Will domain investors buy .au?

[ttfan]

For those people here that invest in .com.au domains, and hold a significant .com.au portfolio, are you likely to buy the equivalent .au of your .com.au if it becomes available?

 

[snoopy]

Would only be worth doing on very valuable names in my view. The registration fees will soon add up and it will sink profitability. I think you'll find most people will be drawing a line somewhere rather than doubling up.

I know a lot of people went through this process with .uk. It is probably worth dropping marginal names in .com.au at the same time.

 

[Scott.L]

Initially yes purely out of defensive registration (fear & greed) until the opportunity cost kicks.

Realistically, the top end of town who holds the most valuable names will be possibly locked into a yearly fee escrow scheme until settled. So that leaves marginally valued domains in the registration pool.

Accordingly, the propose rules (if accepted) won't allow the transfer of .au rights to investors wanting to buy a conflicted com.au because both buyer and seller forfeit the application rights to get .au when a change of registrant occurs.

So no, I doubt investors will be actually buying the .au under these policy rules.

 

[snoopy]

In the UK they got around 350k registrations in the first year (before all the robo registrations started), and their pool was more than 3 times the size of .au. Also the fate of these extensions was less certain in 2014 compared to today with .UK and the new tlds failing to get traction since 2014. .uk and .au are also new tlds and not very different to all the others in terms of take up. There was more upside in 2014. If you apply that it comes to maybe 150k registrations for .au.

That suggests to me UK domainers were (smartly) extremely selective, though the ability to just hold the right for several year would have helped to avoid spending a lot of money on something that ended up doing badly. auDA shouldn't be charging for this conflicted name stuff in my view.

https://www.nominet.uk/news/reports-statistics/uk-register-statistics-2015/

 

[ttfan]

Yes I would expect initially investors might buy the .au, just in case there is demand for it. Then perhaps drop it after a year if there appears to be no demand.

 

[Scott.L]

Yes I would expect initially investors might buy the .au, just in case there is demand for it. Then perhaps drop it after a year if there appears to be no demand.

"Investors" (not speculators) will only buy the most valuable domains, but those names will most likely be tied up in a conflicted multi holder process.

If the rules were altered by allowing the transfer of the application rights to any third party it may attract investors to bargain with all parties, if negotiation fails, at lest the new owner is in the running and has the option to patiently wait it out.