Houzez – Real Estate WordPress Theme

Version 4.4.4 — 29 October 2026

• New Stripe bank payments. Accept SEPA Direct Debit, iDEAL, Bancontact, ACH and the other payment methods you have turned on in your Stripe Dashboard, alongside cards. Choose Stripe Dashboard settings in the new Theme Options → Membership → Stripe Settings → Payment Methods option, or keep Cards only (the default). Bank payments can take a few days to clear: buyers see a “payment is being processed” note, and the package or listing is activated when Stripe confirms the payment. If you choose Stripe Dashboard settings, add the checkout.session.async_payment_succeeded and checkout.session.async_payment_failed events to your Stripe webhook (Stripe Dashboard → Developers → Webhooks), otherwise bank payments will not activate packages and listings. Houzez shows a notice in wp-admin while your webhook is missing these events.
• New Stripe webhook signature check. New optional Webhook Signing Secret option under Stripe Settings . When it is set, requests to the Stripe Charge Page without a valid Stripe signature are rejected. Leave it empty to keep the current behaviour.
• New PayPal webhook payments. PayPal payments are now also completed by the PayPal webhook. A package or listing is activated even when the buyer closes the tab after paying, and a payment PayPal holds for review is activated once it clears (the buyer sees a “payment is being processed” note). Add the CHECKOUT.ORDER.APPROVED , PAYMENT.CAPTURE.COMPLETED and BILLING.SUBSCRIPTION.ACTIVATED events to your PayPal webhook, next to PAYMENT.SALE.COMPLETED , BILLING.SUBSCRIPTION.CANCELLED , BILLING.SUBSCRIPTION.SUSPENDED and BILLING.SUBSCRIPTION.EXPIRED , and enter its ID in Theme Options → Membership → Paypal Settings → Webhook ID. Houzez shows a notice in wp-admin when PayPal is live without a Webhook ID, or when the webhook is missing events.
• New PayPal renewal invoices. Each PayPal subscription renewal now creates a Recurring invoice, as Stripe renewals do.
• New Header image parallax switch. New Theme Options → Headers → Style → Header Image Parallax Effect option. Turn it off to keep the static image page header and the properties parallax template image centred, with no scroll effect. It is on by default.
• New Outdated Stripe code notice. Houzez now shows a notice in wp-admin naming any copy of Stripe code from an older Houzez version that your child theme or a plugin uses. Those copies make Stripe checkouts fail with the new Stripe library. Copy them again from this version and reapply your changes.
• Improved Faster listing pages. Listing card image galleries now load only the first photo with the page. The other photos load when a visitor hovers over, taps or swipes the card, so listing pages download far fewer images. The first photo is no longer swapped for a different file, so WebP images from LiteSpeed Cache and similar plugins stay in place.
• Improved Faster property lightbox. Property lightbox photos now load only when the lightbox opens, starting with the photo the visitor clicked and the photos next to it, and use responsive image sizes. Photos are still shown uncropped.
• Improved Lazy “+ more” photos. The hidden “+ more” gallery photos of the property top areas v6 and v7, the property gallery layouts and the luxury homes gallery now load lazily instead of with the page.
• Improved Stripe library 22.0.0. The bundled Stripe library is updated to version 22.0.0, and every Stripe request now uses one Stripe API version ( 2026-09-30.endive ), so Stripe works the same whatever your Stripe account’s default API version is. This fixes Stripe checkout on Stripe accounts created from 30 September 2026 and removes the curl_close() deprecation notices on PHP 8.5. Existing Stripe plans, prices and subscriptions keep renewing and cancelling as before.
• Improved Per-listing Stripe payments are now also recorded by the Stripe webhook, so a paid listing is still published or made featured when the buyer closes the tab before returning to your site.
• Improved Stripe payments now need PHP 7.4 or newer. On older PHP, Stripe is hidden from the payment page and admins see a notice asking for a PHP upgrade, instead of a PHP error.
• Improved When a package’s price, tax or billing period changes, new PayPal subscribers now pay the new price. Existing subscribers keep the price they signed up for.
• Improved PayPal checkout no longer asks buyers for a shipping address.
• Improved PayPal requests now check PayPal’s TLS certificate, and PayPal no longer causes curl_close() deprecation notices on PHP 8.5.
• Fixed On older Stripe accounts, a new Stripe subscription also created a renewal invoice and sent the recurring-payment email.
• Fixed The Stripe plan ID was not saved for new subscriptions on Stripe accounts created after August 2020.
• Fixed Reloading the Stripe success page after a per-listing payment, or Stripe resending its event, recorded the payment again, with a second invoice and emails.
• Fixed Malformed requests to the Stripe Charge Page caused a PHP fatal error. They are now rejected.
• Fixed After an update, every admin page could keep redirecting to the Plugins page when the redirect setting could not be saved, for example because of a database or object cache problem. Houzez now redirects once, and never from the Plugins or License page itself.
• Fixed Cancelling a PayPal subscription from the dashboard was sent without the reason PayPal requires, yet Houzez stopped tracking the subscription either way, so PayPal could keep charging the member. Houzez now forgets the subscription only after PayPal confirms the cancellation, and shows an error otherwise.
• Fixed A PayPal renewal could be recorded twice, and the first payment of a new PayPal subscription sent the recurring-payment email.
• Fixed When two buyers paid for listings with PayPal at about the same time, the first buyer’s approved payment could be left uncaptured.
• Fixed PayPal payments in Japanese yen, Hungarian forint and New Taiwan dollar failed.
• Fixed PayPal subscriptions rounded a fractional package tax down, for example charging 7% for 7.5%.
• Fixed When a PayPal checkout could not start, the browser opened the error text as a page. Buyers now return to the payment page with a message.
• Fixed A suspended PayPal subscription lost its link to the member, so payments after PayPal reactivated it were not recorded.
• Fixed An empty grey strip could appear at the bottom of the static image page header, mostly on mobile.
• Fixed In Membership mode, submitting a listing that was first saved as a draft did not send the new submission emails to the admin and the agent.
• Fixed The PayPal helper functions skipped TLS certificate checks, printed PayPal errors to visitors and reported a failed cancellation as successful.
• Fixed The address search on the wp-admin property edit screen failed with LegacyApiNotActivatedMapError on Google Cloud projects that only have Places API (New) , which is the only Places API new projects can enable. It now uses Places API (New), and still works with the older Places API.
• Fixed The Section Google Map widget did not use the Google Cloud Map ID from Theme Options, so the property marker did not show and the browser console showed “The map is initialized without a valid Map ID”.
• Improved The hidden gallery photos in the single property Elementor widgets (Property Images Gallery v1, v4 and v5, Section Top Area v1, v2, v6 and v7, and Section Block Gallery) now load lazily instead of with the page.

Earlier versions

• 4.4.3 (20 October 2026): 3 improved, 42 fixed
• 4.4.2 (7 October 2026): 1 improved, 9 fixed
• 4.4.1 (23 September 2026): 4 new, 4 fixed, 1 security