The culmination of four years' work and four separate mapping companies, the map search facility allows the search and display of WA properties on an interactive web map.

According to joint founder and director Charlie Gunningham, every property on the aussiehome.com site is mapped, allowing site visitors to enter a street, suburb or a post code to display mapped properties in the area.

"We are now closer to our vision of a completely map-based property portal for WA," Mr Gunningham said

"Since day one we've had mapping on our site, but this takes it to a whole other level.

"Nothing like this has existed in Australia before, and only a handful of sites globally have deployed anything like this degree of mapping technology."

Mr Gunningham said aussiehome.com had employed one of MultiMap's employees to develop Australian data into maps.

Likening the system to an extended version of Telstra's www.whereis.com, Mr Gunningham said the system worked with the majority of Internet browers - a significant development as there had been some browser incompatibility with previous map technologies.

Launched in 1999, Nedlands-based aussiehome.com started life with seven real estate agency clients and 70 properties, and about 20 site visitors per day.

The company now has 112 agency clients, mainly in WA, and displays about 4,000 properties that attract up to 5,000 site visitors daily.

Despite low market confidence in dot.com businesses, aussiehome.com has recorded its second profitable year, showing a 40 per cent increase in annual revenues.

This growth is attributed to, among other things, the successful implementation of online systems, web site development and hosting, and branching out into print media, which now accounts for 25 per cent of the business.

aussiehome.com has developed more than 60 Internet sites for real estate agents in WA, NSW and Victoria.

Mr Gunningham said aussie-home.com was now moving into back office management systems and CRM software to allow customers to run their business online.

Using the aussiehome.com system, real estate agency customers can add and update property details and photos online, order products, check hits and enquiries, manage their own clients, print brochures and export maps.

aussiehome.com also produces The Life magazine with five real estate agencies in Perth's western suburbs and produces monthly publications for other real estate agents, as well as brochures and sign boards.

aussiehome.com was a finalist in the 2003 Telstra WA Small Business Awards and was awarded the 2002 Winners 'business of the year' award and 'People's Choice' award - Asia Pacific IT&T Awards.

Mr Gunningham is a WA Business News 40under40 Award winner.

Courtesy: WA Business News, 28th August 2003