Generic Domain Names

If you are a domain investor and you have ever had the opportunity to exchange emails with Richard Swerdlow, you’ve probably been impressed with the company logos in the footer of his email: Condo.com, Houses.com, Property.com, and Location.com. With the exception of Location.com, which is under development, the other three exact match domain names are fully operating businesses.

I read some news about Houses.com that was reported yesterday, and I want to share it with you. In light of the recent Apartments.com deal and Auction.com deal, it seems that there is quite a bit of money flowing in the real estate space, especially for these exact match keyword .com domain names with successful businesses.

In a press release yesterday, Houses.com announced a joint venture with Bayview Asset Management, LLC, a huge real estate investment and mortgage firm based in Florida. According to the press release, “the transaction provides Houses.com capital and resources to elevate its brand, add product features, and scale consumer traffic and revenues.” Terms of the deal were not shared in the news release.

It would be very cool to see another great exact match domain name like this become a well known brand in this space. According to Swerdlow, that is the plan for Houses.com. “We are dedicated to becoming the definitive marketplace for single-family houses and a leading consumer brand in the massive, growing online real estate market,” he said.

The full press release announcing the new joint venture is below:

The Oakland Athletics baseball team announced that it will begin using the Athletics.com domain name for its website. The baseball franchise, or quite possibly Major League Baseball, purchased the Athletics.com domain name back in May of 2012, in a deal that had been reported in initially by Jamie Zoch of DotWeekly and written about further in Domain Name Wire. The purchase price of Athletics.com was not revealed.

The decision to rebrand the website from OaklandAthletics.com to Athletics.com was made to keep all of the team’s branding and social media the same. Here’s how the team announced the news today:

“In an effort to ease fan access to the official club website and, in turn, conform with most other Major League clubs’ sites, the A’s have announced “athletics.com” as their new brand domain.

The switch, from the original “oaklandathletics.com,” is effective immediately, and it “will make accessing the Athletics much easier and faster for fans,” the team said in a statement.

Moreover, the name matches that of the A’s official social media accounts, including @Athletics on Twitter.”

In 2009, just about 73% of MLB teams owned the matching team name .com domain name. Since that time, a number of teams / MLB were able to buy their .com domain name, including Athletics.com, Angels.com, Rockies.com, and Cardinals.com.  It appears that there are only a handful of teams remaining that do not own the exact match .com for their franchise website. Those team name .com domain names include: Rangers.com, Rays.com, Twins.com, and Giants.com.

Kudos to the Athletics and Major League Baseball for buying and using Athletics.com.