Last updated: August 19, 2026
How to handle listings from different MLS regions comes down to one rule: our MLS Import plugin connects one WordPress install to one approved MLS board over the RESO Web API. Inside that single connection you can run as many import tasks as you need.
Each task filters on property type, status, city, county, ZIP, price range, agent ID, agency ID, or office ID, so one board’s inventory splits across as many task sets as the site plan calls for.
A second MLS board is a different matter. That one is a product limit, not a setting: a brokerage that needs two approved feeds runs a separate WordPress install, or a separate site setup, for the second board.
That limit is not permanent. Support for multiple MLS connections on one install is work in progress. It has not shipped yet, so everything below describes what the plugin does today.
Which leaves the question this article spends most of its length on: if the data lives in two installs, what does the public see, and what does NAR’s policy let you combine?
Key Takeaways
- MLS Import links one WordPress install to one approved MLS board; a second board needs a second install.
- One connection runs multiple import tasks, filtered by type, status, city, county, ZIP, price, agent, or office.
- On our reading of RESO’s field pages, Data Dictionary 2.0 standardizes field names; local values and board rules still vary.
- NAR Policy 7.58 permits co-mingling two MLSs’ listings when you hold participatory rights in each.
How to handle listings from different MLS regions: one connection per install
Start with the boundary: everything else in a two-board build sits on top of it. Our MLS Import plugin supports one MLS connection per site or plugin setup. Inside that connection, you create as many import tasks as the site needs. If your brokerage holds participatory rights in two boards and both feeds must stay live, the clean model is a separate WordPress install or site setup for the second board.
That’s a limit, and it deserves naming as one. Plan around it early and it costs one extra setup. Find it in week three, after promising the partners one blended admin screen, and it costs a rebuild.
Multi-board brokerages aren’t an edge case. RESO’s own MLS FAQ, pulled 2026-08-19, counts 489 MLS systems in the United States as of July 2026, plus more than 30 in Canada.
Two installs mean two credential sets, two dashboards, two cron schedules, and two of everything to patch.
If you’re still weighing a direct feed against an IDX vendor, settle that first. Everything below assumes the access route is decided.
How does a brokerage show two boards to the public?
Running two installs is a back-end fact. Your buyers should never notice it. Two patterns work:
- Two separate site setups, publicly reachable and cross-linked, each carrying its own board’s attribution.
- One blended public search layer in front of both installs, so a visitor searches once across both regions.
Pattern two is a template decision, not something the MLS connection controls. MLS Import’s job stops at the pipeline: connect, filter, import, update, remove.
The legal ground is explicit. NAR’s Policy Statement 7.58 states that an MLS participant “may co-mingle the listings of other brokers received in an IDX feed with listings available from other MLS IDX feeds, provided all such displays are consistent with the IDX rules, and the MLS participant… holds participatory rights in those MLSs” (adopted 11/14, pulled 2026-08-19).
That does not contradict the one-connection-per-install architecture: NAR describes who may combine listings, not how many feeds one piece of software holds open. Individual MLSs may require that listings from another MLS “display the source from which each such listing was obtained,” which Step 5 covers.
The implementation sequence
Step 1: Get credentials approved separately for each board
Each board approves its own credentials on its own timeline. Two boards, two credential sets, one per install. Ask for RESO Web API access by name.
Check your board in RESO’s certification registry, whose own chart data (pulled 2026-08-19) counts 314 Certified Current, 77 Passed Current, 7 Certified Legacy, and 132 Uncertified. Passed Current is not “no Web API”: RESO defines it as a system that passed technical testing whose organization has not yet accepted those results for publication as certified. The RESO Web API connection details come from that approval.
Step 2: Split one board’s inventory into import tasks, not connections
Once the first feed is live, the instinct is to add a second connection for the next region. That’s not the move: one connection, many tasks.
Each import task filters on property type, status, city, county, ZIP, price range, agent ID, agency ID, or office ID, so one board’s inventory splits into whatever task set your plan needs.
Step 3: Normalize the fields to the RESO Data Dictionary
Map every import to the Data Dictionary’s field names, not to your first board’s labels. DD 2.0 is the current version for RESO certification, approved October 23, 2023 (dd.reso.org, pulled 2026-08-19).
The targets are StandardStatus for listing state, PropertyType and PropertySubType for classification, and the Media resource for photos.
Step 4: Normalize the taxonomies before the first import
Field normalization gets the data in. Taxonomy normalization makes it searchable. Your theme keeps its own property-type categories, and both boards’ values must land in the same ones or your search filters split into near-duplicates.
RESO’s Data Dictionary wiki records 99% usage adoption for PropertyType and 95% for PropertySubType (pulled 2026-08-19). High, and still not the same as two boards populating them identically.
Step 5: Import and display each board’s required attribution
Two clauses of NAR’s Policy Statement 7.58 govern this. An IDX display “must clearly identify the name of the brokerage firm under which they operate in a readily visible color and typeface.” A clause amended 11/21 adds the listing firm plus its “email or phone number… not smaller than the median used in the display of listing data.”
On a blended page, label which board each listing came from; some boards require it. See our notes on MLS display rules, attribution, and internet flags.
Step 6: Set a refresh schedule each board’s rules allow
Set each install’s schedule to the stricter of the two rules that apply. NAR sets the floor: the IDX download “must be refreshed… no less frequently than every twelve (12) hours” (Policy Statement 7.58, amended 5/17).
Some boards cap the other end: Contra Costa Association of REALTORS states authorized vendors “may pull new listing data up to six times a day” (ccartoday.com, pulled 2026-08-19). Six is a ceiling, not a goal.
Step 7: Stagger the schedules so two import tasks never overlap
Firing two large import jobs in the same hour on one shared host is the failure that costs a weekend. WordPress’s Plugin Handbook says WP-Cron “is only triggered on page load,” and PHP’s manual lists a default max_execution_time of 30 seconds.
So a big job can get cut mid-run, and the front end shows half-updated listings or a stalled queue. Stagger the installs by hours, then define DISABLE_WP_CRON in wp-config.php and add a system cron entry. More on avoiding overlapping import tasks.
📌 Pro Tip: check max_execution_time on your host first; no stagger saves a job that dies at 30 seconds.
Step 8: Monitor each feed separately and alert per feed
A stalled feed on one board is invisible from the other install’s admin, so alert per feed. The statuses MLS Import treats as off-market (Closed, Deleted, Expired, Withdrawn) can trigger removal, so a listing that should have dropped and did not is your first signal.
If a board’s API goes offline, the site can keep the last synced listings and retry next sync, so a dead feed can sit unnoticed. Related: fix outdated listings on a WordPress real estate site.
Worked example: the same three fields across two boards
“Different MLS regions use different field names” is a common misconception. But once both boards are RESO Data Dictionary certified, it’s wrong: standardizing those names is the point of certification. What varies is the values inside them, plus board rules outside the Dictionary. That reading is ours, from RESO’s field pages.
Table 1: status and property type. RESO field names are real and cited; “Board A” and “Board B” are illustrative, not real board values.
| RESO Data Dictionary field | “Board A” (illustrative) | “Board B” (illustrative) | What the site displays |
|---|---|---|---|
| StandardStatus | Active | Active | Active |
| MlsStatus (open enumeration) | “ACT” | “Active – Show” | mapped to StandardStatus = Active |
| PropertyType | Residential | Residential | Residential |
| PropertySubType | Single Family Residence | “SFR” | normalized to Single Family Residence |
RESO defines StandardStatus as “the status of the listing as it reflects the state of the contract between the listing agent and seller.” MlsStatus sits beside it by design, documented as “an open enumeration… Providers may use local values.” That is why normalization exists.
Table 2: photos. Three real boards, three different published rules, each cited to its own page.
| Board | Photo rule | Source |
|---|---|---|
| MLS Now (Ohio) | Maximum 50 photos per listing | support.mlsnow.com, updated March 13, 2026 |
| OneKey MLS (New York) | At least one exterior photo within 24 hours (most listings); photo deletion restricted once inactive | support.onekeymls.com, dated June 3, 2026 |
| Realcomp II Ltd (Michigan) | Pending and sold listings restricted to the primary photo only | realcomp.com IDX rules, Section 18.10 |
Three boards, three different rules on photo count and timing. Read each board’s own rulebook.
What changes from board to board
Opt-in and opt-out participation models
NAR’s model policy makes IDX inclusion the default. MLSs “may not exclude any listings… except those listings for which a seller has affirmatively directed that their listing or their property address not appear on the Internet.”
The listing broker’s side starts from a similar default: consent “may be presumed unless a listing broker affirmatively notifies the MLS that the listing broker refuses to permit display.”
The practical question usually isn’t whether a board “lets you in,” but whether a seller opted a listing out. Presumed consent is a common default, not a universal rule.
Which fields you actually receive
A standardized field name is not a promise that the field is populated. RESO’s Data Dictionary wiki records StandardStatus at 94% usage adoption across 344 organizations (pulled 2026-08-19).
Go a level deeper and the spread widens. RESO’s Data Dictionary wiki puts lookup-value adoption inside StandardStatus at 94% for Active and 23% for Coming Soon (pulled 2026-08-19). Before you build a filter or a badge on any single value, check what that board’s feed actually sends.
Photo and media limits
Photo rules are set per board. MLS Now (Ohio) caps a listing at 50 photos (support.mlsnow.com, March 13, 2026). OneKey MLS (New York) sets a minimum instead: most listings need one front exterior photograph within 24 hours of entry, and photos “may not be deleted” once a listing is no longer Active, with narrow status exceptions (support.onekeymls.com, June 3, 2026). Realcomp II Ltd (Michigan) allows only the primary photo on pending and sold listings (Section 18.10, realcomp.com IDX rules).
Build the gallery to degrade to one image; on a Realcomp feed that’s sometimes all you get.
Refresh timing
Three independently published rulebooks state the same floor in nearly identical words. NAR: refreshed “no less frequently than every twelve (12) hours.” CVR MLS, Section 11.2.5: “at least once every twelve (12) hours.” Realcomp, Section 18.2.5: “at least once every 12 hours. (Revised 2014).”
The ceiling is a separate, local number: CCAR’s six pulls a day. A floor is a minimum you must meet. A ceiling is a maximum you must not exceed, never a target.
Local display rules
NAR’s attribution baseline is the brokerage name plus the listing firm’s email or phone number. Boards add their own layer on top. Realcomp requires that, absent a link through to a detail view, “the Listing Office Name and Originating MLS must be displayed in the summary display for every listing” (Section 18.3.3, realcomp.com IDX rules).
On a two-board site, “Originating MLS” stops being boilerplate and starts being load-bearing.
What MLS access itself costs, board by board, is in understanding MLS access costs. The product limit is unchanged: one approved board per WordPress install, so a second board means a second install.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many MLS connections can one WordPress site have?
One. MLS Import supports a single approved MLS connection per WordPress install. Multiple import tasks run inside that connection, filtered by city, price, or office. A second MLS board needs a second install, not a second feed on the same site.
How do I set up IDX search to cover multiple regions for a team or brokers?
For regions inside one board, create a filtered import task per region on one install. For regions on a second board, run a second install with its own credentials. MLS Import handles the pipeline; one blended search across both is a theme-side decision.
Do different MLS boards use different field names?
On our reading of RESO’s published field pages, no. StandardStatus, PropertyType, PropertySubType, and the Media resource are Data Dictionary names. What differs is the local values inside them, plus board rules such as photo caps; MLS Import maps every board to the same Data Dictionary targets.
What does MLS Import cost for a brokerage on two MLS boards?
MLS Import is $49 per month or $504 per year as of August 2026. A brokerage on two boards runs two separate installs: two site setups at $49 each, not one combined plan. Each install holds its own credentials and refresh schedule.
What happens if an MLS listing changes status or goes off the market?
The statuses MLS Import treats as off-market (Closed, Deleted, Expired, Withdrawn) can trigger removal from the WordPress site during the normal sync cycle. If a board’s API is briefly offline, the plugin can keep showing the last synced listings and retry on the next scheduled sync.
