Project Overview

The customer intends to build a professional real estate auction website named doordealsnow.com focused on secure, authentic bidding and post-auction offline deal settlement.

Key objectives of the platform include:

  • Allowing users to bid on real estate properties via online auctions
  • Placing a configurable hold amount on the bidder’s payment method to ensure genuine participation with Authorize.net payment gateway.
  • Automatically hold and debit the auction fee to the winning bidder’s card at auction completion
  • Releasing held amounts for non-winning bidders
  • Completing the remaining transaction offline, outside the platform

The solution must be reliable, scalable, and suitable for real estate–specific auction workflows.

Customer Requirement

1. Hold & Debit of Auction Fee with Authorize.net payment gateway

To ensure only serious buyers participate, a fixed amount is held on the bidder’s card when they place their first bid. Once the auction ends, all non-winning bidders get their full amount released, while the winning bidder is charged only the auction fee. The remaining property payment is then completed offline.

Use Case:

Precondition:

  • Auction is active
  • Fixed Hold amount and auction fee are configured by admin

Main Flow:

  1. A bidder places their first bid on a real estate auction listing.
  2. The system places a fixed hold amount on the bidder’s credit card to validate serious participation.
  3. Multiple bidders continue placing bids until the auction reaches its end time.
  4. When the auction ends, the system identifies the winning bidder.
  5. The system releases the held amount for all non-winning bidders.
  6. For the winning bidder, the system charges only the auction fee from the held amount and releases the remaining balance.
  7. The buyer completes the remaining property transaction offline.

Postcondition:

  • Auction fee is successfully collected from the winner
  • No non-winning bidder is charged
  • Auction is closed with a confirmed winner

This flow ensures authentic bidding and reduces fake bids.

2. Real Estate Custom Fields

The system must allow real estate–specific information to be displayed clearly on each auction listing. This includes property details such as property type, number of rooms and bedrooms, plot or built-up area, location, parking availability, and other relevant attributes. These details should be manageable by the admin and visible to bidders on the auction product page to help them make informed bidding decisions.

 

Technical Approach

  • Approach 1: Develop requirements using the Ultimate Auction Pro Plugin (Woocommerce based plugin)

Ultimate Auction Pro Plugin is a WooCommerce-supported WordPress auction plugin suitable for building real estate auction websites while leveraging WooCommerce for payments, user accounts, and order management. This approach is recommended for projects where auctions are a core requirement but WooCommerce compatibility and gateway flexibility are essential.

The plugin works with most WordPress themes, providing greater design flexibility while delivering a stable, scalable auction system integrated into the WooCommerce ecosystem.

  • Development
  •  Add configurations for Auction fee and hold amount
  • Effort : 3 hours
  • Effort: 30 hours
  • Add new custom fields for Real Estate
        • For this requirement, we will not use REES WooCommerce (Real Estate) Plugin but we will use Advanced Custom Fields plugin to add custom fields that is required by you. We think free version of ACF plugin should do the job but if required you will have to purchase ACF Pro and we will do the integration to add custom fields.
  • Effort: 2 hours
        • Why we will not use REES WooCommerce (Real Estate) Plugin 
          • The REES WooCommerce plugin primarily appears to be used for adding real estate–specific fields such as property type (sale/rent), size (sqft), land area, rooms, and similar attributes. Functionally, it achieves this by registering a custom WooCommerce product type (e.g., Real Estate Product).Our Ultimate Auction Pro Plugin also relies on a custom WooCommerce product type (Auction Product). WooCommerce allows only one product type per product, which means both plugins cannot be used together on the same product. For this reason, the REES plugin is not compatible when auctions are required.If your requirement for REES is limited to managing real estate–specific fields only, the recommended approach is to replicate those fields using ACF (Advanced Custom Fields). This avoids product type conflicts and allows full compatibility with our auction plugin.
  • Advantages of Approach 1
  • Plugin already has the Automatic Hold feature with Stripe & Braintree.
      • The plugin already has the “Buyer’s Premium” feature which you are calling as “Auction Fees”. Since the basic feature is there, we will just have to implement the “Automatic Hold” settings inside it.
  • Ajax-Based Bidding Architecture
  1. Faster bid processing
  2. Better real-time bidding performance
  • Robust Auction Expiration via CRON Jobs
  • No dependency on page visits to trigger auction expiry
  1. Key Features that would benefit your website
    • Native support for offline deal settlement
    • Bidder hold mechanism to ensure authentic bidding
    • Configurable auction fee
    • Automated email notifications (bid placed, outbid, auction won/lost)
    • Optional SMS / WhatsApp notifications for critical auction events
    • Admin-level control over auction lifecycle 
    • Future-ready architecture for scaling and enhancements

  • Approach 2: Develop requirements using the Ultimate Auction Pro Plugin

Auction fee, credit card hold, and full Authorize.Net authorization/capture/void workflows are not available by default and require complete custom development, including fee configuration, bidder-level authorization, partial capture, and transaction release at auction completion.

  • Development
  • Robust Auction Expiration Logic with CRON Jobs
  • Effort: 42 hours
  • Add logic for Hold/Release auction fee with bidding/expiration
  • Effort: 15 hours
  • Add configurations for Auction fee and hold amount
  • Effort: 5 hours
  • Effort: 27 hours
  • Advantages
      • Can be integrated into an existing WordPress theme
      • No dependency on WooCommerce
  • Disadvantages
  • The features needed for your website like, automatic hold of auction fees, offline dealing with expiration emails has to be developed from scratch whereas in “Approach 1”, we have to extend those features based on your need. This scratch development will excessively increase the development effort, thus increasing the cost. 

Our Recommendation

  • We recommend “Approach 1” due to the following reasons:
    • Less development cost
    • Robust auction logic & additional features.

Deliverables

  • Finalized auction setup based on the selected approach
  • Authorize.Net integration with auction fee hold, release, and debit logic
  • Real estate–specific auction fields and admin controls
  • Documentation for admin usage and auction management

 

Effort

  • Effort for Approach 1
      • Development Effort = 35 hours
  • Effort for Approach 2
    • Development Effort = 92 hours

Effort Snapshot 

 

Effort Snapshot for Approach 1

 

    1. Add configurations for Auction fee and hold amount 3 hours
    2. Auction fee integration with Authorize.net 30 hours
    3. Add new custom fields for Real Estate 2 hours

 

Effort Snapshot for Approach 2

 

    1. Robust Auction Expiration Logic with CRON Jobs 42 hours
    2. Add logic for Hold/Release auction fee with bidding/expiration 15 hours
  3. Add configurations for Auction fee and hold amount 5 hours
4. Auction fee integration with  Authorize.net 27 hours

 

Commercials

  1. Project Cost

 

  • Total Cost
    • Approach 1: 35 hours x USD 45/hour = USD 1575
    • Approach 2: 89 hours x USD 45/hour = USD 4000

  • Payment Mode: 

  1. Payment Schedule (for Approach 1)

Milestone Amount (in USD) Estimated Delivery Date
Advance Payment  1575 28th January 2026
Project Start 9th Feb
Project End 18th Feb
Total Amount $1575

 

Notes:

  • Important: Based on our development pipeline, we have allocated above dates. Please note that these dates are available as of today and will change based on when the payment is made and our availability at that time.