Am working with an agent in the Quad Cities (Iowa/ Illinois). Her broker (Ruhl & Ruhl Realtors) will NOT allow the agents to have their own IDX on their websites. The only option is for the agent to 'frame' the Ruhl and Ruhl IDX page or Realtor.com.

The broker farms out their internet leads to their agents (selectively, of course), for a 30% referral fee. Their local Quad City Realtor Association MLS DOES allow agent IDX sites, but the broker must sign off and she refuses.

Clearly it's a control issue - probably afraid that agents will compete with the broker for leads if they are allowed to have a website with an IDX feed that bypasses the broker.

This is a new agent, so she has absolutely no clout with the broker. She could go to a competing firm, likes this company and has just started to get her business off the ground and isn't really wanting to make a big switch so early in her career.


Any suggestions on how to get around this? I'm assuming this is all legal?

Suggestion -- Change companies!

If the broker is this controlling about IDX, then I assure you she's just as controlling about lots of other things.

our board has a similar arrangement via a third party provider. The service can only be had by way of brokerage agreement.

It's another income stream for the broker, but it can come at a cost. For the agent it's simply a matter of what their overall marketing plans are, and what value they percieve in their brokerage relationship.

So the broker wants their cut of the commission PLUS a 30% referral fee? That's robbery! Is he going to make you pay a fee to use their framed IDX on top of that?

My suggestion is to find a new brokerage - soon. If this is a new web site - if it is properly designed and SEO'd - it will take 9-15 months to get to the top of all of the organic search engine listings. If this company is a good place for new agents to gain knowledge then you can use this time to learn.

But once your site starts getting enough traffic for you to drive decent (not even significant) income, then quickly find a new brokerage that let's you have your own IDX.

Forcing you to use the broker IDX may or may not be ethical - you woould need to check with your local Association of Realtors, or maybe even the local MLS. But you might also open a can of worms that will cause you problems down the road - especially if this is a powerful brokerage.

All the boards around here require the broker to "allow" you to use an IDX solution on their personal website. But I've never met a broker that didn't sign the form without hesitation.

My suggest is to find a new Broker as quickly as possible. Obviously that Brokers idea is not to take care and support their agents, but to compete with them... and that's JUST NOT RIGHT! Make a rude gesture and head for the door!

Taking into account that your client doesn't want to change companies for whatever reason, I will offer a few ideas to help the agent capture her leads. Our local MLS doesn't allow individual agents to use their own IDX if the broker has it on their site, so we are in the same boat of having to frame it through no fault of our broker.
My broker got a completely new site in February and the set up now is such that the page I frame is identifiable as "mine" so the leads which come through it are also mine.
Before that, though, I had to do whatever I could to capture the leads rather than having them go through the broker's system. I tried a couple of different things with varying degrees of success.
1. Require registration to search. When visitors click on "Search" they are first taken to the registration form. You get lots of registrations this way, but many others will just go away mad.
2. Put a brief form in the left frame of the page which requires name and contact info and space to put MLS numbers for more info or showing requests. This will result in fewer leads, but they will be more serious and less insulted by the registration process.
Good luck,
CiCi