How to get MLS® listings on your own website.
Showing live listings on your own site means getting DDF® access from CREA. It is a short process, it comes with your membership, and you only do it once. Here is exactly how it works — including the parts most people get wrong.
DDF® in one paragraph
The Data Distribution Facility is CREA's system for sending Canadian MLS® listing data to places other than REALTOR.ca — including a REALTOR®'s own website. You opt in, you get credentials, and your site can then pull listings, agent and office records, and open houses, and keep them current automatically. It is the legitimate route to live listings on your own domain, and it is the one thing a real estate website genuinely cannot fake.
Everything after this is the how.
Six steps, once.
Five of them are yours and take an afternoon at most. The last one is ours.
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Check you are eligible
DDF® is for CREA members in good standing. If you are a licensed REALTOR® paying board dues, you almost certainly qualify — your board can confirm in a sentence if you want to be sure before starting.
Access comes with membership rather than as a paid subscription. You opt in to it; you do not buy it.
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Sign in to your DDF® Dashboard
This is where opt-in and credentials both live, inside your CREA member area. If you have never opened it, that is normal — most REALTORS® have no reason to until they want listings on their own site.
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Choose which feed you want
Two options, and this is the decision that matters most. Most agents want the National Shared Pool, because a site showing only your own listings gives a buyer almost nothing to browse. Comparison below.
You can opt in to both. Changing later is not difficult, but choosing correctly now saves a round trip.
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Accept the agreement
Opting in means accepting a click-wrap agreement with REALTOR.ca Canada Inc. It is worth actually reading: it sets out how listing content may be displayed, and that you are responsible for the site that displays it. It also notes that personal information may be stored or processed outside Canada, and asks you to notify your own clients accordingly — which in practice means a line in your privacy policy.
It is governed by Ontario law and CREA can revise it without notice.
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Generate your API credentials
The dashboard issues a client ID and a client secret. Treat the secret like a password — it is the key to your feed.
CREA's rules say you may not share these with a technology provider or anyone else. Keep them yours.
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We connect it and confirm the first sync
You enter your credentials into your own site's settings. We verify the connection, confirm listings, agents, offices and open houses are all arriving, and check the required display elements are in place before anything goes public.
From there it looks after itself — new and changed listings arrive automatically, several times an hour.
CREA's dashboard changes from time to time, so this is written at the level that stays true. If a screen does not look like you expected, ask us — we have walked clients through it and it is quicker than guessing.
The one decision worth getting right.
This is the step people rush, and the one that decides whether the finished site is any use.
Member Feed
Your listings only
Only the listings belonging to you or your brokerage.
- Simplest possible setup
- Fine if your own inventory is large and always stocked
- A visitor sees nothing when you have no active listings
- Almost no pages for search engines to index
- Buyers leave to browse somewhere with more choice
National Shared Pool
Every opted-in listing, filterable
Listings from every REALTOR® who has opted in, which you can filter to your market.
- A site worth browsing from day one
- City and area pages with real inventory behind them
- Your own listings still appear, alongside the rest
- More display rules to satisfy — handled as part of your build
Both of our current REALTOR® sites run on the National Shared Pool. A site with four of your own listings on it is a business card; a site with your whole market on it is somewhere buyers come back to.
What the feed asks of you in return.
CREA sets conditions on displaying listing content, and the responsibility sits with you as the participant — not with your web developer. Every item below is handled as part of a PropertyConnector build, which is most of why the platform exists, but you should know what you are agreeing to rather than find out later.
A "Powered by REALTOR.ca" link on every listing
At a minimum size, linking to that exact listing on REALTOR.ca.
The listing brokerage named on each listing
Readable without a click. Not buried in a tab.
CREA watermarks left intact on photos
They cannot be cropped out or covered.
The trademark statement on every page
CREA's standard wording about the REALTOR® and MLS® marks.
Terms covering four required notices
Trademark ownership, CREA's accuracy disclaimer, who operates the site, and the copyright and anti-scraping notice.
Listings refreshed at least daily
Sold and withdrawn listings have to come down promptly.
Activity reported back to CREA
Listing views are logged to CREA's analytics service.
Reasonable protection against scraping
You are responsible for the site that displays the content.
Not an exhaustive list, and not legal advice — CREA's DDF® Policy and Rules is the authority, and it is revised periodically. We track it because our clients' access depends on it.
Your credentials stay yours.
CREA's rules are explicit that DDF® credentials may not be shared with a technology provider or anyone else. They are issued to you by CREA, and they live in your own site's settings — encrypted, and never shown again after you save them. Not even we can read your client secret back out, which is the point.
That is worth checking wherever you end up. If a provider wants your client secret held on their systems, or offers to sign up on your behalf, ask them how that squares with the rules you are the one bound by.
Your domain, your content, your leads and your feed credentials are all yours. That is a deliberate design decision, not a courtesy.
DDF® questions we get asked
Does DDF® cost anything?
The feed comes with your CREA membership rather than as a paid add-on — you opt in to it. What costs money is the website that displays it, which is what we build. Your board or CREA can confirm your own situation.
How long does it take?
The dashboard part is usually a single sitting. Where it stalls is the decision about which feed to take, and finding the dashboard in the first place. Once you have credentials we can be connected the same day.
Can you get DDF® access for me?
No, and be wary of anyone who says they can. The agreement is between you and REALTOR.ca Canada Inc., the credentials are issued to you, and CREA's rules say you may not hand them to a technology provider. What we do is tell you exactly what to click, then configure and verify everything once the feed is yours.
Do I have to give you my client secret?
You enter it into your own site's settings yourself. It is encrypted in your site's database and never displayed again once saved — not to us, not to anyone, not even back to you. It is never transmitted to McQueen Digital or any third party. If you ever need to change it, you get new credentials from CREA and paste them in.
Can my listings show up in Google?
Yes — the agreement expressly permits search engines to index listing pages, which is the whole basis of how a listing site gets found. That permission is why city and listing pages are worth building properly.
What happens if I stop paying CREA dues?
Access ends with membership, and the rules require local copies of listing content to be removed. Your site, your pages, your blog and your leads are unaffected — the listings simply stop arriving.
How many websites can one feed serve?
Ten. CREA's rules say a participant 'may not operate more than ten (10) Websites using the Listing Content' — so a single agent with a main site and a campaign site or two is nowhere near it. Worth confirming against the current Rules if you are planning something bigger, since CREA revises them periodically.
What can visitors filter by?
CREA's rules set out the filters a site is *allowed* to offer — location, price, rentals, property type, and property features — and then leave it to each participant to decide which of them to actually apply. On a PropertyConnector site that means location, price, beds and baths, building type, ownership, square footage, lot size, storeys, year built, how recently it was listed, and a keyword search for things like waterfront or a garage. We do not offer a rentals filter.
Is this the same as an IDX feed?
It is the Canadian equivalent. DDF® is CREA's own distribution facility for Canadian MLS® listings — different rules, different data, and the reason a platform built for it behaves better here than one adapted from elsewhere.
We are not CREA and this page is not official CREA guidance. It is what we have learned setting up real feeds for real REALTOR® sites. For anything binding, your board and CREA's own DDF® documentation are the authority.
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