Connecting your MLS to DealFlow
What the connection actually does, what it doesn't do, and exactly how to get it switched on — including who to call and what it costs.
What the connection does
DealFlow already matches your buyers to listings using public-web data, automatically, twice a day. That works, and it's included in every plan. But public-web data is scraped from portal pages: it lags the MLS by hours or days, and details like lot size, HOA, and exact square footage are often missing or wrong.
Connecting your MLS replaces that source with the real one. Here's the actual flow:
- You and your broker are licensed onto the feed Your MLS licences listing data to your brokerage, not to you personally. You and your managing broker sign a data licence that names DealFlow as the data consumer — that signature is what proves you're entitled to receive the data.
- We switch your feed on — there is nothing for you to paste On MLS Grid markets, including IRES, the access credential is issued once to DealFlow as the registered data consumer, not to each agent, and it stays on our servers. When your licence is approved, your feed starts. More on this below.
- DealFlow pulls new listings every hour It asks your MLS for the listings you're permitted to see, using the official RESO Web API — the industry-standard interface your MLS already publishes. Anything newly listed, price-changed, or gone under contract shows up within the hour, without you pressing anything.
- Every listing is scored against every active buyer Budget, beds, baths, square footage, lot size, HOA, must-haves, dealbreakers, and state. Anything that breaks a dealbreaker is discarded rather than shown.
- Each buyer's pool fills with only their matches You open a buyer and see the homes that actually fit them, ranked, with the reasons they scored the way they did. Nobody gets a wall of irrelevant listings.
The practical difference
Verified beds, baths, square footage, lot size, and HOA on every record instead of best-guess parsing. New listings within the hour instead of within a day or two. And your daily search limit stops applying to buyer matching entirely, because the listings come from your MLS rather than from our metered web-search service.
How much history you get
Two different things are kept, for two different reasons:
- Everything currently for sale — active, coming soon, under contract and pending. All of it, continuously refreshed.
- The last 6 months of closed sales, for comparables. Older sales roll off automatically as new ones arrive.
Six months is a deliberate figure, not a technical accident: it is the window Fannie Mae and most appraisers prefer for a comparable sale, and it keeps a CMA arguing from recent evidence rather than from a market that no longer exists. If you need to reach further back for an unusual property, pull those comps from your MLS directly and add them by hand.
Expired, withdrawn and cancelled listings are deliberately not kept at all. Your MLS's licence prohibits using its data to approach property owners, so DealFlow does not store the data that would make that possible.
What it is — and what it isn't
This trips people up, so it's worth being precise. An MLS data feed is not one single thing; there are several types, and they're licensed differently.
- This is a private, internal-use feed. The listing data comes into your CRM, for you, to match against your own buyers.
- It is not IDX. DealFlow does not publish MLS listings on a public website, and connecting your MLS will not put a search widget on your site.
- It is not a VOW. There's no consumer-facing portal where the public registers to browse listings.
- It is not a syndication feed. Nothing is republished, resold, or sent anywhere else.
Your MLS decides which feed type covers a private CRM. IRES has confirmed in writing that this use case is Back Office (BBO) — listing data pulled into an agent's private CRM for their own buyer matching, with no public display. Other MLSs classify it the same way in most cases, but the decision is always theirs, and it affects your fee, so we confirm it before you commit.
One consequence worth knowing: back-office feeds arrive as a single combined feed under NAR's "One Data Source" policy, and every record carries its own usage permissions. DealFlow reads those permissions on every listing and stores only what your licence actually covers — so the app can never show you a record your agreement doesn't reach.
Where the access credential lives
The credential that pulls MLS data can reach an entire licensed feed, so it is worth being precise about who holds it.
- On MLS Grid markets, including IRES, we hold it — not you. MLS Grid issues one credential per data licence agreement, to the registered data consumer. That is DealFlow. It is held on our servers, is never sent to your browser, and is never included in a backup or an export.
- Your own access is checked separately, on every pull. Because one credential reaches the whole licensed feed, the credential alone decides nothing. DealFlow verifies your entitlement each time: if your MLS membership lapses or your MLS Connect add-on ends, MLS data stops reaching your account even though the credential still exists.
- If your MLS issues you your own token — some RESO servers outside MLS Grid do — you can paste it into Settings → Listing feed instead. A token you paste yourself stays on that device, is never uploaded to our servers or included in your cloud backup, and is cleared when you sign out.
Either way, no MLS credential is left behind on a shared or borrowed computer, and nothing that could pull your MLS's entire database ever sits in your cloud backup.
Before you start
- An active MLS membership in good standing.
- Your managing broker's agreement to sign off. MLSs licence data to the brokerage, not to individual agents — your broker signs, every time, without exception.
- A conversation with us first. We complete vendor registration market by market. Contact us before you approach your MLS and we'll tell you exactly where we are with yours, so you don't open a request that can't be completed yet.
How to get connected
- Tell us which MLS you're on We'll confirm whether that market is ready, what feed type applies, and what the fees are before you commit to anything.
- Get your managing broker on board They'll be asked to approve a data licence. A quick heads-up now prevents the most common delay later — an approval email sitting unopened.
- We start the request Data feed requests are initiated by the software vendor, not the agent. We open it on our side; your MLS and your broker review it.
- You and your broker approve You'll get an email asking you to sign the data licence. Watch for it — this is where requests stall. Three signatures are needed in all: yours and your broker's, ours as the data consumer, and your MLS's. Your MLS has the final say and can decline. The usage rules attached to your feed apply to every listing you receive.
- We enable the feed on your account On MLS Grid markets there is no token for you to copy. The credential belongs to our data-consumer licence and stays on our servers; once your MLS approves, we switch MLS data on for your account.
- Check that it's flowing In DealFlow: Listings → Listing feed (or Settings → Listing feed). You'll see your MLS, your licence type, and when it last pulled; ⟳ Pull now fetches immediately if you'd rather not wait for the daily sync. If your MLS issues per-agent tokens instead of going through MLS Grid, this is also where you paste yours and press ⚡ Test connection — you'll get a real sample listing back if it worked, or a plain-English explanation if it didn't.
For IRES members specifically
IRES delivers its data through The MLS Grid. The values you'll use are:
Base URL https://api.mlsgrid.com/v2
MLS system name ires
Both are filled in for you when you pick IRES from the list. On IRES there is nothing further for you to enter — the access credential sits with our MLS Grid data-consumer licence, not with you.
What it costs
Your MLS charges its own fee for data access, and it varies by market and feed type. Every one of those fees is billed to us as the vendor, and reaches you as a single monthly add-on on your DealFlow invoice.
IRES members — the actual numbers
IRES publishes its data feed fee schedule, and for a Back Office feed it is:
$35 per agent, per month — the participant fee, charged for each agent using the feed
$8 per month — vendor fee
$150 one time — setup
The $35 is the part that scales with you: it is charged per individual agent, not per brokerage, so a five-agent team is five participant fees.
MLS Connect is $59 per agent, per month, on any plan. That covers the $35 IRES participant fee, our share of the vendor and setup charges, and the licence administration. There is no separate setup charge to you.
Three things we'll always do:
- Show you the exact amount before you're charged — no MLS fee ever appears on your invoice as a surprise.
- Start billing on activation, not on purchase. Licence approval takes days to weeks and can be declined by your broker or your MLS. You are not charged for MLS data until the day it actually starts flowing.
- Never bundle it into a plan price. The MLS fee is a real cost charged by your MLS, and it stays a visible, separate line — so you can drop the feed without changing your plan, or change your plan without touching the feed.
Your DealFlow plan is separate and unchanged. The MLS add-on works on any plan.
Availability. We are completing MLS Grid vendor registration market by market, starting with IRES. Until your market is live, MLS Connect can't be purchased — talk to us and we'll tell you exactly where your MLS stands rather than have you open a request that can't be finished.
If something doesn't work
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| Rejected the token | The credential is wrong, expired, or your licence doesn't cover this MLS. On IRES and other MLS Grid markets the credential is ours, so tell us and we'll sort it out. If you pasted your own token, re-copy it from your MLS's platform — it's easy to miss a character or pick up a trailing space. |
| Rejected the query | Usually the MLS system name is wrong for your market. Pick your MLS from the list rather than typing it, and clear any extra filter you've added. |
| Rate-limited | Too many requests too quickly. Wait a minute and pull again — normal daily use never hits this. |
| Connected, but 0 listings | The connection works; your filter is too narrow. Clear the extra filter and pull again. |
| Listings pulled, but no matches | Listings are sorted into the pools of buyers whose search is switched on. Turn on at least one buyer's search in the Searches tab, then pull again. |
If your MLS licence lapses
Buyer matching automatically falls back to public-web data, so your pipeline keeps working while you sort it out. You'll see a notice in the app rather than a silently empty buyer list.
Who to contact
On a different MLS? Most MLSs offer a RESO Web API feed and DealFlow speaks that standard, so there's a good chance yours works — get in touch and we'll check your market.
Not sure where your market stands?
Email me before you approach your MLS and I'll tell you exactly where vendor registration is — so you don't open a request that can't be finished yet.