Is Property.com to generic for its own good?

wwwweb · 11-15-2009, 04:47 PM

Over the years I have been following the progress of property.com, from the sheer fact of the value of the domain all the way thru to the well financed domainer who owned it.

For whatever reason this domain never really got off the ground from a development perspective. I know the rumored X million dollar sale price and what not, for which case everyone knows it is more than worth a few million dollars.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/domain-name-discussion/623246-property-com-generic-its-own-good.html

The concern I have is, maybe it is to generic to really establish any sort of presence online, outside the power of the name itself. If any of the big property, and real estate players had any interest in this domain, they would have tried to purchase it by now, especially during the real estate boom that just ended. I am sure there were offers, but at some point the value outweighed the cost, and they walked away leaving it to be basically a well elaborated parking page.

I know when I want to search for property I will not go to property.com, if I wasn't a domainer, and just a normal internet user, after I visit to the site, I would never go back again, because it serves little to no purpose. I know that can be said with just about any parking page, but when you are talking about property.com, with all the money backing that site, you would think there would be a better business plan in place. It is almost sad to see such a great domain in that sort of developed state.

InsanerDomainer · 11-15-2009, 05:22 PM

Generic is good, vague is bad. It leans towards vague. Still a very valuable name I'm sure, but 7 figures sounds like a bit much.

Jaco · 11-15-2009, 05:38 PM

It isn't too generic. It's just that the owner is in the fortunate position of being able to hold out forever, since there aren't any real liquidity pressures on names that were acquired back in the stone age, for peanuts.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=623246

A lot of old-school portfolio holders who bought names for eventual 'big score' scales to industry- including guys who have become very wealthy in the meantime- will find themselves willing those names to their heirs, if they don't get real with their prices.

The Elephant in the room is that while internet saturation in English speaking countries is high, the interplay of internet with consumer patterns is still low, relative to what most people agree it will eventually become. As such, there's still upside to the value of some names, but a lot of names are still being drastically overvalued, even in relation to what the future likely holds.

A business resolves a domain name purchase as being worth X to their bottom line. They will do their best to quantify what the name brings to the table in terms of organic traffic, how that traffic converts, what search engine advantage it might have, what sort of offline marketing gravitas it might have- then, they come up with a figure of what that name is worth to them, entirely contingent on how much money they anticipate that name will put in their bank account. This is where the disconnect often occurs between premium domain owners and prospective end-users. One is concerned about right now, the other is often times looking very, very far down the road- far enough that by the time we get there, the people who are making todays buying decision will be retired, or dead.

I think a lot of early domainers were dreamers. Shrewd, very intelligent people, but dreamers. Their capacity for dreaming is what afforded them the foresight to snap up all the great names, but this same capacity for dreaming becomes a hindrance when it comes time to making optimal, real-world selling decisions in real time. They're waiting and waiting and waiting for the white-whale, but in the mean time, you get PPC landers on premium web properties.

As direct navigation diminishes and search engines- in their quest to deliver meaningful user experiences- start to squash low/no content development that is profitable solely because of the gravity of the domain, you will see a lot of these guys scrambling to 'get paid' by converting those names into sales... So far, they've been earning quitenicely while they wait. As this changes, they'll want to get while there's getting to be done. We're already starting to see it.

wwwweb · 11-15-2009, 06:27 PM

I'm not sure if this is true but rumor was it got sold to foreclosure.com for 3M.

Doesn't seem to be the case. Don't know who owns it.

I know I inquired in purchasing investmentproperty,com guy
wanted 1m, to this day its a choppy one page lander for some
Real estate agent, and now his asking price is 100k lol.

I also look at the guy was has been trying to sell remix.com,
Think he wanted 500k, then 400, not sure where he is at now.

Is it greed, or is there more cheddar out there?

DomainTalker · 11-15-2009, 08:25 PM

No, I don't think Property.com - nor other generics - are too general for their own good.....Its about how they are used.

The problem with Property.com is not that its 'too generic', but that its simply never been developed as a serious Property site.

In Australia, for example, by far the most universally used property-search mechanisms now are online property sites - when looking for available property to buy - or, sell - on both a local, and national, basis.

And the most successful of these are the pure generic(s) names for the industry:

Eg: RealEstate.com.au

(Link here: - Real Estate, Property, Land and Homes for Sale, lease and rent - realestate.com.au )

(btw - Property.com.au redirects to this site 'cos RealEstate.com.au was developed first, and became a go-to place for property online).

The pure generic domain, RealEstate.com.au (unlike Property.com) is a full, comprehensive, up-to-the-minute, property listing site - and, widely promoted. Every real estate agent subscribes to it to place their client's listings - and, it now outstrips all print media for advertising properties for sale, or to buy...Visitor numbers are steadily climbing.....No doubt it gets natural type-in traffic, too, as an 'extra'....This site is a dominant, blockbuster, profit-maker of a business...!!

No....A pure generic domain is gooood.....Its just bothering to capitalise on it...!!

...Property.com - properly developed - could, of course, be as successful a business as RealEstate.com.au....Both are total generics for the industry.

BTW, just for info....Rick Schwartz paid $750,000 for Property.com - and, the $mega-millions Property.com sale deal (to the owners of Foreclosure.com), that he announced earlier this year, fell over - never proceeded.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=623246

See..... The Rick Schwartz Domain and Traffic Blog RicksBlog.com...Home of the "Domain King" (Rick's Blog - Scroll down to his Oct 19 2009 post).

.

snoop · 11-15-2009, 08:30 PM

It is going to be a difficult name to develop due to the the scale of the name. Having said that development is never easy and the vast majority of projects go nowhere. A great domain is a small part of the equation.

owntype · 11-15-2009, 08:33 PM

A few companies would like to pay high price for a domain that can present their business credibility.

DomainTalker · 11-15-2009, 08:35 PM

Originally Posted by snoop

It is going to be a difficult name to develop due to the the scale of the name.

Property.com would be no more difficult to develop successfully than RealEstate.com.au......Both names are total generics.

If the guys that own RealEstate.com.au can do it successfully - someone can do it for Property.com.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=623246

.

snoop · 11-15-2009, 11:36 PM

Originally Posted by DomainTalker

Property.com would be no more difficult to develop successfully than RealEstate.com.au......Both names are total generics.

But both are very difficult propositions. The market is ten times the size for property.com though.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=623246

It takes real infrastructure, sales staff on the ground etc. Realestate.com.au has 500 staff servicing 19000 agents and has raised $56million to get to where it is today. Imagine the size of a company required to service the United States. This isn't for any type of domain investor, it is for wallstreet. Thinking the domain is going to be major part of the equation is wishful thinking. I think it is a $1-$2million dollar domain that needs hundreds of millions spent on it.

DomainTalker · 11-15-2009, 11:52 PM

Originally Posted by snoop

But both are very difficult propositions. The market is ten times the size for property.com though.

This isn't for any type of domain investor, it is for wallstreet.

Agreed. This ain't a quick 'domainer developer' proposition....Its for a major business concept, and, that takes resources.

The OP's question was whether a true generic like this is 'too generic' for its own good.

I'd argue, no way....Its prospects are about what is done with it - accepting that it'd take a lot of cash to make it the industry leader it has the potential to become.
????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=623246

.

Jaco · 11-16-2009, 12:59 AM

I didn't realize Schwartz had money tied up in this. I thought it was a stone-age reg.
In that case, yeah, he bears a cost to carry; at minimum, whatever yield he could've been receiving on his money if parked in other investment vehicles.

evirtual1 · 11-16-2009, 06:35 PM

would it work as a developed site with sub domains , asian.property or american.property and so on

i thought being so generic that it offer many opportunities as above

11-15-2009, 04:47 PM	THREAD STARTER #1 (permalink)
wwwweb NamePros Regular Join Date: Sep 2009 Posts: 954	Is Property.com to generic for its own good? Over the years I have been following the progress of property.com, from the sheer fact of the value of the domain all the way thru to the well financed domainer who owned it. For whatever reason this domain never really got off the ground from a development perspective. I know the rumored X million dollar sale price and what not, for which case everyone knows it is more than worth a few million dollars. ????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/domain-name-discussion/623246-property-com-generic-its-own-good.html The concern I have is, maybe it is to generic to really establish any sort of presence online, outside the power of the name itself. If any of the big property, and real estate players had any interest in this domain, they would have tried to purchase it by now, especially during the real estate boom that just ended. I am sure there were offers, but at some point the value outweighed the cost, and they walked away leaving it to be basically a well elaborated parking page. I know when I want to search for property I will not go to property.com, if I wasn't a domainer, and just a normal internet user, after I visit to the site, I would never go back again, because it serves little to no purpose. I know that can be said with just about any parking page, but when you are talking about property.com, with all the money backing that site, you would think there would be a better business plan in place. It is almost sad to see such a great domain in that sort of developed state.

11-15-2009, 05:22 PM	#2 (permalink)
InsanerDomainer NamePros Member Join Date: Aug 2009 Posts: 134 Follow @InsanerDomainer	Generic is good, vague is bad. It leans towards vague. Still a very valuable name I'm sure, but 7 figures sounds like a bit much. __________________ RecentBookmarks.com During.biz BoyNamesForBabies.com GiftAndNovelty.com W h y P a r k m i n i s i t e s

11-15-2009, 05:38 PM	#3 (permalink)
Jaco Account Closed Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Chicago, Illinois Posts: 1,442	It isn't too generic. It's just that the owner is in the fortunate position of being able to hold out forever, since there aren't any real liquidity pressures on names that were acquired back in the stone age, for peanuts. ????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=623246 A lot of old-school portfolio holders who bought names for eventual 'big score' scales to industry- including guys who have become very wealthy in the meantime- will find themselves willing those names to their heirs, if they don't get real with their prices. The Elephant in the room is that while internet saturation in English speaking countries is high, the interplay of internet with consumer patterns is still low, relative to what most people agree it will eventually become. As such, there's still upside to the value of some names, but a lot of names are still being drastically overvalued, even in relation to what the future likely holds. A business resolves a domain name purchase as being worth X to their bottom line. They will do their best to quantify what the name brings to the table in terms of organic traffic, how that traffic converts, what search engine advantage it might have, what sort of offline marketing gravitas it might have- then, they come up with a figure of what that name is worth to them, entirely contingent on how much money they anticipate that name will put in their bank account. This is where the disconnect often occurs between premium domain owners and prospective end-users. One is concerned about right now, the other is often times looking very, very far down the road- far enough that by the time we get there, the people who are making todays buying decision will be retired, or dead. I think a lot of early domainers were dreamers. Shrewd, very intelligent people, but dreamers. Their capacity for dreaming is what afforded them the foresight to snap up all the great names, but this same capacity for dreaming becomes a hindrance when it comes time to making optimal, real-world selling decisions in real time. They're waiting and waiting and waiting for the white-whale, but in the mean time, you get PPC landers on premium web properties. As direct navigation diminishes and search engines- in their quest to deliver meaningful user experiences- start to squash low/no content development that is profitable solely because of the gravity of the domain, you will see a lot of these guys scrambling to 'get paid' by converting those names into sales... So far, they've been earning quitenicely while they wait. As this changes, they'll want to get while there's getting to be done. We're already starting to see it. Last edited by Jaco; 11-15-2009 at 05:44 PM.

11-15-2009, 08:25 PM	#5 (permalink)
DomainTalker Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: http://ISSUES.COM Posts: 1,126	No, I don't think Property.com - nor other generics - are too general for their own good.....Its about how they are used. The problem with Property.com is not that its 'too generic', but that its simply never been developed as a serious Property site. In Australia, for example, by far the most universally used property-search mechanisms now are online property sites - when looking for available property to buy - or, sell - on both a local, and national, basis. And the most successful of these are the pure generic(s) names for the industry: Eg: RealEstate.com.au (Link here: - Real Estate, Property, Land and Homes for Sale, lease and rent - realestate.com.au ) (btw - Property.com.au redirects to this site 'cos RealEstate.com.au was developed first, and became a go-to place for property online). The pure generic domain, RealEstate.com.au (unlike Property.com) is a full, comprehensive, up-to-the-minute, property listing site - and, widely promoted. Every real estate agent subscribes to it to place their client's listings - and, it now outstrips all print media for advertising properties for sale, or to buy...Visitor numbers are steadily climbing.....No doubt it gets natural type-in traffic, too, as an 'extra'....This site is a dominant, blockbuster, profit-maker of a business...!! No....A pure generic domain is gooood.....Its just bothering to capitalise on it...!! ...Property.com - properly developed - could, of course, be as successful a business as RealEstate.com.au....Both are total generics for the industry. BTW, just for info....Rick Schwartz paid $750,000 for Property.com - and, the $mega-millions Property.com sale deal (to the owners of Foreclosure.com), that he announced earlier this year, fell over - never proceeded. ????: NamePros.com http://www.namepros.com/showthread.php?t=623246 See..... The Rick Schwartz Domain and Traffic Blog RicksBlog.com...Home of the "Domain King" (Rick's Blog - Scroll down to his Oct 19 2009 post). . __________________ NewMediaFrontiers.com® - ChatBox.com - Movie.info - Phone.me M.biz - Hypnotherapist.com - AJ.net - YT.net - iFlyDrive.com - iSofa.com Last edited by DomainTalker; 11-15-2009 at 11:47 PM.

11-15-2009, 08:33 PM	#7 (permalink)
owntype Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Posts: 3,137	A few companies would like to pay high price for a domain that can present their business credibility. __________________ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z . C O M

11-15-2009, 06:27 PM	THREAD STARTER #4 (permalink)
wwwweb NamePros Regular Join Date: Sep 2009 Posts: 954	I'm not sure if this is true but rumor was it got sold to foreclosure.com for 3M. Doesn't seem to be the case. Don't know who owns it. I know I inquired in purchasing investmentproperty,com guy wanted 1m, to this day its a choppy one page lander for some Real estate agent, and now his asking price is 100k lol. I also look at the guy was has been trying to sell remix.com, Think he wanted 500k, then 400, not sure where he is at now. Is it greed, or is there more cheddar out there?

11-15-2009, 08:30 PM	#6 (permalink)
snoop New User Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 5,072	It is going to be a difficult name to develop due to the the scale of the name. Having said that development is never easy and the vast majority of projects go nowhere. A great domain is a small part of the equation.

11-16-2009, 12:59 AM	#11 (permalink)
Jaco Account Closed Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Chicago, Illinois Posts: 1,442	I didn't realize Schwartz had money tied up in this. I thought it was a stone-age reg. In that case, yeah, he bears a cost to carry; at minimum, whatever yield he could've been receiving on his money if parked in other investment vehicles.

11-16-2009, 06:35 PM	#12 (permalink)
evirtual1 NamePros Expert Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: VampireHire.Com Posts: 6,769	would it work as a developed site with sub domains , asian.property or american.property and so on i thought being so generic that it offer many opportunities as above __________________ Seeking serious offers .. F-X-T.com = Forex Trading Vampire Ebook Business Show Watch The Domainers Song

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