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The one-word generic domain name Property.com has been sold to Foreclosure.com. Although the price hasn’t been disclosed, I’m sure it’s well into the seven-figure range. Knowing the seller, Rick Schwartz, I can tell that he wouldn’t let any of his top domains go for much less. Rick bought the domain in 2005 for $750,000, which many believed to be above value at that time. By the way, he also owns Properties.com, but the plural version hasn’t been part of the deal, as it looks.

Rick posted the following on his blog a few minutes ago:

Foreclosure.com Founder, President and CEO, Brad Geisen, announced today that he has reached an agreement with “Domain King” Rick Schwartz to acquire the domain name “Property.com,” paving the way for his entry into a new market.

With Property.com Geisen intends to create a one-of-a-kind — and convenient — one-stop online real estate marketplace that is easy-to-use and navigate. The Web site will serve as an easy-accessible national real estate classified that is going to be free to all visitors, providing sellers, buyers and investors with a whole new concept of marketing and finding homes on the Web.

According to Geisen, the acquisition of Property.com will allow him to focus his efforts on a different and potentially much larger segment of the real estate market. In fact, in Geisen’s opinion, the niche foreclosure market, which is Foreclosure.com’s market, represents just 2 percent of all available real estate inventory.

“I’m going after the 98 percent of the real estate market outside of the foreclosure business.” said Geisen. “For the past several years, I’ve built and run one of, if not ‘the,’ most successful Internet foreclosure businesses, but the business was always exclusively distressed real estate. I’ve achieved in Foreclosure.com what I set out to accomplish and I am ready for a new challenge in a different market. I intend to shift my focus on developing my new ideas that will revolutionize how homes should be listed, viewed and purchased. I’ve developed the critical skills which I intend to apply to this new market,” said Geisen.

Property.com will include all listing types, including those indexed the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), creating a database that could surpass more than 15 million homes, but not including distressed properties, which will remain the business of Foreclosure.com. The best part is that it will be totally free to search for potential buyers and visitors, and sellers will be able to upload and edit their own personal listings at no charge.
It’s a wide-open model that Geisen knows will create an invaluable resource for just about anyone interested in real estate.

“I’m raising the stakes and pushing all my chips to the center of the table,” said Geisen. “Foreclosure.com and my related companies have been leaders in their spaces for nearly a decade. I’ve seen what’s been wrong with the way things were done and I’ve developed the methods to fix them. I have the knowledge and resources to take this to a whole new level … and that’s what I plan to do.”

Geisen revealed the new Property.com will be unveiled sometime in 2009. The specific terms of the deal to acquire Property.com were not disclosed. However, Geisen indicated that the value of the deal is one of the largest URL purchases to date.
That’s a deal that has the seller Rick Schwartz – who is known as the “Domain King” — smiling from ear-to-ear. He purchased Property.com for $750,000 in 2005 and was recently introduced to Geisen through Kevin Leto of BigTicketDomains.com about a possible re-sale.

“My job is to acquire prime, industry specific domain names with large volumes of natural type in traffic and eventually develop them to their fullest potential by partnering with leading companies in their respective fields which I have been doing for more than a decade,” said Schwartz,” “Early on I saw the value in Property.com; however, I never had the resources to develop it so it could reach its maximum potential. Brad Geisen has the vision to truly get the most of Property.com for the benefit of so many people in every corner of the United States. I’m thrilled to be a part of this exciting new project with Brad.”

Stay tuned for frequent updates and milestones for the new Property.com. Feel free to visit the Web site in its current form. However, as mentioned earlier, the complete re-launch will not be official until sometime in 2009.

http://www.prunderground.com/00237/record-11-million-usd-paid-for-three-word-domain/

This press release claims that the three-word domain GamblingForumOnline.com was sold for $1.1 million in stock and cash. Now, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but this doesn’t sound very legit to me.

First, who would ever pay $1.1M for such a domain name? Second, the domain was registered in June 2007. Third, there are lots of substitutes and probably even some comparable domains still available for registration. Fourth, the alleged buyer BestOCG.com doesn’t seem to have been in business for a long time, either. The domain BestOCG.com was registered in 2006 and, on top of that, the website sure doesn’t look like the site of a million-dollar business: It’s a mini-site full of casino affiliate links.

As always, press releases have to be taken with a grain of salt.

What are your thoughts on this sale?

The domain name DebtNews.com was sold on the new auction platform Bido yesterday, and it was the highest Bido sale to date with a winning bid of $10,628.

Congrats to the team of Bido.com on the successul auction!

Rick Schwartz, co-founder and organizer of the popular T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domain conferences, has recently made an announcement that there will be multiple live domain name auctions held at the upcoming TRAFFIC conference in New York City in September.

In the past, it has only been Moniker providing its auction services, but for the first time there will be some other auction houses selling domains in New York, too.

This is indeed, as Rick calls it, a “game changer”. Many domain sellers have complained about Moniker having unfavorable broker agreements, exclusivity periods that were too long (often longer than 100 days) and commissions that were too high. All this might be about to change, as other auction houses getting access to the exclusive TRAFFIC events will cause competition to go up, which in turn should be an incentive for Moniker to reconsider the terms of its aftermarket services.

From Rick’s blog:

As is stands now we believe there will be up to 5 different auction companies holding live domain auctions in New York City in September. Moniker will continue to be the “Premiere” auction at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. as they have been. As you might imagine, this was not an easy decision. Monte and his crew have done a great service to us all over the years. Just sometimes what is good for one company may not be in the best interest of an entire industry. So kudos to Moniker for doing what others would not do when none of us knew the outcome.

Last year the New York TRAFFIC show produced a record breaking $15M in auction sales. I believe that is more than all other live domain auctions at other shows combined for both 2007 and 2008!! We have the right location at the right time with the best domain audience. Including other auction houses will be effective, good for the growth of the industry, make things very exciting and open things up that will create lots of energy. Like I said, this is a game changer and we are all big winners. More info will be released soon.

Most of the domain auctions held this year haven’t been as much of a success as the auctions of 2007. I think that is in part because of the slowdown in the overall economy and because of the increase in energy prices and living expenses. Buyers have become more careful about spending their money in the right places.

The decision to feature more than one domain auction could keep buyers excited at the conference by offering higher diversity and more domains to choose from. Although this doesn’t guarantee successful domain auctions, innovation is always good and I hope this change will ultimately help the TRAFFIC conferences and the domain aftermarket to grow.

As reported by Dot Weekly and TheDomains.com, Tucows is still pulling their expired domains out of auctions at Afternic.

But Adam Gross and Pete Lamson from NameMedia (Afternic’s parent company) and Ken Schafer from Tucows have posted comments on TheDomains.com, explaining that there were technical issues that caused the domains to be removed from the auctions:

Adam from NameMedia here. As discussed, there were technical issues in Afternic’s implementation that occurred. The result was that Afternic was not updating the mutual inventory as frequently as it should have, so Afternic made names available for preorder that should not have been.

I guess that means we won’t be seeing any more of Tucows’ domains being pulled from Afternic’s platform in the future. Let’s see.

Continue reading:

http://www.thedomains.com/2008/07/11/tucows-still-pulling-their-own-domains-out-of-auctions/

http://www.dotweekly.com/2008/07/11/tucows-problem-still-is-not-fixed-at-afternic/