CREA DDF WordPress

CREA’s DDF (Data Distribution Facility) is the national listing-distribution route: one application through CREA rather than a board-by-board agreement, a shared pool of listings contributed from across the country, and a mature ecosystem of WordPress plugins that can have listings rendering on your site within days. It is the fastest data path in Canadian real estate — and the thinnest. This page walks the route step by step, then prices it honestly: what the pool contains and omits, where the fees actually sit, and how it compares to the direct board feeds we run instead.

Step 1 — Create the feed at RealtorLink

DDF starts inside RealtorLink, CREA’s member portal. The DDF application walks you through a data-feed wizard: you choose a feed type — your own office’s listings, a franchisor pool, or the National Shared Pool, which is the one most agent sites want because it carries listings contributed by participating brokerages across Canada — then filter it by board, property type, geography, and price, and finally designate the destination that will consume it. That destination is the important word: the feed is issued to a technology provider (your plugin or service vendor), and since April 2021 CREA charges those providers tiered access fees even though the feed remains free to you as a member. Your approval is typically quick; DDF’s paperwork is the lightest in the industry, which is precisely its appeal.

Step 2 — Choose a plugin lineage

Two families of WordPress real estate plugins matter in Canada, and we describe both generically because products churn while the architectures do not. DDF-native plugins consume the feed above directly: they import listings into your WordPress database on a schedule and render them with shortcodes or theme templates. RESO-Web-API plugins speak the modern board-feed standard instead and treat DDF as one possible source among several. For a pure DDF build the first lineage is simpler; if you suspect you will want a direct board feed later, the second saves a rebuild. The questions to ask either vendor are the same: which data sources, what import cadence, and whether images are stored locally or hotlinked — board and CREA rules care about the details. The wider WordPress picture, including lead capture, is in IDX for WordPress.

Step 3 — Configure sync, and understand what you configured

Imports run on your site’s cron. Daily is the common default in plugin documentation we surveyed (2026-07); some implementations poll hourly. Two operational truths follow. First, freshness is bounded by that schedule — price changes and terminations wait for the next run. Second, the import is a real workload: thousands of listings and their photos flowing into your WordPress database and media library on shared hosting is the classic cause of the slow, stale sites this route is known for. Budget hosting accordingly, and monitor the cron — a silently failed import looks identical to a quiet market.

Step 4 — Display rules still apply

DDF is not a rules-free zone. CREA’s DDF policy binds how listings are displayed and attributed — the listing brokerage is credited, data is not modified or blended misleadingly, and CREA’s trademarks are used correctly. It is lighter than board IDX display policy, but an audit still has a checklist to fail. Read the current DDF Policy and Rules before launch; it is a short document and the only authority that matters.

What DDF gives you — and what it cannot

The honest ledger. DDF delivers national breadth, the industry’s easiest application, and a feed at no member cost. It cannot deliver three things that decide many Ontario sites. The pool is opt-in, so it is not the complete inventory of your board — in a market where a buyer expects every TRREB listing, gaps are visible. The field set is thinner than a board feed: enough for cards and detail pages, short of the room-by-room and history depth a direct feed carries. And there is no sold data, ever — solds live behind the VOW feed class, which is a board agreement and a compliance build of its own; the three-way decision is mapped in IDX vs VOW.

Our own position, stated plainly: BrokerFold does not consume DDF. We operate direct board feeds — TRREB’s RESO Web API today, synced every 15 minutes with photos mirrored to our own CDN — because feed depth and freshness are the product for the markets we serve. DDF is still the right answer for some sites: national-breadth brochure sites, teams outside our boards, or anyone for whom days-to-launch beats data depth. The full cost picture of running the WordPress route — hosting, licences, maintenance — is tabled in what a WordPress IDX website really costs, and the platform alternative is one application form away from any IDX website.