It seems I have been reporting A LOT lately on 2 letter .com domain name sales and today is no different with 3 more changing ownership.
A couple of things to keep in mind:
- There are only 676, 2 letter .com domain names
- Minimum wholesale IMO is riding about $600,000 USD based on a couple recent sales around that price point
BrokerageFirm.com who I personally do not know much about prior to recently, had its hand in two of the recent purchases. According to its website: “We’re a confidential digital brokerage firm that specializes in the buying and selling of websites, domains and apps.”
JC.com has been sold by E. W. Scripps Company to BrokerageFirm.com. Journal Communications Inc. recently merged with Scripps and they must have felt it was an asset the company did not need and quickly sold it. I first detected movement on JC on September 7, 2015 and by September 21, 2015 BrokerageFirm.com stepped in and purchased the domain name from them. BrokerageFirm.com has been buying up popular category type domain names like LL.com, NNN.com and many more.
MW.com has been sold and acquired by BrokerageFirm.com. The domain name was owned by MWH Americas, Inc. and transferred out of Ascio domain name registrar to GoDaddy and going under whois privacy on or about September 17, 2015 with name servers going to BrokerageFirm.com.
KC.com has been sold. The domain name brokerage firm Igloo.com and Amanda Waltz had a for sale page on the domain name recently. The prior owners are unknown due to the domain being under privacy protection but the buyer is Mou Yiming according to whois records. I reached out to Amanda for confirmation but had not heard back at time of publication.
BrokerageFirm.com is a 5 member team according to its website, with all of them listed as “Senior Acquisition Specialists”
- Cory DeRosa
- Nick Tsapaliaris
- Max Klekner
- Joel Malmquist
- Brittany Nickelsen
I reached out to the entire team several days ago and did not get a reply back.
Although BrokerageFirm.com is a brokerage firm for domain names, it is not common for a brokered domain name to change ownership to the broker. Since both MW.com and JC.com have transferred registrars and went under whois privacy, it may indicate that BrokerageFirm.com were the direct buyers of both domain names.
According to DomainTools.com, BrokerageFirm.com has about 9,300 domain names using its name servers and would indicate its inventory.
To stay with BrokerageFirm.com, they also appear to have acquired 429.com from General Electric Company according to whois records:
The domain name was registered at CSC Corporate Domains and has transferred out to GoDaddy and went on the name servers BrokerageFirm.com.
GE had owned the domain name from about April 5, 2008 when they obtained it from a SBS Technologies.
It’s unclear currently if the domain name was purchased from GE or they may be selling it but since whois has changed and registrars, I would again go with sold and BrokerageFirm.com are the likely buyers directly.
XR.com and SX.com were pointing to BrokerageFirm.com at one point or another in the past. Not sure if they were just brokering them or actually owned them.
XR.com, SX.com and GJ.com – all have sold by BrokerageFirm recently.
I assume they were not owner, just broker.
BS.com as well.
they likely are NOT buyers. they want LL owners to point the DNS to them so they can make
for-sale landing pages. Just FYI.
Aron,
I would agree with that but the registrar changes prior to the dns change IMO indicates a sale. I know you wouldn’t transfer your LL’s out just to list with a broker, nor would I. I understand the name servers and whois privacy protection… not a registrar transfer just prior to both. The transfer may also hinder a potential sale if the buyer wishes the domain to transfer to a specific registrar as that can’t take place for 60 days after the past transfer.
Cool.
good digging 😀
BrokerageFirm.com is Anthos Chrysanthou. Not really a broker, they just buy/sell names for Anthos.
Interesting…
Interesting sale! I would love to know the amount involved in this transaction.
they contacted me numerous times to purchase my NNN.com domain and both times offered lowball (below wholesale) numbers. they first started with an offer of 30k and said final offer of 60k.
They are very well known as lowballers and as aggressive spammers, repeatidly calling and emailing all premium domain owners with incredible low offers, again and again…
Thank you for the mention Jamie. Yes, the domain (kc.com) name has sold now. At time of publication, escrow transaction had not completed. Congratulations to both buyer, and seller. We were happy to be able to help all parties reach an agreement that all parties were pleased with.
Brokeragefirm.com brokers premium domains for many clients. We welcome the opportunity to broker any premium domain.
Howard Fingerman, Director of Sales
Brokeragefirm.com
howard@brokeragefirm.com.
Looks interesting, but you don’t publish a standard commission rate or set of rates for sellers?
Rates don’t matter in this case, because they suck all blood from sellers anyway.
It’s very common practice that BrokerageFirm lists name for $4.5M+ and then push it deep down and sell it below $600k. That applies for XR.com, GJ.com and many other premium names that have sold recently. Not sure if BrokerageFirm has some special sense to be able to find broke sellers, but for some reason they agreed to settle for 6-figure. And last but not least, majority of deals are done through Chinese brokers, so more reasonable way is to contact Chinese brokers directly.
Interesting, see what I just posted below as well after checking out their sellers option.
Okay, so when you go to Sell, you get this message:
“Note: You will be charged $100 plus a 20% commission to enlist our services.”
And then it wants you to enter cc info for the $100 charge.
I get it, people are in business to make money, but I’ve never seen anything like that before, an upfront charge just to “enlist services” in addition to the 20% charge. I’m afraid the implications of something like that are far too extensive and that’s a total deal breaker.
Chinese brokers who find buyers take 8% (standard) commission, so BrokerageFirm keep 12% for almost nothing done.
The big problem there is the $100 up front, even though 20% is clearly worse and less desirable than 15%.
Looks like Rick sold CD.com to BrankRate few years back.
I think this one went unreported.
As per the SEC filing from Bankrate
On October 15, 2010, the Company completed the acquisition of the internet domain name CD.com from Rick Latona Auctions, LLC, a Georgia Limited Liability Company for $500,000. This acquisition was made to complement the online publishing business. The results of operations of CD.com are included in the Company’s consolidated results from the acquisition date. The purchase price allocation resulting in the recording of $500,000 to internet domain name has been finalized.
I contacted nick tsapaliaris for tsapaliaris.com domain and the reply I got was ” eat my shit “. I also replied him in his language. But I am wondering , is this how people in this so called ” brokerage Firm ” behaves and replies. I do wonder whether they also get replies in the same language which these guys use when they contacts others to sell domains. They may be successful in their business but its not the way to behave with others. shame on your nick tsapaliaris and shame on brokerage firm that they hire bastard people like him.
Its really painful to see that in domain industry people exists who have no sense of talking. Mr Nick Tsapaliaris is so rude that he forgot even basic decency and started abusing to my family members as well. I am not so much experienced in domain world but all I can say that pioneer people like Mike mann , elequa sir , frank Schilling , Mike Berkens sir , Ron Jackson , Rick Schwartz all are down to earth even though they are extremely successful. Whenever I have communicated with them , I have always learnt from them .
But see this company brokerage firm ‘s employees who deals in domains , how do they talk. Now they have even come down on level of abusing me and my family. I always used to think that people in domain industry are nice and 99.9 % domainers are nice , even though we belong to diff diff part of this world . I used to think that its like a family. But it gives so much of pain when I see a company known as brokerage firm employees people who gives abuses to family members just because I am brokering domain name tsapaliaris.com !!
For brokerage firm , if you cant talk nicely with domainers , you have no right to remain in domain industry. I accept that I am not so much successful in domain world , but still I know how to talk with fellow customers and brokers. Really shame on brokerage firm.
For anyone who want the full detail of Nick tsapaliaris ‘s abuses , I am ready to send the mails to you.
Puneet Agarwal
India
Puneet,
First and foremost, please accept my apologies for the response you received after reaching out to Brokeragefirm.com. In no way does it represent our team of brokers or our organization.
We pride ourselves on our high level of integrity and professionalism. His response to your inquiry is completely unacceptable.
We sincerely regret Mr. Tsapalairas’ actions as they are not in line with our behavior expectations and our standards. We find his comments offensive and unacceptable and have dismissed him from our firm.
Howard Fingerman
Director of Sales
How do you call brokers with zero domain experience “Senior Acquisition Specialist”?
I don’t see anyone on staff w/ any experience in the industry. Am I missing something?
I have been contacted by this brokerage who have made me an offer for a domain name.
It is their first contact – should I proceed with caution??