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by domainthrowa675 1540 days ago
I am in the unusual situation that my family name is still available as a 4 letter .com. It's been that way as far as I can tell for many years and I imagine this is a rare situation in 2022.

I always liked the idea of owning it and passing it down for generations (assuming email will last that long)

The domain is parked by some small company / SEO agency but in theory seems to be available for sale. In the past they had a form similar to the one mentioned in this post, which only accepted offers above 10k$. I've been holding out on checking this domain for a while now since I expect every increase in traffic will affect the price but sometime in the last years they reduced it to a simple 'contact us' form without minimum price.

I hope being honest is my best approach here, since I do not expect to build a business with that name (not good for the english speaking world) any time soon.

It is meant purely for family email addresses and possibly one personal/family blog.

I also see this as a one-off chance where I either buy it now for an acceptable amount or I won't come back to the table for pretty much ever since we will have to make a decision soon and settle on some other domain/gmail instead. Noone moves email addresses for fun, for us the value of acquiring the domain decreases over time.

Can anyone here recommend to me how I should proceed with this?

Would a broker be a good fit here or should I open the communications on my own since I am not a business and don't want to appear as such?

At the same time I have no idea how to broker such a sale myself and wouldn't want to risk appearing an easy target for a scam.

1 comments

Have you thought about *.Family? That's what's we went with.
The problem with gTLDs is that there is no ceiling on the registration/renewal price for those domains. If a given gTLD takes off because, for example, someone writes a blog post about how great it is to just use it for your family's email addresses (great idea, by the way), the owners of the gTLD could quadruple the renewal price next year. Of course, some people spend tens, hundreds, or even thousands a year on domains anyway, so I suppose this only applies if you're particularly price conscious.
Interesting point. Honestly, hadn't thought about that.

Given I'm all in on my .family address, and demand might drive up the price... I would like to revise my comments to say WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT BUY A .family ADDRESS!!!

;-)