How do real estate listing feeds work?

As we explained in an earlier post, with real estate listings, the property listing data starts with the MLS. All of your property data is entered into the MLS by the listing broker, agent, or administrator, along with photos, and possibly some .pdf attachments, like seller’s disclosures.

Once published it becomes active and available to all agents that access the MLS. Keep in mind that only licensed real estate agents who are members of the MLS have access to your listing. The general public can not access the MLS direct, so they must work with an agent to receive access to view “limited” data. Some sensitive data, such as agents commission, or showing contact info are never allowed to be viewed publicly.

After it’s live on the MLS the listing data is made available to third party real estate websites like Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com. These third party websites are setup with the MLS to “pull” data feeds, and they update several times a day to keep the listing data fresh. So when you change your listing price for example, it should update on most websites the same day.