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Domainers immune from the lockdown bump?

Kevin Murphy, July 30, 2020, Domain Sales

While the can be little doubt that the domain industry saw a boost in the second quarter due to the impact of coronavirus lockdown mandates, the same may not be true for those playing in the secondary market.

Data out from Escrow.com last night shows the weakest quarter for secondary market sales since the company started publishing its data two years ago, with average prices and overall sales volume down.

The company, which acts as a trusted intermediary for domain transfers, said it processed $55.2 million of sales in Q2, down from $85.8 million in the first quarter.

All of the primary geographical markets saw a decline apart from Hong Kong, with the US suffering the worst dip.

The US obviously has taken the biggest dose of the virus and has little in the way of a social safety net, so it’s perhaps not surprising that buyers are being more cautious with their cash.

The declines fly in the face of data and commentary from the primary market, where registries and registrars have generally been seeing unexpected boosts to sales as lockdown-impacted small businesses rush online.t

It’s tempting to speculate that while the virus has created more customers for domain names, fears over the incoming recessions have made buyers less likely to want to splash out on a premium domain.

Escrow.com said that the median price of a domain name without associated content dropped from $3,000 to $2,500 in the quarter.

Uniregistry: sales prices down for “first time ever”

Kevin Murphy, September 19, 2017, Domain Sales

Uniregistry today said that it sold $29 million of domain names through its Uniregistry Market platform so far this year.
But the company said that average sales prices dipped for the “first time ever” over the period.
The 3,617 names it sold in the first eight months of the year went for on average $8,017 per domain, compared to $9,110 in the same 2016 period.
Average prices had been steadily rising since 2011, Uniregistry said in a press release. It blamed the reversal on “expansion into exploratory, nontraditional markets” — the mix leaning more towards new gTLDs and ccTLDs, in other words.
On the bright side, the total dollar value of sales were up to $29 million from the $25 million in the comparable period. Transactions were up 24%, the company said.
Eight months is an unusual period to report results for, making me wonder whether today’s statement is in response to some recent bad press, but as a private company I guess Uniregistry can report figures for whatever period it wishes.
The numbers, to reiterate, refer to its Uniregistry Market secondary sales platform, not its own cache of registry-reserved new gTLD domains.