Virtual Real Estate market is booming!

The real estate market may be facing a real tough time these days, but the market for virtual real estate properties, the domain names is flourishing with people making heavy investments in acquiring prized premium domains.

According to DN Journal, domain sales worth $38,029,543 were reported In the first quarter of 2008, which is a 78% increase over the $21,253,105 in domain sales reported for the first quarter of 2007! The average sale is reported to be with average sale at $10,103 and the total number of reported sales was 3,764.

Amazing… I would say

The largest sale reported was that of the $10 million sale of Fund.com during the first quarter of the year! Other prominent sales included $2.6 million for Pizza.com and $1.7 million for DataRecovery.com

I am thrilled with this all. Seems like I am in the right business after all

Bond.com up for auction at Sedo!

A premium domain name, Bond.com has been put up for auction at leading domain name marketplace Sedo.com, for a reserve price of $1million.

Considering the immense hype surrounding the latest of the Bond movies, the interest of the fans in the Bond franchise, and the recent opening of the Ian Fleming exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, the domain name is likely to prove to be too hot and fetch a record price.

This is going to be worth watching out for, my friends!

Casino Royale was the best Bond movie if you ask me and the James Bond is one of my favorite movie series and I am sure that this domain is gonna be bought by a fan and for an astronomical sum! An excellent investment opportunity, more like a jackpot in a casino, it will be for whoever wins the domain auction

Pizza.com sells for $2.6 million!

The owner of the domain pizza.com is reported to have accepted an offer from to an anonymous bidder of $2.6m for the domain name pursuant to a week-long online auction. The domain was originally registered in 1994 for just $20 annual fees!

The sale is expected to be finalized within next few days.

Ooooooh man, I wish I was into buying domain names when the world wide web was just taking off in the early 1990s. What a return on investment! What a business! Domaining…

Ramp.com sold on eBay for 25k USD!

Premium domain name www.ramp.com sold for US $25,211 tonight!

The domain, Ramp.com was owned by Ramp Corporation which is being liquidated in bankruptcy (U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York case 05-140006).

The transaction will be completed through the debtor’s law firm Snow Becker Krauss in New York (www.sbklaw.com).  The law firm will hold the payment in escrow until a bill of sale is executed and the domain is transferred to the new owner (eBay ID - discountramps).

If you ask me, the sale was a hurried one and the domain could have fetched much more, at least One Million USD, had the law firm made it a longer auction and publicized it a little as well. What do you say, guys?

Fund.com sold for cool $10m!

A New York, USA, based company, Fund.com Inc. (earlier known as Meade Technologies Inc.), has bought the rights to the domain fund.com for reportedly almost $10 million in an all-cash transaction! Another world record of sorts!

The deal was brokered by Clek Media Inc. and the sale of the domain FUND.COM was actually for US$9,999,950.

It is yet another big dollars domain acquisition to make people and take notice of the excitement that surrounds domaining and the profit that the domain has fetched its original registrant.

Such transactions, though few and far between, keep the hopes of us small-time domainers alive! Though I do not have any single word .com premium domain, yet I have a few that my domaining sense tells me will be worth a couple of hundred thousands down the line and till then, I am holding them

Domain name disputes on the rise!

Domain disputes are on the rise! What else could you expect when the domaining industry is such a huge money spinner while being a low investment business!

Unscrupulous yet highly intelligent cybersquatters pick up premiuim domains related to any event or celebrities/businesses as soon as they get a whiff of something new and exciting comping up. 

Sample this:

The National Arbitration Forum, an international provider of alternative dispute resolution services, administered a total of 1,805 domain name disputes in 2007, up from 1,658 disputes in 2006. The National Arbitration Forum has been approved as a domain name dispute resolution program provider by the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) since 1999.

The National Arbitration Forum reports at the end of 2007:

• UDRP domain names with common extensions like .com, .net, and .org accounted for 1,775 filings.
• usDRP domain names with the .us extension accounted for 30 filings.
• Of the 1,805 filings, Panelists heard 1,391 cases; parties worked together to settle many of the rest.
• There were 9,916 total domain name complaints filed since 1999.
• Of those filings, Panelists heard 8,006 cases; the parties settled many of the rest.

- PR-USA

I wish the practice of cybesquatting just disappears overnight. What a better place this world would be!

Hmmm… wishful thinking!