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The
domain sales numbers are in for the third quarter of
2010 and there is good news and bad news. The bad news is
that the total dollar amount of sales reported to us in 3Q-2010
was $23.5 million, down 3% from the $24.3
million registered in the same quarter a year ago. The
decline from the previous quarter was more
precipitous, falling 19% from the $29.1
million reported in 2Q-2010. That looks really bad
on the surface but a closer look at the numbers shows that
for the vast majority of sellers, prices were up
solidly in 3Q-2010!
How
can that be? As always a few outliers at the top of
the market can dramatically skew the total dollar
value of reported sales. That is exactly what happened
here. There was not a single 7-figure sale reported in
3Q-2010. The four highest sales were Jerusalem.com
($510,000), IPO.com ($500,000), Poker.ca
($400,000) and O.co ($350,000). Those top four
sales totaled just $1.76 million.
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The
total $ value of 3Q-2010
domain sales was down due to no
7-figure sales, but the median sales
price rose by double digits.
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Contrast
that to the top four sales in the previous quarter
(2Q-2010): Slots.com ($5,500,000), Dating.com
($1,750,000), Photo.com ($1,250,000) and Flying.com
($1,100,000). That is a total of $9.6 million
for just those four domains (which also happen to be the
four biggest sales so far in 2010 - they all fell
in the same quarter).
So
the total value of just the top four sales in
2Q-2010 was $7.84 million higher than the total
value of the top four sales in 3Q-2010, accounting for
all of the $5.6 million shortfall from 2Q to 3Q
this year and then some. The year over year results were similar. The
total for the top four sales in 3Q-2009 were almost twice
as high in 3Q-2010, again accounting for all of the dollar difference from one year to the next.
With
the total dollar value of reported sales so reliant on a
hand full of blockbuster sales a more useful figure
- and one far more relevant to people who are not selling
7-figure domains - is the median sales price - the
point at which half of all reported sales were higher and
half were lower. By that measure, the $2,944 median
price reported to us in 3Q-2010 represents a 15%
jump over the same quarter a year ago when the median
was $2,563. The 3Q-2010 median also rose 7%
from the $2,750 median price the previous quarter
(2Q-2010). So the market is seeing considerably healthier
prices than in previous reporting periods both this
year and a year ago.
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That
weaker total dollar figure we saw in 3Q-2010 is also
likely to see a huge surge in 4Q-2010 when a $13
million bankruptcy sale of Sex.com is expected
to be completed. Talk about big sales skewing the total
dollar value - had that Sex. com sale been logged in
3Q-2010 that domain alone would have created a jump
of more than 50% in the total market value reported
for the quarter. |
(Editor's
note: We only report notable domain sales - in
our case that is .com sales of $2,000 and
higher and all other extensions of $1,000 and
higher. As a result median prices for the entire market
would be considerably lower than those reflected in the
sales we track that do not include the low end of the
market).
Here
are some other numbers of interest. For the first
three quarters of this year, the total dollar value of
sales reported to us has been $75.7 million. That
is down a bit - 1.3% - from the $76.7 million total at the
same point in 2009. However, again, if Sex.com closes in
4Q-2010, this year should easily surpass the 2009 total.
Looking
at .com domains only, the median sales price in
3Q-2010 was $3,700, down slightly (-2.6%)
from the $3,800 median from the previous quarter.
The total dollar value figure for .com sales, due to the
lack of 7-figure sales, saw a much steeper drop, falling
38% from $21.7 million in 2Q-2010 to $13.5
million in 3Q-2010.
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contrast, the median price for ccTLD domains priced
$2,000 and higher (the same minimum as the .coms in our
database) was $4,445, soaring almost 20%
from the $3,718 median in 2Q-2010. The total dollar
value of country code sales also ballooned from $5.49
million to $6.99 million, a jump of more than 27%
from 2Q-2010 to 3Q-2010. The ccTLDs have been rocking for
a couple of years now and their momentum seems to be
getting only stronger.
The
non .com gTLDs continue to lag the .coms and ccTLDs
but this category did show gains in both total dollar
volume and median sales price in 3Q-2010. The median
soared more than 13% from $3,088 in 2Q-2010
to $3,500 in the most recent quarter and the total
dollar volume of reported non .com gTLD sales increased by
an even higher percentage - 30% - from $2.3 million to
$3 million. |
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Sedo
Releases Their 3Q-2010 Domain Market Study
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For
another view of 3Q-2010 activity in the domain
aftermarket, download
Sedo's latest quarterly market study
(.PDF file). Sedo contributes to our weekly
domain sales reports, but as noted
above, we have them send just sales that meet our
reporting minimums ($2,000 and up for .coms and
$1,000 and up for ccTLDs). Their in house survey
covers the full range of sales made on Sedo's
popular aftermarket platform. |
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Some
of the highlights from Sedo's report include word
that the most popular gTLD there continues
to be - no surprise - .com with 74%
of all sales, followed by .net with 11%,
.org with 8%, .info with 5%
and .biz with 2%.
Germany's.de
accounted for more than half of all country
code TLD sales with 52%. Great
Britain's .co.uk and the European Union's .eu
were a close second and third with 14%
and 13%, respectively.
In
another interesting note, comparisons
with offline property investments from
the Halifax House Price Index show that
while UK house prices were 0.9% lower this
quarter, online real-estate sales (domain
names) grew by 1.58% in the same period.
We
Release A List of the Top 20 Sales Ever Reported
to DN Journal
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final note, for the first time we have
released a list of the 20
highest domain sales reported
to us since we started tracking and
verifying sales on the domain aftermarket
in the fall of 2003.
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We have
always had (and continue to have) charts
(scroll down on that page to the chart
links) showing the top 100 sales from each
year but we haven't previously pulled our
all-time Top 20 from those charts
(primarily because our all-time list does
not include sales prior to when we started
verifying sales for ourselves in 2003 and
we include only all cash sales of domain
names only).
We cant
vouch for sales reported prior to that
because we were not following the market
then and was eventually learned that many
of the sales reported from that era were
not cash
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deals (payment was often made, at
least partially, with stock that declined
dramatically in value) and some of the
reports were simply bogus.
We
finally decided to provide our list of
verified all cash sales from 2003 forward because so many mainstream media
outlets have requested that information
from us. |
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