Listings you expect are not being imported

Why does my real estate website show only my own listings?

Your website may show only your own homes because it has no wider IDX feed, the approved link that brings other agents’ listings to your site. Or the feed may work, but a page or filter shows only your listings. Check which case you have before you buy software.

How to show more than your own listings

Start with your feed rights, then check what your site pulls and what the search page shows. These are separate checks. A page cannot show homes that never reached your site, and a working feed can still sit behind a page set to show only your homes.

1. Ask your broker or MLS if your website may show other agents’ listings. Get the answer in writing. Start with how to connect your website to your MLS.
2. Ask your website team to check whether the feed includes those homes. Use one known MLS number as a test.
3. Check agent and office filters. In MLS Import, these can limit what gets pulled. Keep only the limits you need and your board allows. See which listings are imported.
4. After widening an MLS Import task, run a full import once (see cause 5 below).
5. Check the main search page. It may still have its own agent or office filter, even when more homes are stored on the site.
6. Keep a separate My Listings page if you want one. Test that page and the wider search with a known home from another firm.

Can MLS Import put other agents’ homes on my WordPress site?

Yes. MLS Import can pull other agents’ homes from the feed your MLS approves for your site. You or your broker get that approval. MLS Import then pulls the allowed homes into WordPress and checks for changes each hour. Your import filters and search page decide which homes buyers see.

MLS Import is our plugin. It works with WpResidence, Houzez, Real Homes, and WpEstate. Its Standalone mode adds listing pages and search to other WordPress themes. Check the requirements before you buy.

What does MLS Import cost, and how long does setup take?

MLS Import costs $49 a month or $504 a year, with a 30-day free trial. Your MLS may charge its own fees. Approval time varies by board. Once your feed is approved, your website team connects it, checks the fields, tests a small import, and sets up updates.

There is no fixed launch time for every site. Your MLS approval, hosting, and number of homes affect the work. Check current pricing before you start.

Does an agent’s website show every home for sale?

No. An agent’s website shows the homes its feed and page settings allow. A short list does not mean those are the only homes for sale. Some sellers keep their homes off public websites. Some homes belong to another MLS, the local service where agents share listings.

If you are buying a home, ask the agent: ‘Is this just your listings page, or can I search other agents’ homes here too?’ Send the agent any home you cannot find by its address or MLS number.

An import task that finds fewer listings than you expect, or none at all, is almost always the filters rather than a fault. Every filter you set is sent to the MLS as part of the query, and the MLS returns only listings that satisfy all of them at once.

Work down the causes below in order. The first three account for nearly every case.

Before you start

1. Both connection banners on MLS Import Settings are green. A red MLS banner is a different problem.
2. You have one real example: an MLS number that exists in the MLS and that you expect this task to import.

1. A filter value does not match the MLS wording

Filters are exact matches, not searches. Miami matches listings whose city is stored as Miami and nothing else. miami, Miami Beach and MIAMI are different values as far as the query is concerned.

Two rules govern how filters combine. Several values in one field are treated as any of these, so a city list of Miami and Coral Gables returns both. Different fields are treated as all of these, so a city of Miami with a property type of Residential Lease returns only listings that are both.

Take the listing you know should import, open it in your MLS, and read the values it actually holds for each field you filtered on. One mismatch anywhere in the set removes it from the results.

2. The internet display filters are set to yes

Internet Entire Listing Display and Internet Address display are the two fields sellers use to opt a listing out of internet publication. They behave differently from every other filter on the task.

1. Set to yes, the filter is added to the query and only listings the MLS marks as explicitly allowed come back.
2. Set to no, no filter is added at all. The field stops being part of the query and the MLS decides what to return under its own rules.

That asymmetry is what produces the empty result. If your MLS leaves the field blank rather than setting it to true, asking for the allowed ones excludes every listing, including the ones that are genuinely publishable. Set both to no and run the task again. If listings appear, this was the cause.

One provider is treated differently. On an RMLS feed the entire listing filter is never sent, so setting it makes no difference there.

3. The listing’s status is not one you selected

Status is a filter like any other, and MLS status wording varies. A task set to Active alone will not import a listing the MLS has moved to Active Under Contract, even though most people still think of it as on the market.

Open the listing in your MLS, read its exact status, and confirm that value is selected on the task.

4. The listing does not reach the API

MLSImport reads your feed through the MLS API and has no other route to the data. If your MLS excludes a listing before it answers, that listing cannot be imported and nothing on your site can change it.

Boards apply their own rules on top of the fields you can see, which is why a listing can be visible to you inside the MLS system and absent from the API. Nothing in the response says why. When the filters check out and a specific listing still never arrives, that question goes to your MLS or your API provider with the MLS number in hand.

Should my site show the same number of active listings as Zillow and my MLS search?

No. Your site, your MLS search and Zillow almost never show the exact same number, because each one counts from a different list. Your MLS search shows what members can see. Your site shows what your IDX feed is allowed to send for your filters. Zillow gets its listings through its own separate pipe.

Agents notice this fast. One wrote to us: “in zip Code 33480 Palm Beach shows 344 Active listings your plugin only shows 6”. A gap that big almost always has a reason you can find. Here is where each gap usually comes from:

Here is how to compare the numbers fairly:

1. Open your import task, click Update, and read the We found count. That is how many listings your MLS sends for those filters.
2. Run a search in your MLS with the same city, property type, price and status.
3. If your MLS search shows more, copy one MLS number that is in the search but not on your site.
4. Make a test import task with only one filter: ListingId set to that number. If We found says 0, your MLS is not sending that listing to your feed. If it says 1, a filter on your main task is leaving it out.
5. If your site holds fewer properties than We found, look for listings another task already claimed (see “If it does not work” below), a task capped at 10,000, or an import your server stopped. You can read stopped imports in Tools, then Scheduled Actions.

Use Zillow as a rough guide, not as the number to match. It is fed from a different pipe, so it can run higher or lower than your feed.

5. You are looking at the hourly sync rather than a full run

The hourly sync asks only for listings changed since the last run, which is what keeps it fast. A filter you widened this morning does not pull in the older listings it now matches until the task runs a full import.

After changing filters, run the task manually once and let it finish. From then on the sync keeps it current.

If it does not work

Listing on Zillow but not on your site? Here is how to tell an MLS release rule from a filter problem.

1. The count is right but properties are missing from the site. Another task claimed them first and they are on the site under a different task. Search by MLS number in the properties list before assuming they were never imported.
2. The task imports some cities and not others. The missing city is spelled differently in the feed, often with an abbreviation or a saint prefix written out.
3. Everything imports except new listings. The task is filtered on a listing ID or a narrow date driven field left over from testing.
4. Nothing imports and the run ends immediately. Check the field selection has been saved at least once. A task cannot write properties before the field mapping exists.

Frequently asked questions

Can you tell me why my MLS excluded a particular listing?

No. The API answers with the listings that match and gives no reason for the ones it leaves out, so a missing value and a deliberate exclusion look identical from our side. Your MLS or API provider can see both.

If I narrow a filter, are the properties it no longer matches removed?

Not by the import itself. They stop being updated by that task, and the daily reconciliation decides their fate from your status settings rather than from the filter change. Use the delete tool if you want them gone straight away.

Why does the same listing import for one task and not another?

Because each task sends its own filter set. A listing has to satisfy every filter on the task that is running, so a broad task can hold listings a narrow one will never see.

Does a large filter set slow the import down?

No. Filters are applied by the MLS before it answers, so a tighter filter usually means less data and a faster run. What slows an import is the number of listings returned and their photos.

Related

1. Controlling which listings are imported
2. Avoiding overlapping import tasks
3. Closed and off-market listings
4. How daily reconciliation works
5. Import History and the activity log

Send us the import task and one MLS number you expect it to import and we will read the query it builds.