NEW DELHI: Adding Context to Content, MagicBricks.com Introduces Locality Pages With Ratings, Reviews, Maps and Medi.

Scouring the Internet for information, Firoze Ahmed grumbled, "I want to know about BTM Layout in Bangalore, not a flowery prose on the Garden City of India". Local is the new global demand; people want information relevant to specific localities and places rather than broad and sweeping generalizations of the city.

For the first time in India, MagicBricks.com has introduced unparalleled granularity and contextual content at the locality level, providing detailed maps, ratings, reviews, photos and videos for popular neighborhoods across major cities - these have all been fully integrated with locality snapshots, search results and detailed listing pages.

"The net has helped make searching for real-estate easier and more effective. To add to this, we are delighted to launch 'neighbourhoods': Thousands of exclusively sourced HD photos and videos that will now give our users a good first-hand impression of a locality. This will help the user to quickly focus onto only the selected localities of his choice. Making property search efficient and productive to the user, we believe, will help migrate more steps of the property buying cycle to Online," says Sudhir Pai, Business Head, MagicBricks.com.

"Additionally, we are also launching the 'Search on Map'feature. This allows users to browse properties on the map and view relevant media & content at the locality & neighborhood level. Such unique services are born out of a deep understanding of the user and have the potential to become game-changers in the future. We shall continue to lead this space and seed such innovations as potential disruptors in the category," Pai added.

Here is a brief outline of these matchless new features, only available on MagicBricks.com -

> Search on Map - Contextual maps listing available properties - See price ranges of local property listings - browse listings using the map - Google Map API integration. Click here for a Live Example. [http://bit.ly/1964mdu ]

> Neighbourhoods - Locality snapshots - Summarized reviews, rates and trends, active agents and listings, new projects and photos. Click Here for a Live Example. [http://bit.ly/13MPdLH ]

> Locality Ratings and Reviews - Crowdsourcing opinion and gaining knowledge & expert advice on the neighbourhood. Click Here for a Live Example. [http://bit.ly/12wp8hb ]

> Locality Photos and Videos - Giving a sense of the neighbourhood skyline from the comfort of your screen - currently seeded with over 45000 high definition photos and videos for 200 localities across five cities - and more will be crowd-sourced in the near future. Click Here for a Live Example. [http://bit.ly/1a9KALQ ]

The MagicBricks.com Product & Design teams have put in a huge effort to create these features, for example - to create the locality photos and videos - thousands of exclusively sourced photos, videos and reviews on top localities of the country took thousands of man hours to seed and collate. Moreover, these photos are geo-tagged with 100% accuracy so that a buyer can see the actual location of photo on the map.

MagicBricks' ongoing in-house research on property seekers buying behavior found two important needs that have now been addressed exclusively by MagicBricks.com with these unmatched features -

1> 95% of them want to get a look and feel of a locality before making a contact. Most of them (especially NRIs) don't get time to go to ground and this delays their property buying decision.

2> They expect real estate portal to show genuine photos and videos of a locality, which will help them in comparing localities at their own convenience.

Towards fulfilling MagicBricks.com's vision of empowering users to make and execute real estate decisions in a transparent manner without uncertainty and ambiguity, the launch of these path-breaking features fulfill these latent demands and continue to push the envelope by providing the widest range of online services pertaining to every aspect of the real estate industry.

Stay tuned to MagicBricks.com for much more!

About MagicBricks.com:

MagicBricks.com [http://magicbricks.com ] provides a platform for property buyers and sellers to locate properties of interest and source information on the real estate space in a clear and transparent process. With in-depth analysis and revolutionary next-gen services customized specifically to address the needs of property seekers and the real estate industry, MagicBricks.com [http://magicbricks.com ] is the leader in online real estate in India.

MagicBricks.com [http://magicbricks.com ] was launched by Times Business Solutions Limited, part of The Times of India Group in August 2006, and has grown to become India's largest property portal. With over 8,000,000 listings from across the country, MagicBricks is the biggest online property marketplace in the country.

This achievement is not by chance, but by design - based on rigorous research, unique product developments and innovations that users have supported and embraced, including pioneering Geo Grouped Inventories, Intelligent Auto Suggest, Nearby Localities, Real Estate Dialogues, PropIndex and GuruTalk. With many new products and services under development, MagicBricks will continue to provide ever-increasing value to its clients and users, and will enhance its leadership in the online property space.

Primary Media Contact: Aseem Seth, aseem.seth@timesgroup.com, 91-9910273367