Where do I get a national IDX?

[ChrisF79]

Greetings,

I'm considering starting a site where REALTORS can sign up and have their own site for a small fee. If I roll this out nationally, where do I get the IDX feed that will be needed for their market?

Am I better off just rolling it out on a city-by-city basis and purchasing the IDX for those individual cities as I go?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[HHI Golf Guy]

If you are designing your own MLS package, you can pay some local MLS associations to obtain their data feed. You can sell your package if the criteria below is met.

Agents can only place feeds on their sites if:

1. The brokerage participates in reciprocity and signs an agreement.

2. The broker of the agent signs off on allowing the agent to place IDX feeds on their site. This is because - by law - the broker "owns" all of the listings of the brokerage.

For example, let's say your a real estate agent and your buddy asks you to sell his house. That listing does not belong to you, even though you are representing your buddy. The listing belongs to your broker.

[ColoradoHomeHelper]

Greetings,

I'm considering starting a site where REALTORS can sign up and have their own site for a small fee. If I roll this out nationally, where do I get the IDX feed that will be needed for their market?

Am I better off just rolling it out on a city-by-city basis and purchasing the IDX for those individual cities as I go?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

You would pretty much need to start out by rolling it out city by city!

[abrahamchaffin]

It's more or less MLS by MLS. Each MLS provides a number of cities. But some MLS's don't provide IDX solutions to the public, so it's very difficult to actually have the entire country. Realtor.com has special contract with MLS service providers because they are NAR. Other websites that try to do what Realtor.com does fall short because they don't have the same access to all the MLS's.

[Jim B]

yes, MLS by MLS as there is no such thing as a National IDX or MLS. There is no need for a National IDX or MLS system, Real Estate is highly local.

[RobM]

The way that Realtor.com gets away with it is that all the local boards feed realtor.com...I have to agree with above, as far as I know, there is no such thing as a national idx solution and it sounds like it may be a costly project

[itrends]

Each state usually has a different system (some providers handle multiple states) so I don't think you'll find a centralized MLS system like that.

[kdobbs]

We use iHomefinder and it works out great. It has lots of features that make it usable to my website visitors. It offers:

Search Saver
Scrolling Listings on Home Page
Featured Listings
Open Houses
Sold Homes
Pre-Formatted SearchesCheck it out on my site on the link below.
My web developer is The Marketing Shop.com.

[itrends]

This wouldn't do any good for a site since it's the same as framed pages. You're basically sending the traffic to 'their' site and the listings cannot be integrated into your own site like the IDX solutions we provide.

Services like this try and make the IDX feeds and search 'look' like your site by adding your logo etc., but this is really no better than a framed page link. Search engines will 'not' index your web site better because lsitings appear on their site instead of yours.

[allnightit]

Yes, be very careful that you don't confuse the IDX system with a "Framed Gateway" where the listings are being pulled in using a frame located on somebody elses site.

That's good if you just want to search listings, but google doesn't see them on your site, they are on the site where the frame is hosted, most likely the IDX provider's site or the local MLS association.

[MrREO]

what's the difference between MLS and IDX?

[allnightit]

The MLS (or Multiple Listing Service) is the actual company that resides in your city which is responsible for hosting and gathering your brokers listings together and making them available to the public in one form or another. You will always see their name appear something like this "CITY MLS" or "CITY Area of Realtors MLS".

One form the different MLS companies may use is the IDX (or Information Data Exchange). This is a term that describes the process of making information available publically to any number of venues. It does not in any way derive it's name from the MLS, it's only associated with the MLS more publically than other industries like the Stock Exchange, for example, who also has a large IDX program.

[SellMyDigs.com]

Nationwide MLS access is possible, Realtor.com has access with every MLS through it's contract with NAR. You can try to set something up with them.

[Jim B]

Nationwide MLS access is possible, Realtor.com has access with every MLS through it's contract with NAR. You can try to set something up with them.


Ha ha, If I were this guy I would save my breath on that one.

[SellMyDigs.com]

That's probably true, but he asked how it's possible not if it was plausible.