The rights to administer a new generic top-level domain, .Realty, were auctioned off Wednesday for $5.58 million to “domaineer” Jay Westerdal’s Fegistry LLC.
Thanks to its trademark on the term “Realtor,” the National Association of Realtors was granted the right to administer the .realtor gTLD as part of a historic expansion of the domain name system by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
NAR is launching .realtor today, giving away a free domain to the first 500,000 members who apply.
When gTLDs are contested, ICANN puts them up for auction. Writing for TheDomains.com, Michael Berkens wonders whether Fegistry can make money on .Realty.
After all, Berkens notes, there are a bunch of other real estate-related gTLDs coming down the pike, including .Realestate (also to be managed by NAR), .MLS (which the Canadian Real Estate Association hopes to administer), .House, .Condos, .Rentals and .Apartments.
If Fegistry sells .Realty domains at $50 (wholesale) to $99 (retail) a pop, “it would take well over 110,000 domain registrations just to begin to break even, not including premiums,” Berkens figures. Source: thedomains.com.
