Sex.com Sale To Be a No Reserve Auction

As I previously reported, Sex.com will be up for auction at the law offices of Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf, LLP, 156 West 56th Street, New York, New York on March 18, 2010 at 11 am. The auction is a result of a foreclosure, a few years after the 2006 sale, which was reported (but never confirmed) to be in the ballpark of $14 million.

At the time of my initial article, neither the auction house nor the law firm representing the lender would confirm the opening price/minimum bid for the auction, although it was stated that a $1,000,000 certified check would be required to bid.  

I was just informed by Richard Maltz of Maltz Auctions that there will be no reserve price for the Sex.com auction. Registered bidders will be permitted to bid online or in person at the Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf, LLP offices. In addition, Maltz added, “the secured party does reserve the right to bid under the law.”

Without a reserve price set, I would expect several bidders to participate in this landmark auction. Full auction details, including the terms and conditions (pdf) of the auction are available on the Maltz Auctions website.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

17 COMMENTS

  1. Elliot,
    The important line mentioned above is “Maltz added, “the secured party does reserve the right to bid under the law.” That basically makes it a reserve action as they have the right to be the last bidder. If they did not have that right it would be a true no reserve. They can call it what ever they like but with the lender having the ability to bid,which is what will happen if they dont get their price, It is indeed a reserve auction.

  2. @ Larry

    While I agree with what you are saying in one sense, I still think it’s more risk as is rather than setting a reserve price ahead of time. If Bidder A bids $2.5m, Bidder B bids $2.75m and the secured party bids $3m and wins, that’s a pretty big paper loss assuming a $10m+ purchase price.

    If there was a $10m reserve price, it wouldn’t seem as bad since no bids would be recorded in the above scenario rather than a big loss.

  3. They are just not saying the reserve price. Elliot, the domain will not be sold cheaply. The parties involved will not let that happen. As with many real estate auctions, the lender is there to protect their investment.
    i see what you are trying to say but it doesn’t matter if the secured holder pays 3 or 10m. they are stuck with the asset and still out their investment. i assume if the party has not declared bankruptcy, they will still go after them.

  4. Elliot

    I’m going to agree with Larry here.

    Domain Capital I’m going to guess is owed north of $5M and probably north of 8M.

    So if they get a top bid of $4M they could take it and lets say a $4 million dollar loss or bid $4.1M and get clear title to the domain

  5. $4mill, come on, this is the best domain on earth. Sex Sells, just no one has owned the domain yet with much internet expertise in the adult industry. Do you understand how much wbe cam and pay per movie sites are making right now? This will be the ultimate property of all time if developed with the right business model. I predict $10mill sale easily.

  6. I just received a note from National A-1:

    “We are still undecided about attending the auction because of how it is being run.

    There is still something that is not right with this auction.

    In every real estate foreclosure auction that we have ever attended the amount owed and to whom is published via
    schedules.

    If the bank is owed a large amount on a property and we are interested at a much lower price we do not attend.

    This is because the bank is always the high bidder in that they are not going to take a huge loss at least not at the

    initial sale.

    Why is the information at this auction being hidden? Something is wrong here. Full disclosure in mandatory.”

  7. Adult conversions are way down these days. Pay per movies sites and regular pay sites have been the most affected. Cams have faired better but they are down a good percentage from the past 2 years. Credit Card companies and banks are cracking down on processing so It will need a completely different idea or business model. Even then the owners will have a major uphill battle to get a ROI.

  8. This could go north of $10 million. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to properly exploit this mega brand. If it is used to power the marketing of something like an Extenze competitor it will easily pay for itself.

  9. ” This could go north of $10 million. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to properly exploit this mega brand. If it is used to power the marketing of something like an Extenze competitor it will easily pay for itself. ”

    Really? So how high will you go $20M..$30M?

    I mean it’s easy enough to pay for itself right.

    As for the non reserve mention, Larry is right, the lender fuirthermore reserved the right to decline the highest bid any ways, that was reported 2 days ago or more, in fact wasn’t that said here? So essentially they dropped that yet can be the last bidder. Now I understand how they lost millions on this, if they think we are that stupid as to fall for this ploy it speaks volumes about their intelligence. The name won’t sale and if it does we’ll be reading about sex.com again in 2-4 years or like marchex, ireit and others watch someone fire selling their portfolio.

  10. @Josh
    Please. My brother and I have enough on our plate already. I may think that 30 acres in Kauai is a steal for $10 million, but that doesn’t mean I have to buy it to prove my point. The bottom line is that most great generics are not monetized or utilized correctly. We see this everyday and Sex.com, used as part of a major marketing campaign, would absolutely pay for itself at $10 million. And as soon as Madison Avenue abandons the Stone Age and awakens to this strategy you will see record sales prices.

  11. The best, most simple, and least costly way to make sex.com work would be to just stick a forum on there with no other crap and let the huge traffic base go to town on it talking about their sex lives 24/7.

    With 5 Mil of UV’s a month you’d have an enormous database in a few months. And that’s where the goldmine is sitting.

    KISS! (Keep It Simple Stupid!)

    If anyone reading El’s blog buys it, contact me and I’ll show you how to then mine the gold out of the database.

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