Understanding RETS vs. IDX

A guide for real estate agents and brokers

The deadline NAR has set for all local MLS's to convert from IDX to RETS is fast approaching. Many agents, brokers, and real estate website technology providers are scrambling to understand the changes and what they mean to them personally. This guide is intended to provide a layman's view of what's going on in the industry along with tips to ensure a smooth conversion from old technolgy to new technology.

Deadline for conversion to RETS

The deadline for all Multiple Listing Services to switch from and IDX platform to a RETS platform had originally been set by the National Association of Realtors for mid 2009, but that has been extended:

3. RETS deadline extended. Finally, the board extended the compliance deadline for MLS vendors to adopt the Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS) to Dec. 31, 2009.
Source: Realtor.org

Background of RETS

RETS was created as a way share data about real estate between various entities such as brokers, agents, MLS's, and home buyers searching for properties. While "Standard" is part of the name, it is somewhat of a misnomer, as it is not fully implemented in a unimorm manner across all MLS's.

The official organization spearheading the technological move to RETS has this to say about it:

The Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS) facilitates data transfer between partners in the real estate industry. Creating and improving RETS is a collaborative effort to simplify moving real estate information from system to system and simplify solution development efforts. As RETS usage matures and expands, MLS with geographic overlaps can create data-sharing policies that provide their members a single point of entry to search multiple MLS data sets.

The downside of IDX

The technology of IDX requires a large download of a data set such as MLS listing data and photos. This download for larger metropolitan areas can be quite large, and imposes a significant bandwidth problem and system administration overhead for all parties. Downloads are done by FTP, which is sometimes unreliable. Typically, an IDX website technology provider would do downloads of listing updates nightly and have computers process the data overnight for display on client websites the next day. Sometimes, depending on the download schedule and the deadline for submitting new listings from brokers, there could be a delay of 24 to 72 hours before updated listing information could be presented on websites using the IDX feed.

The benefits of RETS

RETS provides a more manageable way to interact with the data. Rather than downloading the whole MLS data set, RETS is designed to allow website technology vendors to query only the data they need, when they need it. This way, bandwidth is conserved, and updates to MLS listings get presented to website visitors much more quickly.

Is your IDX website provider ready for the switch?

Many IDX vendors are not up to date on this technology switch and will end up overloaded with transition work for thousands of clients who rely on their services. This could lead to a broken URLs and non-functioning websites for many users if an IDX provider is not able to scale the RETS transition for its clients quickly and seemlessly.

It is recommended that you talk to your website provider about the conversion and find out if they are ready, and what the RETS conversion process will entail for their company.

If you need to set up an MLS search website that will handle the RETS conversion seemlessly, please contact topsellersites.com.