What data is in a VOW feed?

A VOW feed carries the layer of the MLS that IDX leaves out: what properties actually sold and leased for, the listings that expired, terminated, or were withdrawn without selling, and the listing history that turns a single price into a story. IDX licenses the storefront — active listings for anonymous public display. VOW licenses the record — and requires a registration gate in front of it. Here is what that extra layer contains, field by field, and what it still doesn’t.

The two feeds, side by side

Two structural notes on that table. On TRREB the IDX slice is materially smaller than what the VOW feed carries even for actives — so a VOW-equipped site can show a fuller market picture on both sides of the gate. And every row in the right-hand column is conditional: the licence exists only inside the VOW framework of registration, click-wrap terms, and password expiry, enforced server-side.

The sold and leased layer

Closed transaction prices are the headline — the single most-demanded dataset in Canadian real estate, and the reason VOW agreements exist. The feed delivers closed sale and lease records so a registered visitor can see what comparable properties actually traded for, not just what sellers hoped. Alongside the closes come the failures, which are quietly as valuable: expired and terminated listings show what didn’t sell and at what ask, which is exactly the context a serious buyer or seller conversation needs. How all of this may be displayed in Ontario — and the litigation history that made it displayable at all — is covered in Ontario’s sold data rules.

History: the field that changes conversations

Beyond individual records, VOW data links them: the same property’s past listings, price movements, and relist cycles. That history is what lets a site answer “what’s the story on this house?” — listed twice, terminated once, price cut twice — rather than just “what’s the ask today?” It’s the difference between a search tool and an advice tool, and it’s the layer that keeps registered visitors returning instead of treating your site as a one-time lookup.

What a VOW feed still doesn’t carry

Honest limits, because they matter operationally. Part of the feed is licensed for brokerage-internal purposes only and must never reach a consumer-facing page, signed-in or not — per-field licensing is real, varies by board, and is the platform’s job to enforce automatically. Depth is bounded: default history reaches back years, not decades, with archives a separate arrangement. And a VOW feed is still one board’s record — it won’t fill in a neighbouring board’s territory or substitute for a second data agreement. The comparison with what the public feed carries — and why most Ontario practices should run both — is drawn fully in IDX vs VOW.

What it takes to display this data

The feed is the easy half. The licence conditions are operational: registration before access, terms-of-use acceptance recorded, passwords that lapse on the board’s clock (TRREB’s is 90 days, renewable), audit trails that survive a board’s scrutiny, and per-field display rules applied on every render. On a TRREB VOW site that machinery runs as platform plumbing rather than agent homework — which is the correct division of labour. Your side of the bargain is the strategy: decide that the gated layer is your conversion mechanism, and let the sold-data wall turn anonymous traffic into named, registered leads.