MLS Update's Blog: All Categories

Whereas in the past the Austin Board of Realtor has only permitted the display of active property listings in their IDX, they have recently changed their IDX display rules to include guidelines for the display of SOLD information. This includes SOLD listings, comparables, and statistical information derived from SOLD listings obtained from their IDX data feed. The details of the new rules are as follows:

CONFIDENTIALITY OF ACTRIS INFORMATION

SECTION 2. Participant and/or Subscriber may not disclose and shall use independent best efforts to protect the confidentiality of restricted fields, names, and addresses included in the MLS; provided, however, the listing Participant may use “sold” information in advertising…

After inquiring on behalf of a customer, Real Estate Webmasters has learned that the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors is currently in the planning stage of, but does not have a working solution for, syndicating their listing data through an RSS feed.

For those not familiar with RSS and syndication, any website that features the RSS acronym or the RSS logo supports the syndication of their content. This is usually for the purpose of informing people that their website is updating and often carries a snippet of information about the updated content. Some feeds carry more information than others. A content reader or aggregate website will pick up this information when it is updated and let you see only the content that has been updated.

The… Read Full Post

In their Quarterly Brokers' Update, Volume 3 September 2007, MRIS announced the ability for Brokers to display all and agents to display their own Sold Listings from the RETS data feed on their websites. There are a few rules as I will transcribe the full announcement:

"Listings Available for Display on Broker Web Sites

We all know that the Internet has changed the way we do business Information that once was only available through printed MLS books is now widely available to the public online on numerous Web sites, The information that appears on these sites, especially SOLD information, isn't always the most accurate or up to date, and that can be detrimental.

The MRIS Board of Directors has approved the display of SOLD listing information on… Read Full Post

The Memphis Area Association of Realtors(R), in an attempt to reduce the overall over-utilization of their RETS server, has started to limit the RETS record returns over the last week.

For details on how this might affect your IDX or if you are interested in getting an IDX from the Memphis Area Association of Realtors, contact Real Estate Webmasters. Read Full Post

The SunshineMLS, which includes the Naples Area Board of Realtors® and the Bonita-Estero Board of Realtors®, is updating their with new metadata on October 9th, 2007. Their notice was as follows:

To all FTP/RETS users:

Please note that SunshineMLS will implement the following metadata changes on 10/9/2007:

Residential (RES) Property Class:

METADATA-LOOKUP_TYPE

-       The "City" lookup type will have additional values (all Florida cities being added to the list)

Lot and Land (LOT) Property Class:

METADATA-LOOKUP_TYPE

-       The "City" lookup type will have additional values (all Florida cities being added to the list)

Residential Income (RIN) Property Class:

METADATA-LOOKUP_TYPE

-       The "City" lookup type will have additional…

The Florida Association of Realtors (R) just went live with a dedicated photo server. Combined with two new fields to the data feed (PHOTO_QUANTITY and PHOTO_URL), IDX feed subscribers can now hot-link to all of the photos for all of the respective FAR feeds. Other than the great news, the important thing to notice is that they are discontinuing photo download service in the near future. That mean people who don't switch over will not have ANY photos. Here is the full update from FAR:

"Hello,

On 26 JUL 2007 multiple IDX property photos were made available to those offices using the FAR IDX Download service. Multiple photos have been available in our framed solution since inception and now multiple photos are also available to those offices that… Read Full Post

Rejoice! Rejoice! FAR bringing out photo server for hot-linking!

Florida holds some of the highest number of Realtors and real estate related professionals in the United States. Couple this with Multiple Listing Service organizations and you have a dizzying mess of relationships if you are a company dealing with Realtors and MLS's in Florida. Luckily, there exists one body to help streamline things a little: the Florida Association of Realtors.

They provide, in their own words "The tools you need, the advice you can count on." One key benefit is a readily available IDX strategy for web professionals like Real Estate Webmasters, or the layman. People wanting to integrate IDX content on their websites without programming can simply frame an easy to use… Read Full Post

This morning Real Estate Webmasters got an update from the Carolina Multiple Listings Service updating us on the new rules regarding the display of virtual tours in their IDX's. In the past, they had banned the display of virtual tours until they could resolve the issue of not displaying the URL of the host of the virtual tour. Their resolution is as follows:

SECTION 17.1.23: VIRTUAL TOURS: An IDX Participant’s Web site may contain links to virtual tours included in the IDX Database. The virtual tour link text may not display the actual virtual tour URL, the link must open a new browser window (target=_blank), and the domain address displayed in that window must be the same as the domain address of the IDX Participant’s Web site.

Virtual tour URLs are…