Brad, in your post above you quoted first part of my post, but in reality my emphasis was at the second part:
"So my approach to this is : if I can grab (drop-catch, trade, whatever) good keyword in xyz while it has standard 10 renewal, I will do it and will probably renew it few years in advance. I mean really good keywords, like homes, mortgage, loans, etc. Why not
"
Basically, you can not do yourself any financial harm, if you drop-catch something like homes.xyz with standard renewal and extend 10 years in advance. Your total investment is $100, while you will ALWAYS sell this quality of name for more then $100 in next 10 years (If not, PM me, I will buy it, lol)
Is this possible still in 2018? Answer is definitely yes.
So I am not saying go crazy in this extension, or any other new gTLD extension, I am saying be very selective, and when you see great deal, take it. If you just say "dead", it does not help to anything.