When Janet Case bought property in France three years ago, she found the experience frustrating. There was no equivalent to the American-style multiple listing service, which buyers and their agents use to learn details about most properties on the market in a given area.

Instead, as a buyer she had to visit different real estate agencies. Each showed her the houses that they knew were for sale, but no agency had a list of all the homes available.

Case, who at the time was the chief executive of both the Silicon Valley and San Mateo County associations of Realtors, pondered how to bring MLS-like utility to the European real estate market without coming across as an outsider intent on smashing other countries' business practices.

The result is Proxio, a Palo Alto-based company that provides real estate agents a networking and business referral system that can serve as an international multiple listing service. Case started Proxio last year with Peter Spicer, one-time chief information officer for MLS Listings, formerly called REInfolink. The Campbell company operates Silicon Valley's local multiple listing service.

"The one thing that every buyer in the world wants is to see everything that's available," said Case. Proxio is "a platform that brings together the agents with the inventory and the agents with buyers wherever they are in the world, and we do it in six languages," she said.

Languages include English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. The company's basic services are free, and allow agents to display their listings, create a network of fellow agents who can view the listings, and refer their clients to other agents on Proxio.

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