There have been A LOT of movements on 2 letter .com domain names the past two days starting on September 10, 2015 and continues into today, September 11, 2015, so I wanted to make you aware of the movements as some may be sold.
The majority of movements detected include a “status” update in whois records, and this can indicate a domain name may have been “unlocked” for transfer and this can be an early indicator to a potential sale.
FF.com, a domain name owned by Bank Of America has had a whois update to “OK” in whois records. This potentially could mean the domain name is in the process of changing ownership? The domain currently doesn’t resolve and is registered at CSC Corporate domains. Was FF.com sold? I think so!
YB.com has transferred from GoDaddy to eName. The domain name was owned by YB.com Inc. with an email address of priley@gmail.com and whois records are now showing zhiqiangjin of China. This domain name very likely has been SOLD.
XL.com, owned by XL Airways France at Network Solutions had a whois update status to “OK”. I’m not sure this domain has sold, but may be in the process of simply transferring registrars?
XR.com has transferred from eName to GoDaddy.com. This domain name was listed for sale for $749,900 and this transfer may indicate the domain name has SOLD. eName does something with whois records as most services like DomainTools.com and others often have a hard time getting updated data, so this makes tracking domain names hard. All services I use are showing eName as the registrar but one other tool I use is showing the domain has transferred to GoDaddy. Visiting XR.com directly, which had a for sale lander on it, states “This domain is no longer available.” This domain has likely SOLD!
PK.com followed suit of XR.com and has transferred from eName to GoDaddy. The domain name is under privacy at GoDaddy currently, but likely SOLD!
YU.com has had a status update to “OK”, which again may indicate the domain name has potentially sold or is simply transferring or potentially something else. This domain is currently registered at eNom.
XB.com has had a status update to “OK”, again, similar to YU.com it may be transferring, sold etc. This domain is registered at Name.com using Moniker name servers.
Considering minimum wholesale on LL .com domain names has been north of $550,000 lately, these are Millions of dollars of potential domain name sales. If FF.com sold, that domain name alone could easily have been sold for $1M+ and potentially a lot more!
The two letter .com resale market is a really great microcosm where you can study the impact of so called “not-com” names. There are only 676 two letter .com names possible. If 500 new generic not-com extensions come that will add 338,000 two letter domains to the spectrum. Not all, but some small subset of those 338k will be better than their .com equivalent and those will be dilutive in the next few years as not-com’s become more mainstream. In the long term however (20 years out), putting more inventory in the market will expand that market overall and could actually make the 2 letter .com’s more valuable. But at the same time, the percentage gains in the not-coms will be much much greater as they go from 2000 or 3000 per name into the hundreds of thousands in some instances. It’s an interesting moment in time right now with so much inventory available.
Interesting. Frank, thanks for thoughts.
I can confirm that XR.com has been sold to a Chinese investor.
Thanks Peter! Are you able to share the sales price?
I am not involved in the transaction, but I can tell you that It was more than its highest bid on NameJet.
The current whois of xr.com I see now is kefu@zundai.com, and zundai.com is a domain loan company in China.
Possibly very fast flip or a use of quasi investor as a middleman. Liquid domains change hands very quickly in China.
You can add DP.com to the list.
The table is tilting steadily East. If this continues for long, and it may, there will be few short domains outside China.
I can say to sources close DD.com sold just below 2M and FF.com sold for about 1.4M for FF I can say for sure and it will be reported in some time but possibly not right away as there are some terms that need to be dealt with.