How do I integrate RETs mls listings into my solution?
I'm doing a contract for a Real-Estate company and basically have to integrate a solution to list all MLS real estate listings on a page. There are other specs as well but they aren't an issue. I'm building with RoR (with pg) and deploying with AWS elastic beanstalk (EC2).
Initially I thought I was going to use a simple API endpoint which had some json data but this isn't available in the Real Estate industry. Instead I had to access the IDX solutions through which I have to use RETs, a database for MLS listings. However I'm so confused as to how I should integrate RETs and what it exactly is?
If there are any Devs with Real Estate experience, can you please help me understand how to integrate this?
I'm currently looking at alternatives like https://simplyrets.com/
Thanks in Advance.
Top comments (3)
Hi Ash, did you find a solution?
I did some work with RETS for my open source real estate website builder:
github.com/etewiah/property_web_bu...
Though I never got round to fully implementing it I could give you some pointers.
Hey Ed,
I plan to use simplyrets with the help of my client who is supposed to provide the brokerage credentials (rets credentials).
In the mean time I used a web scraper to generate my own data in csv format and then uploaded it into the rails app: github.com/ashToronto/realty-scrape.
If you find the scraper useful drop me a star, it gets images too.
I also created a few additional features i.e value my home, mortgage affordability calculator, etc.
The way my system works: Developer (me) creates catelogue of home data for search and uploads it periodically, admin creates add listings (can be imported via csv), when the user searches admins add listings are featured before catelogue. Everything results in lead generation (long story short).
I went through your open source and I liked the motivation. Wordpress seems to be dominant in real estate, however I found working with rails for this project an absolute blast, great dev experience. I think my only major issues were in the UI of the app because I tried using ajax for search queries but it causes unexpected behavior when we navigate back to the search, it did improve speed by at least 20%. I also dropped turbolinks with great reluctance. I think speed is something I'd love some advise on especially because my system at the moment uses the local db for querying.
I really wanted to focus on UI as well. I was thinking of adding a blog but I'm not too sure if it's worth it for real estate. Would love an opinion.
Once I make my repo public I'll be sure to drop a link in here.
Hi Ash,
Sorry I've only just now seen your reply - I assumed I'd get a notification when you replied but I never did.
The realty scraper repo you link to is no longer available. Will you put it back sometime?
I also created a real estate scraper a while back:
github.com/RealEstateWebTools/prop...
I'll give you a shout on linkedin, there might be ways we could collaborate.