Latest! NamePros Domain Sales Analysis for H1 2024

For the period from January 1, 2024 through June 12, 2024, 271 sales were reported. Several of these are outstanding lease-to-trade (LTO) transactions that will be excluded due to their potential inability to close, for a total of 269 sales analyzed.This paper is based on the date of reporting, and these 269 sales total $1,042,083.

Wide Variation in Prices

As expected, sales prices varied widely, as these prices ranged from large sales of high quality names to liquidation price transactions. Below is the sales price distribution:

The overall average price was $3,888, while the median price (the middle of the range in order) was $1,300. Not all sales were retail, but most were.

Two sales were priced at $100,000 or more and only seven sales were priced below $100, three of which were $99.

Most sales were .com

The majority of sales were .com, accounting for 67.5% of reported sales. There was a huge gap between .com with 183 sales during the reporting period, compared to .org in second place with 10 sales and .cc in third place with 9 sales. The chart below shows all extensions with 3 or more sales during the survey period.

Many extensions had sales

While the majority of sales were for .com, there were many extensions. The top-level domains (TLDs) with 3 or more sales are, in order of the number of sales: .org, .cc, .ai, .xyz, .co, .net, .fr, .io, .vc, .se, .app, and .us.

Surprisingly .ai, .co and .io are not selling higher. .fi, .shop, .tv, .wiki and .wtf all had 2 sales.

Single sales were reported in the following extensions during the survey period: .af, .bet, .bi, .bot, .co.uk, .consulting, .dev, .esq, .fund, .homes,

.link, .me, .network, and .science.

Afternic dominates the sales landscape

Afternic is the most reported sales venue at 48.9%, followed by Dan at 25.6% and Sedo and Atom tied at 5.9%.

Chart of the most common sales venues reported. This is from the January 1, 2024 to June 12, 2024 period in the NamePros Report Completed Sales thread.

In at least 14 sales, sellers used just one service to complete the sale, with Dan being the most popular venue, followed by Afternic, Escrow and Sedo.

Holding time

If these results are indicative, most domains are held for a significant period of time before being sold. Not all sales reported holding times, but in many cases they did. The average hold time was 25 months, with a median of 11 months. Holding times ranged from less than 1 month to about 180 months, or 15 years.

While some sales with a holding time of more than 10 years were high, this was not always the case. For some domains, after a long holding period, the domain is eventually liquidated at a price not much higher than the cumulative cost.

Acquisition Process - Multiple Manual Registrations

While many sellers did not state how they acquired the name, for 144 sales, this information was provided. I was surprised by how many sellers domain name manual registrations accounted for 62.5% of HR. Clearance registrations were next at 11.8%, then expired registrations using tools like ExpiredDomains at 8.3%, and auction registrations (mostly expired auctions) also at 8.3%.

144 of NamePros' reported sales for the first half of 2024 provided information on how domain names were acquired. HR here denotes a manual registration, DR is technically a manual registration as well but the domain is listed for sale after the registration, clearance is an auction of domains that have expired but were not sold in the auction, purchase is a wholesale acquisition, NP is an acquisition where the domain is declared to have been acquired on NamePros, and backorder is the process of acquiring a domain through a service.

Source: namepros