Risking It All, One Roll of the Dice
Domaining can be approached from many angles. You can pursue any number of strategies covering a wide range of risk levels. The “risk” can be a carefully calculated decision … or a wild, high-stakes roll of the dice with no guarantee of a substantial return on your investment.
So check this out! There is an upcoming auction of a portfolio of .com real estate domain names. This particular auction will be held on June 11, 2009 in San Francisco at the Fairmont Hotel & Resort. The auction will be conducted by J.P. King who describe themselves as a ”premier auction marketing firm selling the finest in high value properties”.
The real estate portfolio being auctioned off contains over 2300 geo-targeted domain names. What is most interesting here is the very carefully crafted marketing campaign behind the auction. There is a slick, dedicated webpage. There is a lengthy & sophisticated white paper. There is a professional mailing announcing the domain portfolio sale. There is an official endorsement of this domain portfolio by Monte Cahn of Moniker (who are acting as the escrow agent). Monte is quoted as saying …
It is extremely rare for such a pre-assembled platform of virtual real estate to become available.
There appear to be several rather positive aspects to this auction in regard to domain names. And also a potentially negative element as well. First, the positive.
Definite Positives:
- J.P King appear to have a successful history of representing sellers of high dollar real estate and other properties. Looks like a classy outfit along the lines of a Sothebys or Christies auction house. Premium domains deserve this kind of association.
- Monte Cahn (and Moniker) appear to be making an effort to possibly lift the auction of domains to a more prestigious level. Premium domains are indeed high dollar assets and in the realm of fine art & rare collectibles.
- This auction has an accompanying mailing (very professional looking I might add). I assume this hardcopy mailing is going out to real estate firms nationwide. End user outreach is monumentally important. I assume there may be a forthcoming press release too.
Possible Negative:
- Questionably, the actual domain names themselves. This large portfolio of real estate domains are almost exclusively constructed on City+RealEstate+Listings.com as in PhoenixRealEstateListings.com. Can you spot a potential problem?
This bears some discussion. The ultimate real estate web addresses are geo-targeted domains ending in “RealEstate” as in MiamiRealEstate.com. A 2300 plus domain portfolio built on this formula would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, possibly even higher. The ultimate gold standard.
By adding “Listings” on to the gold standard we move away from premium and into the arena of a long tail domain that has some competition. There is no substitute for “Miami Real Estate”.
But there are multiple competing substitutes for “MiamiRealEstateListings”, such as ”MiamiRealEstateAgents”, “MiamiRealEstateForSale”, “MiamiRealEstateMarket”, “MiamiRealEstatePrices”, “MiamiRealEstateForeclosure”. All of these examples were just taken from Google’s auto-generated key phrases.
Now this does not negate the value of a portfolio built on City+RealEstate+Listings.com, but it does raise a question as to whether a portfolio of these domains will have enough appeal to generate nationwide interest and high level bidding.
A 2300 name portfolio built on truly prime real estate domains like: City+RealEstate or City+Homes would garner massive, unprecedented interest and sky high bidding never seen before in the history of domaining. Of course, it is impossible for someone to have amassed a comprehensive portfolio containing these types of premium quality domains.
So, June 11 will come and go very soon. And we shall see if the auction was a resounding success, or not. I must say that I am impressed with the look of the marketing and packaging. It appears designed with real estate end users in mind.
However, I’m not sure that City+RealEstate+Listings.com is going to cut it. Long tail domains need to have no substitutes in order to stand out as a truly unique opportunity.
But as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Let’s see what the real estate community have to say on June 11th.
I wanted to respond to the above as Moniker is involved as the closing and transfer agent and will be on site at this event. Yes it may be better to have city+realestate, city+homes, however the key WIN and advantage here is the number of domains that blanket this vertical all in the city+realestate+listings. The entire vertical in almost every major city and population center is available here from ONE very smart visionary seller. You could not possibly assemble the other combination at this point and could not for years back. Also, real-estate companies, lenders, closing companies, escrow and title companies all look at the word listings as a key term in their industry and THAT is why this is a unique and valuable offering to end users at this auction.
Just my 2 cents.
The City+RealEstate+Listings.com formation does produce significant numbers of indexed Google pages. As a comprehensive network, there is value here in which the collective whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Also, more important than typical domainer valuation is the value to the real estate community itself. I would enjoy seeing a newsworthy result that would headline equally well in both the real estate & domain industries.