IDX listing attribution rules

IDX attribution rules answer a simple question — whose listing is this? — with a non-negotiable requirement: every listing you display from the shared feed must credit the brokerage that listed it, in a form consumers can actually read, alongside your board’s prescribed disclaimer and your own identification as the site’s registrant. The exact elements and wording are set by each board’s display rules, so the reference below is the shape of the obligation; your IDX agreement carries the letter of it. (General information, not legal advice.)

Three layers on every IDX page

Attribution is really three separate duties stacked. First, the per-listing credit: the listing brokerage’s name attached to each property from the feed — the point of an IDX website is displaying the whole market’s cooperative inventory, and the credit is the price of displaying inventory that isn’t yours. Second, the board layer: a disclaimer in the board’s prescribed wording, trademark-respectful use of the MLS® marks, and any freshness or last-updated stamp the rules require. Third, your own layer: you and your brokerage identified as the advertiser, which is your regulator’s requirement rather than the board’s — in Ontario, the RECO identification rules apply to the site around the feed.

Whose credit, exactly

The credit names the listing brokerage — the cooperating firm that holds the listing — never you by default, and never nobody. Whether the listing salesperson’s name must appear beside the firm is a board-policy detail that varies, as does required wording (the “courtesy of” phrasing many agents remember is one board convention, not a universal law). Two constants hold everywhere: the credit must be truthful to the feed data, and it must be presented so a consumer browsing the page encounters it — legible type, near the listing information, not styled into the background. Ambition to brand every card with your own identity is exactly the impulse the rules exist to check; how that plays out on multi-agent sites is covered in listing attribution on team sites.

Where attribution has to appear

Detail pages are the floor — everyone agrees the full listing view carries the credit and disclaimer. The live question is cards: search results, carousels, thumbnails. Boards differ, and the safe engineering assumption is that the credit belongs wherever the listing appears, because a rule scoped to “displays” rarely means “only the biggest display.” The same logic covers derived surfaces agents forget: map pop-ups, featured bands on a homepage, printed sheets, and social embeds generated from listing pages. If the feed put the listing there, the attribution rides along.

Statuses change what you may show at all

Attribution assumes the listing may be displayed in the first place, and that is its own rules matrix: active listings under IDX, solds and off-market classes under VOW terms behind registration, some statuses not at all — the map is in which listing statuses can I display. The two systems interact: a listing that moves from active to sold doesn’t just gain a gate, it can change which disclaimer set and display constraints govern it. A site that handles attribution perfectly but leaks restricted statuses is still out of compliance.

Attribution is feed data, so treat it as plumbing

The credit on a card is only as accurate as the pipeline behind it: the brokerage name arrives in the feed record, and a platform that hand-maintains those fields, or caches them stale, will eventually print the wrong firm under someone’s listing. That is why the practical standard for choosing a website platform is structural: attribution rendered automatically from feed truth on every surface, updated when the feed updates, with the board’s disclaimer set wired into the template rather than pasted into a footer once. BrokerFold builds attribution that way — per board, from ingest — because a rule that must hold on every listing, every day, is a systems property, not a design task you can remember to do.