Lease to Own deals have become quite popular at Dan.com. The buyer can pay for a domain name monthly over a set period of time while Dan.com holds the domain name. If the buyer opts out of the LTO deal, the seller will receive the domain name back and can keep all of the funds paid, minus the monthly commission fee.
Domain Gang and DNW recently reported on the $129k LTO sale of Mega.xyz. As Theo reported, the five year lease to own plan had a total value of $167,000 had all payments been made. When the LTO deal was struck, the seller, domain industry veteran Kellie Peterson, posted on LinkedIn about this LTO deal and prior experience with .XYZ domain names.
Yesterday afternoon, I saw a tweet from Domainler.com asking if the sale had been cancelled because Mega.xyz was now resolving to a Dan.com “for sale” landing page:
Has Mega․xyz sale been cancelled? https://t.co/WDTVRBfS1A https://t.co/DMimkTSa75
— Domainler.com (@domainlercom) August 29, 2023
Unfortunately for Kellie, the buyer did not make a subsequent payment for the domain name. This is one drawback of an LTO deal – the buyer can opt-out of the deal at any time.
Kellie had the domain name returned and can keep any payment that was submitted. The domain name is listed for sale again, now with a purchase price of $189,000. A prospective buyer can also utilize the LTO option.
Shocked. Total disbelief. Never saw this coming.
I am pretty sure we’ve both had Lease to Own deals end prematurely. Nice to keep the $, but it would have been nicer for the deals to close.
Elliot, I’ve never had a LTO end where we didn’t end up with a chunk of money. This “sale” had BS on it from the beginning for multiple reasons that, at this point, have become redundant.
Bloggers were warned not to report this Mega .XYZ LTO ‘agreement.’
But they chose to shove this fake sale in the face of the rest of us.
The rule has always been not to publicly report LTO deals as most are cancelled after 3 months.
There are long threads on X/Twitter of domainers calling out bloggers for reporting this LTO FAKE NEWS.
Its sad to see bloggers whom I have respected and learned from become total shills for the XYZ House of Cards.
You are losing credibility by the week.
FWIW, I did not report on the deal when it was first discovered and shared. Others had already done so and I had no additional insight or commentary to share. That being said, there is no “rule” about what people can and can’t report beyond being honest.
I agree that sales shouldn’t be added to sales charts and databases like DNJournal and NameBio until they are fully paid and closed. I don’t have any issue with news outlets or investors reporting about LTO sales as long as it is clear they are payment plan sales and are not closed yet.
For instance, in 2018, Michael Castello reported the sale of Traveler.com here: https://domaininvesting.com/godaddy-1-in-google-for-domain-appraisal/#comment-1243
In 2020, he shared that it was a payment plan deal that, unfortunately, was not completed: https://domaininvesting.com/what-is-your-crown-jewel-domain-name/#comment-89176
This sale was not recorded by DNJournal or NameBio. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this.
People are welcome to discuss/debate about what bloggers should or shouldn’t write about. I recall an article written by Michael Berkens that upset Andrew Rosener: https://www.thedomains.com/2017/03/14/wi-com-has-a-high-bid-of-500k-at-namejet-a-udrp-opinion-from-2015-you-should-read/
I think domain industry bloggers do their best to cover industry news as best as they can.
I didn’t say it was a rule.
I specifically referred to an UNWRITTEN rule.
Definition: An unwritten law/rule is one that does not exist officially, but which people generally accept and obey.
Domain bloggers are the journalists of the domain community rather they like it or not. And when they become formal or informal propaganda machines for XYZ in the face of growing opposition to a highly questionable registrar, they need to be called out.
What an individual(s) like Castello Bros does, is not at all comparable to what blogs post.
When it looks like promotional advertising disguised as neutral blogging, its deceptive. If it is promotional advertising, disguised as neutral blogging a disclaimer should be added to any article or post.
XYZ is DEAD.
You actually wrote, “The rule has always been” and not “The unwritten rule has always been.” Unwritten rules are suggestions that many people follow but aren’t required to follow. The unwritten rules of baseball are a probably a good comparison. Lots of old school Managers and ballplayers get pissy when an unwritten rule is broken, but that is all a matter of opinion.
In the “About the Author” box on every article on this website, it says “Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest.” It links to the Terms / Disclaimer page:
https://domaininvesting.com/disclaimer/
On the Terms page, it links to these important articles covering conflicts of interest and advertising on the site:
https://domaininvesting.com/just-about-everyone-in-this-business-has-conflicts/
https://domaininvesting.com/disclaimer-about-advertisers/
In short, I have many conflicts. I have done business and do business with many companies in the industry. I have gone out for drinks and had dinners with many industry leaders. Sometimes they pay and sometimes I pay. I would consider many investor colleagues and competitors to be friends. In order to write knowledgeable articles about the domain industry, a writer has to have in-depth knowledge about domain investing. That comes from actually participating in the industry.
Again, for whatever it is worth, the.XYZ Registry has never been an advertiser here. They would be welcome to pay for banner advertising if available, but they have not.
Excuse my typo, but I was referring to an UNWRITTEN rule among many respected domainers and public reporting platforms.
What benefit was gained from the announcement of Mega .xyz being sold for $167K on a 60 month plan?
Almost all the benefits went to XYZ registry as a form of advertising, new registrations, and possibly gullible domainers paying expensive renewals.
Bottom line, reporting LTO sales is bad practice written or unwritten, and when so many warned this FAKE NEWS would lead to an unpaid LTO – many attacked us for calling it out.
It stinks, it stinks to the heavens this XYZ registry sham.
It’s going to collapse soon, just like FTX collapsed in crypto, and many reputations will be soiled forever.
P.S. : I appreciate you clarifying your terms of service. And all bloggers should do exactly as you have done by saying up front that they have conflicts of interest.
Many visitors to the most popular domain blogs see your platforms as NEUTRAL, not opinion and editorial blogs. Moving forward, it will be the job of the rest of us to make it clear sites like this are OPINION sites with many possible conflicts of interest.
Elliot, you cannot possibly compare the sale of Traveler.com to the “sale” of Mega.xyz. It is a false analogy. Even though Michael’s announcement of the sale was premature, we still walked away with six-figures. Conversely, more than one person predicted the Mega.xyz “sale” would go the way of Gaming.xyz.
I do not think people should report domain names as “sold” until payment in full is made or unless they make it clear that it is a payment plan that is not yet completed. By way of example, if I have a deal to sell DomainInvesting.com for $2m on a 2 year LTO deal, I should either wait until I receive the full payment or should make it very clear that the deal is not final and payment in full is pending.
Regardless, it is great that you got 6 figures and the name back. Hopefully, we will see it on NameBio or DNJournal as a closed 7 figure deal at some point.
I am happy to continue this conversation over ice wine at HMF.
It is so weird how bent some people are about “reporting” the LTO deals.
It’s almost like you no longer think of domain names as digital real estate. You know that asset where sales are reported at the outset of a long term payment plan called a mortgage. Where the norm is that the home is rarely fully paid off, and in a portion of cases the mortgagee losing the asset because they stop paying.
The analogy seems pretty apt to me, but maybe that’s just me.
Y’all can keep being mad, but I’m just going to keep selling and leasing my names and making happy little bank deposits.
When a home is purchased via mortgage the initial SELLER is paid in FULL.
The REALTOR gets their % upfront.
The mortgage debt is held by the new buyer and the bank holds a LIEN until fully paid.
Your comparison is another bad analogy.
It is bad practice to report LTO deals until fully paid. And many of us see XYZ as a sham.
Check the $1.5M deceptive practice settlement: https://domainincite.com/tag/xyz-com
You can gaslight all you want, many called out this FAKE NEWS mega .xyz failed sale from the moment it was announced.
They were all proven right and that’s what matters.
XYZ is DEAD.
You got me at ice wine 🙂
Traveler had a substantial amount paid down at the beginning of the lease, Likewise, Room.com had a large amount at the start of its lease and the $1.5 million deal will be reported as completed next summer.
Love it.
Hope Room closes.
Does the cancellation of mega*xyz sale help or harm XYZ image? To think that mega*xyz purchase was a marketing strategy is absurd. We’ve been witnessing a campaign to discredit XYZ for months. Why do some people wish XYZ dead?