For anyone other than the terminally nosey, house hunting is a chore to be got over and done with as quickly as possible. But now, London-based First Mortgage Securities Ltd, one of the companies that will be offering its wares on the Microsoft Network come the autumn, plans to establish a UK-wide on-line database of properties for sale. It will be accessible through the Internet and the Microsoft Network and although text-based now, will eventually have colour pictures of properties for sale. Although the idea of computerised selling of homes is not new to North America or, closer to Computergram’s home, Scotland, it’s novel for England and Wales. The mortgage lender became interested in using the Internet to sell services about a year ago and this January established a Web page, courtesy of Unipalm Pipex Ltd. It said it found it an intersting piece of technology but not terribly clever as a marketing tool because people had difficulty finding an individual advertiser’s pages. Nevertheless, it has pursued the concept and believes that the Microsoft Network, which should be easier to access and better structured, will bring in more business, although it doesn’t expect to be swamped. At the moment it’s developing the system and will pilot it in Guildford, Surrey where estate agents and builders have shown interest in putting their properties on the page. The company is using a Lotus Development Corp Approach database, but if the scheme takes off it expects to move it over to a Unix-based system.
