As I set off on this information gathering adventure I continually encountered an acronym I wasn't really familiar with. IDX or Internet Data Exchange. Now, I'm no expert and I still don't know what all is possible with this IDX technology but I do know it's sexy. What I mean by that is I found all kinds of interactive maps where I could enter search parameters and like God placing the houses himself, there they appeared on the map. I could click, drag, pop-up and even zoom in from space and see the pool of my neighbor's house.
It all sounds pretty wonderful but I soon figured out what some of the shortcomings are. I first realized as I did a mock search of an area I'm very familiar with some listings were missing. When I say missing, I mean that I know they are for sale and have been for some time and yet the listings were not being mapped. Again, I'm no expert on IDX but my thinking is that with over 90,000 listings in the Atlanta area something has got to be filtered out.
My other proof of this idea was the speed in which I received the mapped results for what I had searched for. It was brutally slow (sometimes never responding) and although sexy when presented, many times slower than the standard FMLS search system. You know, the old school search. I figured that maybe it was just that particular web site so I searched and found other web sites in the Atlanta area using the same IDX technology. It was a common experience to incur a long wait to review results.
IDX is one of those things that looks so good that you want it to work and you'll want to ignore the reality of it's faults because it has so much potential. That's exactly where I found myself. I began to justify the expense and began making calls to vendors and asking questions about installation and on-going costs.
Then in a moment of sanity I decided that I should not be sucked in but investigate further. This probably had something to do with the installation costs and monthly service charges that come along with the integration. So, I went to the national level exploring examples and unfortunately reached the same conclusion about integrating IDX into my real estate web site.
Although I think it's one of the most engaging real estate marketing services I've seen on a real estate focused web site it's also one of the most frustrating in terms of speed. With the realization that some listings were missing I also wonder the quality. Maybe it's just the sheer volume of listings that are currently in databases that is hindering the performance and usefulness of IDX at this point. I'm not the expert, just a user observer.
I love the idea of IDX real estate interactive mapping and I still plan to implement it at some point. But for now I believe the better online search experience for searching real estate is the old school FMLS search.
I did get into google maps and figure out how to get that interactive real estate map I wanted on my site. It's limitations are that it can only display my listings as I have entered them and not every listing in the FMLS. Maybe that's not a bad thing and maybe the fact that a customer can use it and it's fast and works just the same as an IDX interactive real estate map in terms of features. I mean, if I can sell one of my own listings and not split the commission then I'm pretty happy. With the IDX mapping on my site I pay the installation, service fees and more than likely if it does help me make a sale then I'll be splitting that commission with some agent who probably did much of nothing to market the property. There I go justifying things again!
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