But you need to find yourself a suitable residential premise in Mumbai before you leave New Delhi. Your company has made it quite clear that it would be in no position to assist you in doing so. You could identify a few properties listed on the Internet, correspond with the owners through e-mail and make your final decision once you are in Mumbai, you reckon. So, you inform your boss that you would be in Mumbai next month.

You log on to the Net and begin your search for a residential apartment that you could rent in Mumbai. You are able to find plenty of listings that meet your criteria regarding size, location and the like on various real-estate and related sites. Most listings also specify the e-mail addresses of the contact persons and you proceed to send messages to each one of them. While you are doing so you realise that all listings were bereft of visuals which would have added so much more value to your search. You are able to view a few photographs but they are all for new properties listed for sale.

Even those are merely shots of the buildings in which the listed apartments are situated. Wouldn't it be nice if one were able to actually see how well an apartment is furnished, how the surroundings of the building are and what colour the apartment walls are on the Net? Surely there would be some site that allows one to do so?

Curiosity gets the better of you and once you are done sending messages, you decide to spend some more time on the Net searching for such a site. You use your browser to search for "realty" and topmost among the search results is the URL "www.realty.com". What luck, you actually hit upon the kind of site that you are looking for. Through a tie-up with the Nasdaq-listed Internet Pictures Corporation, the site offers a 360 degree virtual tour of a number of properties listed with it.

Imagine yourself standing a few paces away from the house you wish to acquire and whirling around to take a look at your surroundings. That's precisely how it seems when you on "outside front view" for a listed property. You can control your speed, the direction of movement and can pause as and when you desire.

Similar tours are available for the interiors of the property as well. You could for instance, choose a 360-degree tour of the living room. This would enable you to see the flooring, the ceiling, the walls, the windows, the chandeliers, the furniture and even the view outside the windows. Further, if a particular piece of furniture or a painting catches your attention, you could zoom in for a clearer view. Of course you wouldn't be able feel the texture of the curtains and determine whether or not the cushions have an odour. But you would get a fair idea of what the property offered to you looks like.

Although that may not be enough for you to finalise the deal on-line, it would at least help to narrow your list of probables thus saving you the trouble of physically visiting several properties. No India-centred site offers you this service yet -- but you know where to look when you are transferred to Los Angeles.