Condo.com, Houses.com and now Property.com and Properties.com.

The new owner of Property.com and Properties.com is very familiar with online real estate sites: it already owns Condo.com, Condos.com, and Houses.com.

The buyer — which owns US Condo Exchange, LLC — was revealed today in a press release.

While the release says the sales price is confidential, Rick Schwartz tweeted several weeks ago that the combined price was $4 million plus equity.

Schwartz bought the property.com domain name for $750,000 in 2005.

He thought he had a deal to sell it once before to the owner of Foreclosure.com, but the deal went sour due to the buyer’s financial troubles.

The buyer plans to launch a site at Property.com in the fourth quarter of this year.

Expired domain emails sure are fishy.

I hadn’t paid much attention to Intrust Domains until Epik announced last week that it had acquired the company. [See update below]

But it just so happens that I’ve been bombarded by email from Intrust over the past week, so I took a deeper look into its marketing.

The emails come from “Alexander”, who’s informing me that a domain name similar to one I own (actually, the domain is one I just let expire myself) will be auctioned off soon.

Alexander invites me to “express interest” in the domain name so they can try to acquire it.

I wasn’t sure why he sent me four separate emails about this opportunity, but I think I’ve figured it out. Alexander appears to be moving a lot, so he may not have received any responses to his earlier emails.

In his first email he lists a P.O. Box in Colorado Springs. In the second email he’s moved to Franklin, Tennessee. The very next day he’s moved again. He’s still in Franklin but has a new street address (read: mailbox). By the fourth email he had moved across the country to Montecito, CA.

Making matters worse, his email address changes every time! Poor Alexander wouldn’t receive a response to his emails even if I tried.

(Hopefully these practices change now that Epik owns the company.)

[Update: Epik Founder Rob Monster says the email marketing activities that have been marketed under the label of Intrust Domains were not included in the acquisition; it was only the registrar itself. See his comments below.]

Three letter domain name saved by National Arbitration Forum.

Here’s a follow up to a domain name dispute I wrote about last month regarding a three letter domain name.

A National Arbitration Forum panel has denied the complaint for IXO.com brought by Robert Bosch GmbH, which has a line of power tools called IXO.

The decision is in German, so I’m relying on Google’s translator here. But essentially the panel ruled:

1. The owner has a legitimate interest in the domain name because he had started on plans to develop it.

2. It’s more than likely the registrant wasn’t specifically targeting the complainant and instead bought the domain name because it is a three letter domain name.

It doesn’t appear the complainant owns ixo.de, either.

I’m a little unclear about whether Robert Bosch GmbH has started selling its IXO line yet, so perhaps one of my German readers can chime in.

NFL wants to take over Super Bowl web site.

The National Football League’s lawyers may be busy trying to settle the lockout, but its lawyers have time to play games with domain names, too.

The NFL just filed a domain name dispute with World Intellectual Property Organization over the domain name SuperBowlConcierge.com.

The domain name is owned by Houston, Texas based EE Nation, which offers a number of travel services.

SuperBowlConcierge.com is focused primarily on selling transportation to Super Bowl attendees, although it also has an affiliate link to a ticket broker. The company owns some other domain names that may be troublesome, including BCSBowlConcierge.com and NBAFinalsConcierge.com.

The NFL hasn’t filed a similar domain name dispute since 2009, when it won a collection of 26 domain names registered by one person.

Google evangelizes web sites for small businesses.

Remember all those getonline.com domain names Google registered last month?

Now we know what they’re for, and it’s good news for domain name owners.

Google is going state-to-state, city-to-city to help small businesses get online. They’ve teamed up with Intuit to offer a web site builder, domain name, web hosting, and Google Places listing free for a year.

Right now they’re in Austin holding in-person workshops to help businesses get started. Google has advertised the workshops extensively around town.

According to TexasGetOnline.com, over half of Texas businesses don’t have a web site.

To be sure, you should expect these businesses that don’t have web sites to decide they need to buy an existing domain rather than register an available one. But as more businesses get online they’ll use more web services. A rising tide lifts all boats.