90 Day Challenge – DAY 26- Tools You Can Use – What is IDX ?

What is IDX?  According to Wikipedia…

An Internet Data Exchange (IDX) is a real estate property search site which allows the public to conduct searches of approved Multiple Listing Service properties in a certain area.

Site users generally gain the benefit of anonymous property searching and review. IDX sites usually provide less detailed information than the full Realtor Multiple Listing Service, limiting the data to that which is deemed publicly accessible. The benefit to realtors is that users of their IDX web site can search freely, establish some confidence, and qualify themselves before contacting the realtor.

Certain rules apply to the real estate companies’ ability to display each detail about a property. These “display rules” are set by the Multiple Listing Service organization, which generally forms its policy around the recommendations of the National Association of Realtors.

IDX policy is nearing its replacement by a new Internet Listing Display policy being formed by the National Association of Realtors.

A common and standard data exchange protocol for IDX information is the Real Estate Transaction Specification or RETS.

Still confused?  Simply put it is an agreement through the Multiple Listing Service that basically says “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours”.  So that every agent and broker in the MLS is able to display every listing available and not just their own listings.

If you read the Marketing Your Brand Challenge and watched the I am Not a Lead video you understand that listings and information not found on every other site is an important part of every real estate website.

If you already have IDX on your website you might be thinking you have this challenge done already – but keep reading- you probably can learn something here.   Your IDX probably comes from one of 2 sources – your use the FAR solution or you are paying someone for it. There are 2 basic problems with these fields.  First, they are not unique.  Everyone else in your universe has the same information.  Therefore, unless someone stumbles upon your website, they will never know you have that great information on your site because the search engines just don’t see it.  Second, most out of the box solutions have a limited set of listing information fields available.

Look at any listing page on ewm.com- do you see the additional information that is one each listing that you will find no where else?  How about days on the market?  Full and complete comments? Percentage of price reduction from the original price?  Recent Sales?  Similar properties on the market?  These are all unique fields to the EWM website.

You might be wondering why we include all of this extra information.  The answer is simple… consumers want it. There are non- Realtor sites that contain this information.  And shouldn’t it be those who know the most (yes, that is us!) that put the information out there?   I think so.

After a long drawn out battle with the local Associations of Realtors – we are finally able to get this etra information and now, very soon, will be able to proivde it to you for your websites.  I should be able to make the definite announcement within the next two weeks on how you can get this enhanced IDX to your webmaster for your site… so stay tuned.