Best way to setup IDX to my real estate website article image

Best way to setup IDX to my real estate website

Do you want to create an IDX real estate website? A real estate website requires specific features that are not normally available in ready-made websites, but don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

In this article, we will show what is the best way to setup IDX real estate website.

There are really 3 options for setting up an IDX to your real estate website:

  • Free IDX from your MLS vendor
  • You can setup IDX to your site for free
  • You can hire professionals for $79 to setup IDX to your site
Table Of Contents

How can I get free IDX from my MLS on my real estate website?

There are many MLS areas in the United States who offer a free or low-cost IDX solution that you can put in your website.

Pros:

  • Free IDX or cheap IDX for your website
  • Simple setup
  • Customer support and Tech support by your MLS board

These are usually free or cheap. They are great for brand-new agents or folks who only sell real estate as a part-time gig.

The free IDX from the MLS is usually lacking in lead capture and seo features.

If you are just starting in real estate and you have a total marketing budget of less than $500 this is a good option for you. You can get a website up and running with this for as little as $100.

Some are simple to setup since they just use an iframe which is really just a website-within-a-webpage.

Your customer support and tech support are provided by the folks at your MLS. If you have a great relationship with those people and they know you, this can be really wonderful because you don’t have to work with any new companies.

Cons:

  • Iframes are hard to handle on mobile devices and are terrible for SEO
  • Lead capture is usually non-existant or not very good
  • Feature-less - maps, text alerts, etc
  • Setup can take days if you don’t know how to do it. You may have to get into a really long queue for free product setup from your MLS.
  • Customer support and tech support is often lacking or weak. We have seen people who can’t get anyone from the MLS office to answer phone calls or emails for several business days.

Have you used the MLS service provided by your board of Realtors or Realtor association? Was it wonderful? Or was it a nightmare? Let us know how it worked for you. We want to share your experience with other real estate agents and brokers right here.

DIY IDX Setup to my website for free

The second option for connecting IDX to your real estate website is for you to do it your self.

If you have technical experience working with websites this might be a really fun week-end activity for you.

If you have never built a website before or you don't love learning how to do things from complicated technical manuals and watching YouTube videos, then you will probably want to move down to the next section.

What do I need to setup IDX myself to my own website?

You will want to be sure that you have used your website platform quite a bit. It doesn't matter if you use WordPress, SquareSpace, WIX, or even ShowIt, doing an IDX integration to a real estate website is really for advanced users.

We figure that it will take a normal person, who is pretty tech-y, about 5-10 hours to do an IDX integration. If you are someone who is always getting asked by other people to fix their computer or their website, you can probably do it in about half that time.

If you are someone has trouble changing the camera settings on your iPhone and you get confused when you upload property listings into your MLS, you will want to count on about 10-20 hours to do the most basic setup.

The way we see it is like this:

Between everyone on our team we have spent about 22 YEARS working full-time doing IDX integration to websites.

Say we work about 30 hours a week, that will be 22 years x 50 weeks per year x 30 hours per week. That comes out to about 33,000 hours that we have spent doing IDX on real estate sites.

We figure that about 5% - 10% of that time has been just watching videos or reading StackOverflow.com articles like this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18369410/how-to-add-javascript-code-into-existing-iframe-using-jquery

So that is about 1500 - 3300 hours for our whole team or about 400 - 800 hours per person of just traing on how to setup IDX and do IDX stuff for real estate sites.

How will I set IDX up on my site by myself?

You will want to just go to IHomeFinder.com or IDXBroker.com and start looking through the knowledgebase and watching YouTube.com videos about "how to setup IDX on my site?".

When you do this on your own, you learn a lot and you really have total control over all the settings and you will typically get some powerful features setup.

This is in exchange for you going out and selling real estate and making money, but if you are in slow time of year, installing IDX to your own site is a great way to really learn a lot about real estate and technology.

How can I hire someone to setup IDX like iHomefinder or IDX Broker to my website?

If you have a WIX, Showit, SquareSpace, Webflow, Duda, or even a WordPress real estate website, the best way to show real estate listings is to get IDX connected right to your website.

You do what you do best which is sell real estate, marketing to your leads, and let the pros do the heavy lifting on your site.

What if I have my own website and just want IDX connected to it?

We actually think there are some great website builders like WIX, Showit, SquareSpace, and others, that make it really easy for you to build your own website and we just setup the IDX to it.

WordPress has a couple of great page builder tools that are perfect for real estate sites. Elementor is one of the most popular. Beaver Builder is commonly used by some of our partners. These page builder tools make it easier for you to build your site just like you want.

Once you get the site built out, we can help with the IDX part of it.

If you are going to use iHomefinder, then just go HERE to signup and we will get that setup for you for just $79 one time.

You will have a monthly subscription to iHomefinder that makes it really affordable to have all the properties in your MLS on your website.

What is the best and fastest way to setup IDX Broker to my website?

If you are using IDX Broker for your website, then reach out to our partners at realtycandy.com and use our “IDXCOMPARE30” coupon code to get your IDX Broker setup to your site for just $79.

The good people at RealtyCandy will normally get your IDX Broker setup done within about 2 business days.

They include all of this with your IDX Broker setup:

  • RealtyCandy cool map search tools (These look a lot like what we install with iHomefinder ;) )
  • Search tool on your home page. They have 3-4 different designs you can choose from.
  • Seamless website integration to IDX Broker.
  • IDXAddons.com apps for IDX Broker. (We think this is the best thing you can get for any IDX Broker site.)
  • IDX.chat chat service that is built just for IDX Broker.