Using a poor quality or cheap IDX and home search provider

Many agents and Realtors think of Internet Data Exchange (IDX) as adding home property search to their site. That’s close. In fact, IDX (also called Broker Reciprocity) is a set of guidelines from NAR that “gives MLS Participants the ability to authorize limited electronic display of their listings by other Participants”.

Your IDX solution is much more than that. It is not only access to the property listing data but more importantly, it is all of the consumer engagement tools on your site including:

• Property search (advanced or simple, what search criteria, etc.).
• Map search and polygon search (on both mobile and laptop)
• Call-to-action and lead generation tools
• CRM tools
• Automated emails and content to consumers with new and specific listing
• Social sign-in for consumers
• Native SEO friendly content
• And much more

As mentioned above, many older or less-powerful IDX solutions use iFrames or subdomains to add these tools to your site. We’ve also seen agents left without a working site by choosing a company that enters real estate to chase an opportunity and then shuts down after a few months or years, leaving agents with a broken website.

The fix:

Make sure you choose an IDX WordPress Plugin that

1. meets your needs as the backbone for your real estate website
2. is built by a company that is stable and growing and
3. has a support team that is available to answer your questions.

If you’re looking for a community of agents across the country to learn marketing tips and share what is working best for lead generation, Showcase IDX has an active group of incredible agents and brokers that you won’t find with any other provider.