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On February 1 2005, HitachiSoft (Hitachi Software Engineering Co., Ltd. based in Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo with Takeo Ogawa as the CEO and president) will launch a service for real-estate appraisal which it will add to "piXterra", an ASP^*1 service utilizing images transmitted from the U.S. Digital Globe's QuickBird -- a high-resolution satellite -- via the Internet.

Along with the recent expansion of the market for real-estate equity securities and real-estate investment trust (REIT), real-estate appraisal is becoming more important. The appraisal work en tails an environmental survey (existence of medium- to high-rise buildings to the south, any neig hboring rivers, access to streets, distances from traffic facilities, access to shopping areas and distances from undesirable facilities) in addition to the land price data, so job efficiency is in urgent need of improvement.

HitachiSoft's data service, which provides land value data (values by route for taxation (real estate tax and inheritance tax) and the governmental and local standard values) digitized by the Research Center for Property Assessment System, is added to "piXterra", and is updated every six months for cities designated by government ordinance so as to improve the efficiency of real-estate appraisal work.

(Related URL) http://pixterra.net/

Users are able to receive the service simply by accessing the piXterra server operated by HitachiSoft, without the need for any special software or special environment; all they need is an Internet connection. Because the map and land value data can be used in combination with the satellite picture, the conditions surrounding the property can be determined realistically, and the time taken for the field survey can be reduced appreciably. The spot function allowing regis tration of the survey contents (text and photo) by marking the property on the screen facilitates its management as well as comparative studies of similar properties. Thus, appraisal accuracy is improved for higher reliability. The service charge is \20,000/month per terminal. 1,000 users are predicted per year mainly among real-estate appraisers, real-estate consultants and finance organizations.

Sales channels: Direct sales by HitachiSoft and through All Real-estate Appraisers Network Co., Ltd. Types of provided data: QuickBird satellite image data (60-cm resolution), digital map 2500 of Geographical Survey Institute, governmental/regional standard land values^*2, land values by route for inheritance tax^*2, and land values by route for real-estate tax^*2 Supported areas: Sapporo, Sendai, Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, and Kitakyushu

Mr. Takehashi or Ms. Takano,
Corporate Communications, Hitachi Software Engineering Co., Ltd.
Tel: 03-5780-6450 e-mail: press@hitachisoft.jp