07 June 2005

Spicerhaart, Europe’s largest independent Estate Agent, and Multimap, Europe’s leading online mapping provider, today announced the deployment of Multimap’s ““Aerial Photography”” services on the web sites of Spicerhaart’s five-strong portfolio of property brands (haart, Spicer McColl, Darlows, Felicity J. Lord and Bailys). Thanks to the implementation, house hunters can now view aerial photographs of the properties and areas in which they're interested. The photos, provided by Multimap’s partner Getmapping, correspond to the interactive maps Multimap delivers showing the exact location of properties of interest.

Commenting on the site enhancements, Steve Lamb, IT Director, Spicerhaart, said, “We are thrilled with the new Aerial Photography service. It strongly differentiates our online offering from that of our competitors, and is proving extremely popular with our customers. This April alone, aerial photography services received in excess of 52,000 page impressions. These compliment Multimap’s maps, which themselves are clear, detailed and accurate.”

“By equipping our customers with the location information that they need to make a decision about a viewing, we help them to save time and effort,” he continued.

To access a list of the top five most suitable properties, visitors to Spicerhaart’s web sites specify their desired location, number of bedrooms, type of property desired (flat, bungalow, cottage, maisonette, etc.), and maximum property price. They then click on the ‘More details’ link for a property of interest from the list delivered, and select the aerial photograph icon to view an aerial photo of its location at the scale of their choice. To access an interactive map of the same area, with full zoom in/out and pan N,S,E,W functionality, they simply click on the map icon instead.

Jeff Kelisky, CEO of Multimap, commented “People looking to buy a property will compromise on number of bedrooms and price but often can’t be flexible on location. Hence the rocketing demand for online mapping and location-based services in the property sector. Our Aerial Photography service, powered by Getmapping, is a great value-add to complement other location-based services such as proximity searches, giving house hunters more information about what’s located around a property than ever before. We are proud that many big-name property providers have chosen Multimap as their mapping partner, and are delighted to now also be working with Spicerhaart to make the stressful task of house hunting significantly easier and less fraught.”

About Multimap

Multimap is Europe's leading provider of mapping and location-based services. The company delivers more online maps, point-to-point driving directions and geo-spatial ("where's my nearest?") searches to more companies than any other supplier in Europe. All services are offered on mobile, PDA, kiosk, and interactive TV platforms and in multiple languages.

The public website, www.multimap.com, provides a range of free, useful services to assist with everyday life. Key features include street-level maps of Europe, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia; road maps of the world; door-to-door travel directions; aerial photographs; links to location information; and services such as hotel, restaurant and entertainment booking. The public site attracts over 8.6 million unique users, registers more than 160 million page impressions every month, and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the UK. Multimap recently featured in The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 league table of fastest-growing unquoted UK companies across all sectors.

About Spicerhaart

Spicerhaart is the country's largest independent estate agency group, with a series of property websites which are among the most popular in the UK. Around 18,000 properties are on display, through the sites of its 220 branches of haart, Felicity J Lord, Spicer McColl and Darlows estate agencies. The websites are updated hourly, attracting over 200,000 unique visitors a month. Every evening, the group also sends out thousands of emails and SMS text messages, flagging up new properties which have just come on the market. Also within the Spicerhaart group is Wolton Chartered Surveyors, Mortgages Direct and James Jardine financial services.