At FMLS, one of our chief roles is to ensure your listing data is always available to your website, back office tools, and any 3rd party websites your brokerage may have elected to display your listing data. When it comes to this distribution of data, there are a lot of words, phrases and acronyms that are often thrown around, and rarely fully understood. It is our hope we can clarify a few of those things here, as well as better explain how listing data goes from our servers to the vendors who service your brokerage products!
A Few Key Words:
IDX: This is probably the most used acronym used when it comes to real estate data. IDX stands for Internet Data Exchange, and this simply means displaying listing data on a broker or agents public real estate website. Part of being an FMLS member is agreeing to share your listing data with other members, and that includes sharing listings for IDX displays. That allows all FMLS members to have a website which can search 95+% of the current FMLS active listing inventory!
VOW: VOW is an acronym for Virtual Office Website, and can be thought of as an expanded IDX website. When brokerages first began building their online presence, many MLS’s were restrictive on the data the brokers could display. In many cases, an MLS would not permit “Sold” listings to be displayed via an IDX website, so the VOW was created. A VOW site requires you to create a “brokerage” relationship with the website user, and once you do, you can then show them listings that would not have been permitted under the MLS’s IDX rules. However, these days the rules on IDX displays have greatly expanded the listings that are permitted to be displayed, and many brokers no longer need a VOW website. For instance, FMLS now permits “Sold” listings to be displayed back to 2012 on an IDX website, so the extra requirements of creating a VOW site to display these listings is no longer required.
RETS: Real Estate Transaction Standard, aka RETS, is an open source specification that is used as the primary means for the transfer of real estate data from the MLS to a 3rd party.
RESO: The Real Estate Standards Organization is a not for profit organization that is focused on standardizing real estate data across MLS’s, which allows for the more efficient transmission of data across multiple platforms, as well as fosters an environment more conducive to innovation. RESO membership is made up of MLS’s, brokers and technology vendors, all working to make the transmission of real estate data more seamless.
Listing Syndication: Listing Syndication is the distribution of listing information to selected popular consumer search website portals. While it sounds very similar to IDX, the one big difference is these sites are not MLS member brokerage sites.
Your Data Options
At FMLS, our goal is to try and facilitate any legitimate use of the listing data that your brokerage may need. With that in mind, we also feel we have a fiduciary duty to our members to be as protective of this data as possible, to ensure it is not misused. Also, agent access to any 3rd party products which utilize FMLS listing data is contingent on the approval of the principle broker.
FMLS Marketplace: FMLS Marketplace is our online data access platform to streamline the data licensing and approval process. 3rd party vendors create a Marketplace account and upload their products for approval. Once approved, those products will be available to FMLS members for “subscription” on FMLS.com. Products range from IDX, CRM, CMA, and other back office systems, to the ability for brokers to “Opt Out” the syndication of their listings to 3rd parties such as Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, Homes.com, and Apartments.com.
For more information on how to use FMLS Marketplace, click here.
If you do not see the product or vendor you are wishing to use in Marketplace, simply have your vendor navigate to FMLS.com, and follow the links to create a vendor account with us!