Need advice on best approach to get domain name that looks like it might be expiring soon

[domainnonpro]

There's a domain name that I am interested that was created by someone in 2004. They used to use it for their personal site / resume. I used to check it every so often and noticed one day I think a little over 1-1.5 years ago that his site was down and replaced by one of those GoDaddy pages that said something like "future home of something cool"

It had the whois code clientrenewprohibited so I figured I'd just wait until the expiration date last year but on the day of the renew date, the expiration date extended by another year which is coming up again. It has the clientrenewprohibited code again. The whois used to show the owner's name, but ever since their site went down, it's been hidden and only shows the state and country.

Is this GoDaddy parking the domain / trying to keep it to make the owner pay more to keep/renew it? Should I wait until the expiration date and see if it automatically gets renewed again or goes into the grace period? If it goes into the grace period, should I use a backorder service like dropcatch to try and get it? If it doesn't go into grace period and just renews again, should I try to contact GoDaddy to try and buy it or would they try to extort me for more?

These are the results from the icann lookup I did

clientDeleteProhibited
clientRenewProhibited
clientTransferProhibited
clientUpdateProhibited

 

[Gube]

I would first check if the name is listed in their auctions
Before releasing a name, they will (most of the time) try to auction it and get some money back (and get the name renewed one more year there)

Regarding the whois expiration date, it could be because the name was renewed or because it wasn't renewed and they extended the registration "by a year" during the renewal grace period
If the name ends up on their auction platform, you will then be able to try and get it (Auction membership required of $4.99, but only buy it once you are sure the name will be auctionned and if you don't want to buy it at BIN - They BIN list names after the auction period if no one bids)

Gube

 

[domainnonpro]

I would first check if the name is listed in their auctions
Before releasing a name, they will (most of the time) try to auction it and get some money back (and get the name renewed one more year there)

Regarding the whois expiration date, it could be because the name was renewed or because it wasn't renewed and they extended the registration "by a year" during the renewal grace period
If the name ends up on their auction platform, you will then be able to try and get it (Auction membership required of $4.99, but only buy it once you are sure the name will be auctionned and if you don't want to buy it at BIN - They BIN list names after the auction period if no one bids)

Gube

My understanding was that the GoDaddy Grace period was only about 30 days or so and it would show a renewal grace period code in the whois lookup results. Are those status codes in my previous post normal? Maybe the website owner had autorenew setup but just doesn't maintain his website anymore?

So is the best approach to just wait until the expiration date and see if it's listed on their auctions? Do you know if the official expiration is considered as 12:00 a.m. on the date or the day after the expiration date (i.e. if expiration date is listed as 4/20/2020 on the whois lookup results, would expiration date be 12:00 a.m. on 4/20/2020 or 12:00 a.m.on 4/21/2020).

If the name is up for auction, I would likely just buy it at the BIN price unless the price is exorbitant which I don't expect. But if it is too high and I want to wait, should I then try to use a dropcatch service to get it for me?

 

[AEProgram]

use Godaddys whois lookup for godaddy names

https://www.godaddy.com/whois

Like others have said, your best bet is to check godaddy auctions and do not rely on the expatriation date you see in the whois.

Only when you see the domain updated to pendingDelete would you need to go and try catching it using dropcatchers (snapnames, dropcatch etc).

If its an important name for you keep checking every day, and if you need to catch it place a request at many drop catching services.