Rent~Sell~Lease Names?

[sirengirl]

I have noticed the occasional page that pops up with standardized Lease or buy option links. For example the owner of the domain has either a $350 lease option, and or a buy option for $1500. they may also list examples of names sold. Has anyone on here participated in this? What does anyone think of this as an option..?


Just curious..


Lygia

 

[cache]

not very common.
If I rent one and develop it, then it will just contribute to someone else's name value, not very attractive.

 

[brindle123]

I like the idea. If someone owns a great name that you could rent for like five years and make alot of money from it, who wins? Both!?
Maybe you could have a rent to own option in there just in case.
If i could develope a name like cars.com for a decent price and make a killing off it, why not.

 

[drakewla]

I already thought about this idea, but I believe it's too difficult to implement...

First, what happens if the owner (A) or the user (B) changes his mind?

Then, if A wants to sell the domain or if B wants to sell the content, both could be in a "not so nice situation".

I guess the only way would be a legal contract. Then, in most cases, it might be cheaper for B to simply acquire A's domain name.

Alternatively, it could be nice on the short term previous to a domain transfer, for a week or so.

 

[TestCase]

I think I remember domain name leasing/renting being a "popular" option back in the mid-90's. I think it lost favor because of various legal and business issues that came up.

There was always the issue of the lessee building and developing a domain's "identity" so it is closely associated with their product/niche, and then seeing it pulled out from underneath them at the end of the lease and sold/leased to a competitor with deeper pockets.

And domain owners were seeing domain name's "reputation" soiled by less than scrupulous lessees such as those with questionable ethics and business practices - spammers, p0rn hustlers, outright thieves, etc...

When all was said and done, a lot of time and money was being spent on attorneys.

Then again, somewhere in the last year or two I did read about a guy who rents his "ski" domain to a business for the ski season. Though I'm not sure whether or not what I read actually mentioned the domain, what I got out of it was that it was a highly desirable one that would cost a LARGE chunk of money to purchase and no one had yet met the asking price. So the owner rents it for several grand ($5-8k ???) each year for a period of about 4 months.

Wish I could find a few names like that...

 

[ekal]

LasVegas.com is leased for 1.8M annually, adjusted yearly with option to buy out for 30M by 12/31/2009.

I've thought several times about developing a site where people could offer domains for lease but am unsure how much interest there would be.