Morgan Carey's Blog: MLS and IDX

Most of our members know, that creating a custom website takes a lot of time, creativity, and tallent. But oftentimes they are surprised, shocked, amazed etc when I tell them that a truly high end custom website wtih all the other custom goodies (custom IDX, custom blog, quick searches, featured listings modules and the like ) can take a project into the 200-300 hour range in combined design / programming time. Are you serious! Indeed I am :)

So I came up with an idea to take the members on a behind the scenes look at exactly what it takes to go truly custom - you ready?

My idea:

To create a brand new custom design with all the bells and whistles from scratch and do it all publically - Right here in this blog post.

I am the customer (So I am in your…

As many of you know, REW IDX is a true "custom" platform. What this means is that our customers can have us make custom changes to our CORE system in any way they can think of with only 1 real limitation, that limitation being we cannot violate the rules of the MLS board (Our changes must pass compliance).

One of the most common questions asked of me is "What is the difference from just sticking with CORE (Out of the BOX) REW IDX vs customization. Below I am going to provide an example of just one small element (The layout of a listing in the search results) which I have personally worked on the customization for to provide an example of the difference between CORE and going very custom. (Hopefull customers will get an appreciation for why these things…

For those of you who are MRIS members and were following the thread regarding prohibitive pricing from MRIS - we have some good news. MRIS has decided to adjust their pricing model for data so that agents can now enjoy more choice when it comes to their IDX Vendors - most importantly, you will now be able to take advantage of REW's built in search engine friendly IDX.

Here is how the new pricing breaks down:

For agents: (Brokers please see broker pricing tba)

$1000 per year annual developer fee (regardless of how many agents use the IDX)
Yearly data fees (These are based on the number of subscribers and is a fee charged by MRIS)

• 1-25 Agents $5000 USD per year
• 26-100 Agents $10,000 USD per year
• 101-199 Agents $15,000 USD per…
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  Posted: 4 months ago, Comments: 4, Average Rating: Views: 487

As many of you noticed we launched the new REW design V 2.something and have all sorts of new sections - one of the more prominent ones is the new MLS board search - which allows users to search all of the MLS boards that Real Estate Webmasters services in terms of providing custom IDX solutions.

Now Reed has been workign hard populating the thing, and we aren't even close to done - but I had never actually sat down and counted, so I did - and wow I was quite surprised! So far I count that we have entered and currently service no less than 77 different IDX feeds covering even more MLS boards.

Here is what poor Reed has had to compile so far: Lots more to come ABOR
ARMLS
BAR
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Real Estate Webmasters is proud to announce we have completed the paperwork and are awaiting activation of our enterprise level Google mapping API.

We are now able to provide much more timely and complete Google geo-coding, without the limitations of the Google free API. We can also enjoy enterprise level telephone and email support from Google staff, and implementation assistance for any and all existing and new Google mapping technology.

What does this mean for REW customers?

• Faster and more complete geo-coding of very large custom IDX applications
• Reduced programming bills: With access to Google staff, we are able to reduce billable time on implementation, research, and testing / workarounds for complex Google Map mashups — we can go…

I thought I would outline our custom IDX process, as well as some limitations with data feeds, in the hopes to clarify some misconceptions and also hopefully address some points of frustration for certain IDX users.

Lets start at the beginning, the IDX feed

When a new customer signs up to have Real Estate Webmasters develop a custom IDX for them, the first thing we must do is gain access to the raw data feed provided by their MLS board. We are happy to educate and assist clients in accessing this raw data feed, but in the end, it is not REW that makes application for the feed, it is the broker.

The usual process:

I tell you if I had a dollar for every time some sleazy company tried to spam our real estate community with their self promotional crap, I would not need to offer any fee for service development, I could just retire.

Who is the newest spammer? Xoompad IDX

They post "Revolutionary IDX Solution" as their tagline, and then go on to talk about how great their product is. First of all, this is spam and is NOT appreciated. In my opinion there is nothing revolutionary about xoom pad they are just copying quality IDX providers like REW. What is the most rediculous part though, is that they were trying to get away with posting their self promotional CRAP on a competitors website.

Our forum rules state no attempts at blatant self promotion - to date we have…

For those of you looking for CTAR MLS information this post should help.

Creating a custom CTARIDX, first you need a feed.

The person you need to speak to if you are looking to create a custom IDX via CTAR MLS is Jennifer Blalock, she is the information technologies manager. She can be reached at 760-9400 x 116 or via email at jen@charlestonrealtors.com

From the CTAR website:

Jennifer's duties consists of network administration and support of technical hardware and software. She also plans upgrades, supports and maintains software for the Association. Jennifer oversees administration for internet-based member services and administers changes to ctarMLS website. She serves as the liason for all technical and MLS vendors, as well as the MLS user groups