Not certain I understand - but I think you want something like this:

http://www.lot-real-estate.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=fig&substring=1

Note that you'll need to be using an index for this to work. (Go to admin->database->links->properties and check that the indexing at the bottom of the page is internal). And you'll also need to add weights to the fields that you want to be able to search on - e.g. the reference field.