COM.AU and CO.NZ markets

[dnrabbit]

There is an active domain market in Australia and New Zealand.

Thousands of COM.AU and CO.NZ domains drop and are auctioned.

Are any such investors here on NamePros?

How are those markets impacted by the Chinese Buyers? For instance, have the value of LLLL.COM.AU increased?

Do you see success in pitching auction purchases to prospective end users?

 

[ttfan]

Good question, I'd like to hear some views on this too.

 

[jbjbjbjbjbjb]

There's a couple of downsides..

- Registration is around $20 per year and you need an ABN (tax id) to register one which can make it tricky for OS investors (but very easy for australians).

- you can only get second level names eg .com.au, net.au etc. If it was just '.au', then it would be very different. http://www.auda.org.au/industry-information/au-domains/

- People can contest domain ownership if they feel they have a right to it (and pay the registrar around $1k). Which limits any squatting to sub 1k (good thing).

That said, good names alwasy have value but nothing crazy. Most i've seen one go for was probably up to 10k, haven't seen anything more than that.

Numbers also don't play a huge part here with the preference being short single dictionary words/brandnames and acronyms.

 

[ttfan]

I'm currently paying AUD$22 for 2 years.

I know there are several ways for non-AU people to register .com.au domains... I can find the info if anyone is interested.

toys.com.au recently went for about AUD$85k from memory.

 

[jbjbjbjbjbjb]

/\ absolutely right re the two years, apologies

 

[jamesau]

The AU domain industry is very localized. You need a registered Australian business to own a .COM.AU domain. It's a strong market in its own right, but isn't influenced by the Chinese market trends. Generally only the top generic terms fare well.