IDX

IDX — Internet Data Exchange — is the arrangement that lets a brokerage display other brokerages’ active listings on its own website. Every participating member consents to having their listings advertised by fellow members, and in return every member gets a site that carries the board’s entire active inventory, not just their own signs. It is the reason a solo agent’s website can search the same market a national portal does.

How IDX works in Canada

The word is borrowed from the United States, but the machinery here is Canadian and board-by-board. There is no national IDX; each real estate board licenses display of its own inventory under its own agreement and its own display rules. TRREB runs its program through PropTx data agreements. The BC Lower Mainland boards run theirs under a different name entirely — MLS Reciprocity — with a logo requirement and disclaimer set that a generic “IDX tool” has never heard of. The constant across boards: the agreement is between the board, your brokerage, and a registered technology vendor, and the data covers active listings only.

What IDX means for your website

An IDX feed is what turns a brochure site into a search destination. Visitors can browse the full market on your domain instead of leaving for a portal, which is where saved searches, alerts, and registrations come from. It also imports obligations: listings must stay fresh on the board’s expected cadence, photos must serve from the vendor’s own infrastructure rather than hot-linking board servers, listing brokerages must be attributed, and a seller’s instruction to keep a property off the internet must be honoured. A compliant platform absorbs all of that; the mechanics are laid out in what is an IDX website.

Common confusions

IDX is not the MLS. The MLS is the cooperative database the board operates; IDX is one licence to display a slice of it. IDX is also not a VOW — the two are lanes of the same feed, public-active versus registered-off-market, and most serious agent sites run both. Finally, “IDX plugin” products built for American boards generally do not work on Canadian feeds: the agreements, field sets, and display rules differ enough that the plumbing has to be built for the board you actually belong to. If you are comparing options, start from IDX websites in Canada rather than a US feature list.