Online auction platform development case study at Hygge Software

NOODLZ: The Whole Agency Lifecycle in One Platform

Listing, marketing, private bidding, live auctions, valuation, leads and secure document exchange, built for an Irish agency network and now carrying real properties in production.

Noodlz property listing page with price, photo gallery and enquiry button

Ready to Build an Auction Website That Keeps Growing

A product that starts as an MVP and runs for years needs an architecture chosen for the second year. Hygge scopes that the way this one got built.

What the Live Auction Software Covers

What the estate agency software covers, from a draft listing to a completed transaction.

Full Listing Lifecycle

Draft to published to auction or private sale to closed, with rich filtering, mapping, and multi-language and multi-currency support built in.

Live Bidding Engine

Real-time bidding over WebSockets with auto-bid and Best and Final rounds, backed by Redis for pub/sub and caching so a busy auction stays responsive.

Private Verified Bidding

A separate invitation-based module where bidder identity is verified and approved before anyone can place a bid, which is what makes a private sale defensible.

Agency and CRM Tooling

Agent and agency management, lead generation and distribution, and sales dashboards, so the platform runs the business.

Valuation and Market Analytics

Interactive valuation tooling built on historical property data, giving agents a defensible number to bring to a seller.

Document Vault

Multi-party document sharing with role-based, selective access, for a transaction where several parties need different subsets of the same file set.

The Challenge

Agencies had no single place to list, market and manage properties alongside their leads. Auctions and private bidding were handled outside any system, with no structured way to verify who a bidder was. Valuation ran on instinct and spreadsheets, and transaction documents moved by email between parties who each needed a different slice of them, in a market with Irish and GDPR requirements attached.

The platform also had to support franchise-style licensing, where billing follows active listings per agency office.

Our Solution

Hygge built a service-oriented backend on NestJS with one PostgreSQL database per service and RabbitMQ carrying events between them, so a busy auction service does not slow down listing management. The bidding engine runs over Socket.IO with Redis behind it, supporting auto-bid and Best and Final rounds. Private bidding is a separate module with identity verification gating entry.

Scope has grown through a change-request process across more than sixty weekly sprints, with a backlog spanning thousands of tracked items across dozens of feature epics.

Results

What an agency network ran on before this auctioneer software, and what it runs on now.

1 platform

Replaces Auctions Run Outside Any System

1 vault

Replaces Contracts Moving Between Inboxes

Comparables

Replace Valuation Run on Instinct

2+ years

Of Continuous Delivery Since 2024

The Stack Behind the Auctioneer Software

Next.js

React

TypeScript

Redux Toolkit

NestJS

PostgreSQL

Socket.IO

Redis

RabbitMQ

Stripe

AWS

Sentry

Node.js

Services Involved

SaaS Development Web Application Development Backend, API & Database Software Architecture System Integration

The team displayed awesome skills in everything.
Dexter Whelan
Director
Verify on Clutch

Sixty-Plus Weekly Releases

Step 1 - Requirements and MVP Scope

A full requirements and SRS phase before building, settling what the first release had to carry across listing, auction and agency management.

Step 2 - Listing Lifecycle

A property from draft to published to sold, with the states and permissions an agency runs on built in from the first version.

Step 3 - Live Bidding Engine

WebSocket bidding where every participant sees the same state at the same moment, backed by Redis for pub/sub and caching.

Step 4 - Service-Oriented Backend

NestJS services with a database per service and RabbitMQ between them, so auction load and listing management scale independently.

Step 5 - Private Verified Bidding

Auto-bid and Best and Final rounds with verified participants, which is what makes a private sale defensible afterwards.

Step 6 - Agency and CRM Tooling

The daily workspace for agents: contacts, pipeline, viewings and the follow-up that turns an enquiry into an offer.

Step 7 - Valuation and Market Analytics

Comparable data and market views an agent can put in front of a seller and defend.

Step 8 - Document Vault

Contracts and identity documents held against the deal they belong to, with access limited to the party entitled to each one.

Step 9 - Subscription Billing

Per-office and per-seat billing following how agencies buy, so a growing chain adds branches without a new contract.

Step 10 - Production Pilot

As of mid-2026 the agency moved from staging into live, with work shifting to production hardening and live-data support.

Track Record

Company-wide numbers, built from every project Hygge has delivered since 2019.

7 years

in continuous production engineering and AI delivery since 2019

200 +

end-to-end projects shipped for clients since 2019

3

independent quality and security certifications

Where Estate Agency Software Fits by Industry

Industries that share the shape of the problem NOODLZ solved: a transaction that runs live in front of everyone bidding, a paper trail that has to hold up afterward, and a lifecycle that starts long before the sale.

All Hygge Industries

Real Estate & PropTech

Listing platforms, live auction bidding and computer vision that scores construction progress from site photos.

Explore the industry

LegalTech

Document-heavy products where a reference has to be exactly right, and an approximately correct citation is a wrong one.

Explore the industry

Retail & E-Commerce

Recommendation engines, retail media platforms and the billing accuracy that decides whether store partners stay.

Explore the industry

Media & Entertainment

Marketplaces, real-time video and collectibles platforms built for audiences who will leave at the first confusing screen.

Explore the industry

Solutions Built Into NOODLZ

NOODLZ covers the full agency lifecycle, and it runs on three Hygge products: the live auction software, the marketplace around it, and the vault holding what a sale produces.

All solutions

Property Management & Auction Platforms

Live bidding with every offer timestamped and visible, replacing auctions that ran in a room and were written up afterward. Comparables set the guide price before it opens.

Open the solution

1 platformReplaces auctions run outside any system
LiveEvery bid timestamped as it lands
ComparablesReplace a guide price set on instinct

Marketplace Development

Listings, viewings and offers from first contact to completion, with agents, vendors and buyers each seeing the part of the record that belongs to them.

Open the solution

1 lifecycleFrom listing through viewing to completion
3 rolesAgent, vendor and buyer on one record
2+ yearsOf continuous delivery since 2024

Customer & Partner Portal Development

Contracts, disclosures and identity checks held against the property they belong to, so the paper trail sits in one place when the sale closes.

Open the solution

1 vaultReplaces contracts moving between inboxes
Per assetEvery document attached to the property it covers
Audit trailWho opened what, and when

More Products Hygge Has Shipped

Projects that share the same shape of problem you meet when you build an auction website: a transaction running live in front of everyone bidding, and a record that has to survive the dispute afterwards.

All Hygge Case Studies

Healthcare Staffing

IntellicAIr

A two-sided nurse staffing marketplace built around a sealed bidding system written from scratch for how these facilities buy.

1 roundFills what sat open for 78 days
No nameOn a bid that used to hide a 40 % cut
1 inviteBrings a facility’s own agencies onboard

Read the case

Live Auction Software: Frequently Asked Questions

Why a service-oriented architecture?

Because auction traffic and everyday listing management have completely different load shapes. Separate services with their own databases and RabbitMQ between them mean a live auction under pressure does not slow down an agent editing a listing.

How does private bidding differ from the public auction?

Private bidding is invitation-based, and a bidder passes identity verification and approval before placing anything. It is a separate module, because the verification gate is the whole point of it.

What makes real-time bidding hard?

Everyone has to see the same state at the same moment, and auto-bid and Best and Final rounds add rules that fire under time pressure. WebSockets carry the updates and Redis handles pub/sub and caching, so the room stays consistent when it is busy.

How has the scope stayed under control across sixty sprints?

Through a structured change-request process. New work enters the backlog explicitly, which is what makes a multi-year project predictable.

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