My (almost) weekly series “The Sales Roundup” aims to give you a little bit of an insight into why a selection of domain names sold for the prices that they did. As domain investors, we constantly see sales data but we don’t necessarily dive into the data to see why certain domains sell for the prices they do.
Learning why domains sell for certain prices can help to educate us in order to set better expectations for our own domains.
This week, I’m looking at a few sales that were charted by DNJournal between April 27th, and May 10th, 2020. Those names include ElectricCar.com, Bier.de, Estates.com, SensoryPath.com, and Corium.com.
ElectricCar.com – $180,000
Electric cars are big business, with the worldwide market size expected to rise five-fold between now and 2026 to give the electric car industry a worldwide valuation of $567 billion.
The term “electric car” is widely used, so in some ways, it isn’t a surprise to see an exact-match domain for a multi-billion dollar industry selling for a six-figure fee. Brand names such as Tesla dominate the industry, but the exact-match for a large industry can maintain a huge valuation, especially in this case when that industry is based around a product.
ElectricCar.com was brokered by Sedo’s Dave Evanson on behalf of QualityNames.com, a privately owned portfolio operated by Dhara Patel. According to the seller, the domain was sold after an inbound inquiry.
The buyer is currently unknown. As of writing, ElectricCar.com hosts a landing page with a simple contact form and no identifying information at all. The landing page is hosted at Wix, too, so there isn’t any information we can garner from that, either.
Bier.de – $160,920
Sedo was responsible for the second-largest domain sale on my list this week. The name in question is Bier.de. The .DE extension is the German extension, and “bier” is German for “beer”. That alone places some significant value on the domain, but for someone to pay $160,920 for the domain, it has to be an end-user.
The sale of Bier.de ranks in the top 20 .DE sales of all time, and is the second-largest .DE sale of the past five years, behind Kaffee.de. Interestingly, Sedo is responsible for 48 of the top 50 .DE domain sales from the past five years. Sedo is the marketplace of choice for .DE domains, perhaps because of their strong local presence in Germany.
On the surface, it looks as though very little has really changed since the domain name sale. Before the sale, the name was used as essentially a knowledgebase for German beer. That hasn’t changed, and in fact, the domain’s “About Us” page still says that the domain was registered by the owners in 1995!
WHOIS data for .DE domains is very limited, but I can see that the nameservers have changed, and on the site, the ownership details have been updated to “Bugmex,” an SEO company that’s seemingly based in Malta. This certainly classes as an end-user sale, but it’s yet to be determined why Bugmex acquired this name. Perhaps they see an opportunity to create something more from the name and being an SEO company, they’ll have the ability to harness the combined power of a top domain and search optimization.
Estates.com – $90,000
Estates.com is a domain that sold for $90,000 in a deal brokered by GritBrokerage, a brokerage company founded by Brian Harbin. GritBrokerage has been responsible for deals in the past such as the $3.5 million sale of Ice.com.
“Estates” is a word that can be applied to a handful of industries from real estate to personal law, or even cars. Of course, the singular “Estate” would likely achieve a much higher price, but Estates.com would be an attractive buy for buyers across many niches.
The domain was previously developed and in use by a British property management company, but it had been dormant for a couple of years before the name sold.
According to a DomainSherpa episode with Brian Harbin, the domain was put up for sale with an asking price of $90,000, and after the domain appeared once in GritBrokerage’s newsletter, the name sold for the full price.
In the DomainSherpa episode, Brian classed the buyer as an “end-user/investor” who was willing to pay a higher price than many domain investors may have done. The buyer, according to WHOIS, was RightChoice.com Ltd, a company that looks to be associated with DomainEmpire.com, which holds a portfolio of several thousand names. They sold the domain 77.com some years ago for a mid-seven-figure fee.
As of writing, Estates.com is under exclusive brokerage with Epik, and so it’s highly likely that this domain will sell for a higher price in the future.
Good price for ElectricCar.com. It’s one of those names that will skyrocket in value in the coming years. Tesla probably won’t pony up, but a competitor will. I would definitely buy ElectricCars.com ASAP to have a lock on the phrase.