than a typical information search, which Google has proven till date. So we are looking at maps for a base searching and browsing experience on My100floors.com," says Bhushan Patil, COO, STPL. "We are using Google Maps as the base as it stands ahead in terms of data, the possibilities of modelling it for our needs and also price," he adds.

Owing to its innovative features, My100floors is expected to benefit users in more ways than one.

According to the company sources, the portal will let the user carry out extensive property search and browsing on interactive maps without typing in cumbersome questions or fields online. The portal is also designed to allow users to access information and post questions about properties with far fewer clicks than other portals. The portal aims to function as a do-it-yourself micro site for builders and brokers, and will also enable small builders to create project websites with minimum fuss.

The portal is built using open source and Web 2.0 technologies based on PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) and MySQL, and is backed by many new age plug-ins and widgets. However, a second planned portal will be built using an enterprise software stack like Java, C++, etc.