What I was asking is has there been an example of just holding a domain proved to go up in value at a greater rate than inflation because everything gets more expensive over time due to inflation.
That's not true at all .. plenty of things in history have plunged in value because of changes in the market.
As some have already mentioned .. pricing is usually closely if not directly related to supply and demand.
When it comes to domains that's where it gets tricky .. as the supply isn't the general 330 million domains registered.
For domains each domain is unique and in it's uniqueness it has it's own demand. Often times it can be categorised like
- Geo's: Certain cities have more demand than others
- Niche: Certain market trends can explode demand like Solar, Canna, etc
- Brandables: even certain keywords that get hot and then cool down like Hero, Gator, Ninja, etc.
The key is to find good domain that are in demand .. then as more of those domains get purchased and the number of alternative choices to the end user has goes down, then the value of the remaining domains goes up. But only for that class/type/niche of domain.
There is a broad scope of supply and demand on domains .. primarily what we are seeing with single word domains as 2L's, 3L's .. the advantage of having those domains combined with their growing scarcity are making their value skyrocket.
But don't expect this to happen with all 2-word .com's nor with 4L .com's ... because the Advantage*Scarcity factor is so much vastly lower than those 1-word, 2L 3L super premiums. That being said, the shortening supply of super premiums will affect other domains like 4L and 2-words, but there are so many that it will only be the best ones ...
The real question is what makes for the best 2-word domains .. well .. there are so many factors involved in that secret sauce:
- Niche demand
- Phonetics
- Radio test (clarity)
- Humour / Cool factor
- Rhyming / alliteration
- Length
- Uniqueness
- Contextual prefixes/suffixes
- Trending prefixes/suffixes
- Something special that can't be described (Je-ne-sais-quoi)
- Etc etc etc ..
In the end it's about what domain fulfils a potential end user's checklist the most. Even that checklist can vary depending on if they are consumer facing or B2B or even something else.
There are no rules .. but it certainly helps if you have a broad knowledge base and have very good language skills.
When you find a good domain in a hot niche with growing demand .. then yes .. the value will go up. More than inflation even. But the fact of the matter is .. that the vast majority of existing domains do NOT fit the very simple criteria of even being a "good domain".