DDF Listing Photos Missing? Causes and Fixes

You open your site. Most homes look great. Then a few show an empty gallery or a gray box where the photo should be. Buyers notice that right away, and it makes you look bad. The good news is that you can find the cause by checking one MLS number at a time.

Why are photos missing on some DDF listings on my website?

Most of the time, the feed never sent photos for those homes. DDF is the listing feed that CREA (the Canadian Real Estate Association) runs for REALTOR.ca. If a home has no photo links in the feed, your site has nothing to show. The other common causes are a task that stopped updating and MLS image servers that are down for a while.

Here are the usual causes and where to fix each one:

What you see	Most likely cause	Where to fix it
One home has no photos, and REALTOR.ca has none either	The brokerage has not added photos yet	The listing agent or brokerage
Many homes show broken image boxes at once, but price and address still load	The MLS image servers are down for now	Usually nothing. Photos come back when the servers do
Old photos stay up after the agent changed them	The import task is not updating that home	The task’s hourly update switch, or a manual run
Many homes from one task stopped changing at all	The hourly update is not running	Your cron (the site’s timer)
Photos load on your site but not in a Facebook preview	Facebook cannot fetch the image	The Facebook fix below
The whole home is missing, not just its photos	The home is not in DDF at all	See Listings you expect are not being imported

How does DDF send listing photos to my website?

DDF sends a web link for each photo instead of the photo file. CREA made this change in 2020. It ended the old way of streaming images (a feed command called GetObject) on July 6, 2020. Since then, every photo comes as a link in three sizes.

CREA’s own help post lists the three links:

ThumbnailPhotoURL: a small, low-quality version
PhotoURL: a medium version
LargePhotoURL: a large, high-quality version

CREA says you can either store those links and show the photos straight from them, or download the images from the links. CREA calls storing and showing the links “the recommended approach for most DDF® clients.” CREA also warned sites that never changed: “If you don’t make any changes, your websites will not receive any photos from DDF®.”

Some older troubleshooting guides still tell you to test photos with GetObject links. CREA ended that method in 2020, so a failed test with one of those links may not tell you anything about your feed today.

How does MLS Import show DDF photos?

MLS Import does not copy photos to your server. It keeps the photo link from the feed and shows each photo straight from the MLS image server. This matches the approach CREA recommends. Your uploads folder and backups stay small, even with thousands of homes.

Here is what that means when photos go missing:

No half-done downloads. No photo files get downloaded, so a slow run or a full disk can’t leave a home with its details but only half its photos.
Each photo still has a media library entry. MLS Import creates a media library record for each photo. That record points at the image link on the MLS image source. No file sits on your server.
Photos update with the listing. Each hourly run writes price, status, description, photos and any other field you import.
Image server outages show as broken boxes. If the MLS image servers go down, the gallery shows broken image boxes. Price, address and other details still show. The next run brings in the photo links again.
An optional backup photo. MLS Import has an optional hybrid mode. It saves one featured image per listing on your server, so you still have a backup photo if the MLS image servers go down.

MLS Import can’t add photos the feed never sent. If CREA has no photos for a home, no plugin can show them.

Why do DDF photos carry a REALTOR.ca logo?

Every DDF photo has the REALTOR® trademark logo as a watermark. CREA adds it, so it arrives with the photo. You must keep that watermark in the gallery, in the pop-up photo viewer, and in any image editing you do. Never crop it out or cover it, even on homes you market hard.

How to fix missing photos on one DDF listing

Start with one home that is missing photos and write down its MLS number. Then work down this list. Most problems turn up in the first two steps.

Look it up on REALTOR.ca. Search the MLS number. If REALTOR.ca shows no photos either, the brokerage has not added them yet. Ask the listing agent. Your site will pick them up once they reach the feed.
Open the property in wp-admin. Scroll to the Mls Import History box. It lists what the last run wrote to that home, including the images it added. If the run added no images, the feed sent none.
Check that the task updates every hour. Open the import task that owns the home. Look for the Enable Auto Update every hour switch. A task with this switch off is imported once and never updated again. Turn it on so new photos come in. See How the hourly auto update works.
Run the task once by hand. If the photos changed in the feed but your site still shows the old ones, a manual run brings in the current links. See Running a manual import, and stopping one.
Check that updates are running at all. WordPress cron only fires when someone visits your site, so a quiet site can fall behind. A real server cron fixes that. See Checking that auto update is running, Cron not working: a checklist and Setting up a real server cron.
Check whether many homes broke at once. If lots of galleries show broken image boxes at the same time, and the text still loads fine, the MLS image servers are likely down. Wait for the next run before you change anything.

Pro Tip

Compare two homes from the same task: one with photos and one without. Open the Mls Import History box on both. If one run added images and the other added none, the problem is in the feed and your site is fine. For a deeper look, turn on logging. See Turning on logging and reading the log files.

Facebook’s crawler often can’t fetch images from the MLS image server. A crawler is the robot that builds the link preview. The photo is fine on your page. Only the preview fails. The image host may block robots it does not know, or refuse requests that come from another site.

Here is the fix:

Set a featured image from your own media library on the homes you market. Then Facebook fetches it from your own domain.
Open Facebook’s Sharing Debugger, paste the property link, click Debug, then Scrape Again. Facebook keeps the first preview it found until you do this.
Check that image again later. The import can replace a featured image you set by hand when it rebuilds the gallery.

The full steps are in Facebook shows the wrong image or no image.

Frequently asked questions about missing DDF photos

Will downloading every DDF photo to my server fix missing photos?

No. If the feed sends no photos for a home, there is nothing to download. Downloading also makes your site heavier and adds a new way to fail, because a run can stop halfway. MLS Import shows photos from the MLS image server instead. CREA calls that the recommended approach for most DDF sites.

Do I need to delete my listings and import them again?

No. Start with one MLS number and the steps above. Make sure the task’s hourly update switch is on. Then a home whose photos changed in the feed picks up the new photos on the next run of its task. A manual run of the task does it right away.

Why does a whole DDF home not show up on my site?

The home is likely not in DDF at all. Each brokerage chooses whether to put its listings in DDF. One data vendor estimates DDF has about 60 to 65% of active listings across Canada. Saskatchewan and Quebec are not in the feed. DDF also carries active listings only, with no sold homes. See Listings you expect are not being imported.

Can I pick a different photo as the main one?

Yes. Set the featured image yourself on that property in wp-admin. Keep an eye on it, because the import can replace a featured image you set by hand when it rebuilds the gallery. Check your top listings again after their photos change in the feed.

Can I remove the REALTOR.ca logo from DDF photos?

No. Every DDF photo carries the REALTOR® trademark watermark, and it must stay whole in the gallery, the pop-up photo viewer and any image editing. Leave it alone to stay on the right side of CREA’s rules.

Who do I contact when the photos are missing in the feed itself?

The listing brokerage first, since it adds the photos. If REALTOR.ca shows photos but your feed does not, contact CREA’s DDF support. If REALTOR.ca and the feed both have photos but your site does not, open a support ticket from your MLSImport account. Send the MLS number and your import log, and we will help you find where the photos stopped.

Have you fixed missing DDF photos a different way? Share what worked for you in the comments so other agents can try it too.

Photos missing on some DDF listings: why it happens and how to fix it