Undeveloped tests domain leasing offering.
New top level domain name company Radix has teamed up with domain marketplace Undeveloped to sell some of its premium domain inventory by the month.
Called “Domain Rental Market”, some of the domains Radix reserved from registration are now available to rent by the month. It’s a lot cheaper than buying the domains outright, but still not cheap.
For example, you can rent Toy.store, Carpets.store, Gift.store, Pet.store or Book.store for $6,667 a month.
While you might be smirking at these ridiculous prices, the good news is that the Radix deal is a test before Undeveloped rolls the rental option out to other sellers.
Also known as domain leasing in domainer circles, offering lease-to-buy and monthly payment options to domain buyers is becoming a popular way to bridge the divide between what domain owners want for their domains and what buyers can afford. It’s good to see another marketplace testing out a leasing solution.
Gabriel says
It’s a test which they’re going to fail miserably. None of these domains are worth it not even test-worthy
Stella Long says
Consider some small stores in a mall or otherwise pay $10,000 a month for rent plus utilities and taxes. They get x number of feet into the store. With a very brandable Pet.Store how much would they be willing to pay for 2x feet coming in?
May be the difference between possibility of success and sure failure.
Andrew Allemann says
IF owning pet.store brought in twice as many paying customers, then it might be worth it. But that domain alone isn’t going to do that.
Dan says
Agreed these guys don’t know anything playing it by ear, nobody is going to spend thousands to develop domains they rent.
Peter Munro says
I have about 2000 domains to rent or to pay a developer from revenue for development.
This is a good option for someone who does not have much money to buy a good domain, or can not get clients with great domains. If you make TENT.com, eTutoring.com etc then you can get bigger jobs or you can continue to do websites for the local pet store, or other one man businesses.
C. S. Watch says
The .store options are silliness, but…
We leased a dictionary .com to a software startup on a five-year lease (abandon anytime, renewable for five more years, original purchase price held open for the duration of the lease). The company got acquired in less than two years.
We’ve got several lease-to-owns going and recommend it. (Not Escrow.com DNHolding, an unusable GoDaddy tar pit.) Even if you don’t get acquired, or your company doesn’t have a foreseeable life cycle, just figure in 12-24 months at the end of lease, and redirect your traffic to your similar domain or smart rebrand, once you’ve got that market traction. Contract in advance to have your staff’s old email addresses continue to forward (avoid info@, etc.). Any VC will tell you that leasing a posh .com is a smarter play than http://www.half-arsing.it. And you keep the domain owner on the leash if your company takes off.
Tucows now has hordes of top-shelf names that could be under easy Push lease management. They should set up ‘The Power and the Glory: Prestige Domains via Lease-to-Own.’ Just the entrepreneurs who puff up for the fam at the holidays would be enough to make that a going concern. ‘So what are you up to, Kevin?’ ‘Oh, just started Cameras.com. NBD.’
Interested says
Nice response. Do you have business/finance domains, a list that people can see?
C. S. Watch says
We bundle services, and haven’t any lists out-of-contract to offer.
John says
Do you use a third party leasing platform?
C. S. Watch says
We’ve used Escrow.com DN Holding a few times. Never again, if we can help it. Your domain has to be transferred to GoDaddy, so expect a couple weeks of lag while Escrow is querying support at GoDaddy’s mousetrap funhouse. Meanwhile, you’re chewing pencils hoping they don’t delete the domain or down your client’s site.
If Chase or Barclays were to start a domain lease-to-own platform, awesome. It won’t be easy to sell a brand like Radix to paranoid clients as a lease mgmt option. Six-figures to overseas buyers? Good luck. Ideally, Radix leasing might launch under an internationally-known bank co-brand, or invest in a one-word dictionary with similar heft to Escrow.com.
Snoopy says
Just shows how the people running these companies have no real plan, just try any *old* idea and hope it works.
Nobody is going to pay huge prices to lease trafficless 2nd rate domains.
RaTHeaD says
For example, you can rent Toy.store, Carpets.store, Gift.store, Pet.store or Book.store for $6,667 a month.
I WOULDN’T PAY $6667 to OWN all of them.
these people are delusional.
John says
It’s a good idea, but reality check:
Carpets.store – seriously? Carpeting maybe.
Gift.store – SORRY, IT’S GIFT SHOP, NOT STORE
Same for Pet.
Only Toy store and Book store are solid.
168 says
The Radix team is fantastic. That being said, this pricing is way out of line unless it’s a least to own.
Cheers
Website.Academy says
Renting seems the most interesting option to me for domain name investors. Even much smaller amounts of money could lead to a pretty good passive income. However it seems to be not so popular. Probably because it’s not so interesting from the side of the tenant… although I’d say that good contracts could solve that issue.
…even if you could rent your domain for $100 per year, and it costs you $10 for renewal fees, that’s still a very good deal. Hopefully Undeveloped can help in making this the new normal. It could make the difference between your domain portfolio being an asset or a liability.
Does anyone know how many (if any) of these .store domains are actually being rented out for these huge monthly amounts?
I’d love to get in touch with some people who have experience in renting out domains. Does anyone know any “domain name rental” brokers?
Rentstant says
Hello,
We have launched an application where you may rent out your domain, you may also sell your domain on this application, You just need to point your domain to Rentstant and you just need to point your domain on following IP (34.207.174.14)
In this platform, you may also point subdomains and suppose if you are using the main domain for your business in that case you may only point subdomains,
https://www.rentstant.com/
Please let me know if you will have any query or feedback related to the application.
Thanks