Real estate listings usually stop updating on an agency website for one of five reasons: the connection to the CRM has lost its credentials, the scheduled import job has stopped running, the CRM has changed a field the website relies on, a cache is serving old pages, or the website doesn’t map statuses like sold, leased or under offer correctly. Each one can be checked in a fairly logical order, and most are small fixes once the cause is found.
How does a listing get from the CRM to your website?
Most agency websites don’t hold listings themselves. The listing lives in your CRM, such as Rex, VaultRE, Agentbox or Box+Dice, and the website pulls a copy across. That copy might come from the CRM’s API, a feed file the CRM exports, or a plugin supplied by the CRM or a third party.
Typically, something on the website runs on a schedule, asks the CRM what has changed, then creates, updates or removes listing pages to match. Some setups receive a notification from the CRM when a listing changes instead of checking on a timer. Which approach is available depends on the CRM, your plan and what the original developer built, so it’s worth finding out which one you have before trying to fix it.
Is it every listing, or just some?
This one question narrows things down quickly.
- Nothing has updated since a certain date. Suspect credentials or a stopped import job.
- New listings appear, but changes to existing ones don’t. Suspect the update logic or caching.
- Listings update, but sold or leased properties never come down. Suspect status mapping.
- One field is wrong everywhere, such as price or inspection times. Suspect a field change on the CRM side.
- It’s right in the admin area but wrong on the public page. Suspect caching.
Write down a specific example: the property address, what the CRM says, what the website says, and when it last changed in the CRM. A developer can do far more with one concrete example than with “the listings are wrong”. Our guide on reporting a website bug has a template.
Common cause 1: expired or revoked credentials
The website talks to the CRM using an API key, a token or a user account. These can expire, be rotated, or stop working when the staff member whose login was used leaves the agency and their account is deactivated. When that happens, the import usually fails quietly and the website keeps showing the last copy it received.
Check whose account the integration uses, and move it to a dedicated integration user or key owned by the agency, if your CRM supports that. It is the same principle as in our article on who owns your website: anything critical should belong to the business, not a person.
Common cause 2: the import job has stopped
Scheduled imports rely on something to trigger them, usually a cron job on the server or, on WordPress, WP-Cron. WP-Cron only runs when someone visits the site, and some hosts disable or limit it. After a hosting move, a server upgrade or a PHP version change, the scheduled task may simply never run again.
Signs of this include an import log that stops on a particular date, or a “last synced” time in the plugin settings that never moves. The fix is usually to set up a real server-level schedule and add an alert so someone hears about it next time the import fails or takes too long.
Common cause 3: the CRM changed something
CRMs and portals update their systems. A field may be renamed, a new status added, an older API version retired, or the format of images or inspection times changed. Website integrations written against the old structure can break partly, so most listings look fine while one detail goes missing.
Check whether your CRM has published API changes or deprecation notices, and whether the plugin or integration you use has an update. If the integration was custom built, it may need a small change to handle the new structure. We won’t guess at a particular CRM’s API capabilities here, as they differ between products and plans and change over time. Check your provider’s current documentation, or ask their support team what is available on your account.
Common cause 4: caching
Agency websites often use page caching, a CDN such as Cloudflare, or both, to load fast. That’s good, but if the cache isn’t cleared when a listing changes, visitors see the old version until the cache expires. Sometimes the listing page updates but the search results, the home page carousel or the “recent sales” section doesn’t.
Try viewing the page in a private window, on mobile data, or with a query string added to the URL. If the fresh version appears, the data is right and the cache is the problem. The fix is to purge the right pages automatically after each import, rather than switching caching off, which would slow the site down.
Common cause 5: sold, leased and withdrawn status mapping
Every CRM has its own list of statuses: current, under offer, sold, leased, withdrawn, off market and so on. The website needs rules for each one. Should a sold property show on a “recently sold” page, with or without the price? Should a withdrawn listing vanish, or redirect somewhere useful? If the integration only knows about some statuses, the rest fall through the cracks.
Ask for a clear table of every status your CRM uses and what the website should do with each. Also check what happens to the old page’s URL. A sold listing that suddenly returns a 404 error throws away links people have shared, so a redirect to a similar search or the suburb page is often better.
A checklist for fixing the feed
- Collect two or three specific examples where the website and CRM disagree.
- Find out how the feed works: API, export file or plugin, and who supplied it.
- Check the integration’s credentials are still valid and owned by the agency.
- Check the import log or “last synced” time for when it stopped.
- Confirm the scheduled job actually runs, and add an alert for failures.
- Check for CRM or plugin updates and published API changes.
- Test whether caching is serving old pages, and purge on import.
- Review how each listing status is handled, including old URLs.
If you only do three things
Move the integration onto credentials the agency owns, make sure the import runs on a real schedule with an alert when it fails, and agree how every listing status should appear on the site. That covers most stuck-feed problems, and the alert means you find out before a vendor does. Our real estate page covers the other work we do for agencies.
Diagnosing and fixing a listings feed is usually a defined job in our API integrations work, or a bug fix when the cause is a single fault. From $600. Most integrations land between $600 and $3,500.
