Average domain prices stay stable – Mean .com price increases – “Buy Now” transactions at all time high – Sedo

Sedo has been consistently producing a quarterly market study since the 2nd quarter of 2009. There are some stats from before but these are not complete. I took all the reports from the past 3 years and produced some interesting statistics and graphs as individual reports don’t tell the whole story.

Conclusions:

• Domain transactions and sales volume drop at Sedo (Q3 is all time low)
• Average domain prices stay stable
• Average .com price stays stable (currently at $2225)
• Mean .com price increases (currently at $642). A lot of low value .com sales brinf the mean price down.
• .com transactions amount for about 50% of all sales
• “Buy Now” transactions at all time high (42%)
• Auction transactions at all time low (13%)

First of all, the domain transactions per quarter start at 8754 at Q1 2008 and rise up to  11942 in Q1 2010. Then transactions stay above 10000 per quarter for about a year and then the decline starts. Q3 2012 with 8181 domain transactions was the worst quarter ever for Sedo. (I am always taking about the reported market studies since 2008 or 2009 depending on the stats)

Again quarterly sales value has been declining since Q3 2011. The Q3 2012 15,1 million is the lowest sales value since Q2 2009. (Q4 2010 spike is because of the sex.com sale)

The average domain name price has pretty much stayed stable since Q3 2009 at about 2000 USD. But I help but notice that the Q3 2012 average of 1845 USD is the lowest average since Q2 2009. There is a small decline since Q4 2011 but I will wait on future report to draw a better conclusion.

The average gTLD domain name prices of .com, .net, .org, .biz and .info are a bit inconsistent as a single sale can influence the results. Nevertheless .com is always above the 2k USD mark and .info is just below the 1k mark.

The mean gTLD domain name prices of .com, .net, .org, .biz and .info are far more interesting.
Mean .com sales price has been rising consistently since Q2 2009 up to Q3 2012 from 410 USD to 642 in the latest report.
.net had a peak at about 600 USD but it is currently at about 500 to 550 USD.
.org has stayed above 500 USD since Q1 2010 showing the strength of the extension.
.biz is seeing a lot of fluctuations and lately it is below the 400 USD mark.
.info is consistently above the 400 USD mark (except for 1 quarter) and a few times it has been close to 500 USD.

Sedo’s sales channels percentages are also very interesting. The “Buy Now” sale percentage has been steadily increasing since Q2 2009 and has reached a maximum of 42% of the sales in Q3 2012. Offer/counteroffer sales have seen a decline from 47% to 33%. Auctions have seen a significant decline dropping from 39% to 13%. I wonder how many transactions of this 13% are auctions with only a single bid. These 1 bid auctions that have come from offer/counteroffer should be credited to the offer/counteroffer percentage as technically these are not auctions. Escrow transactions and brokerage sales have stayed stable.

Sedo increased sales commission in Q1 2011 from 10% to 15%. At that time Buy Now sales percentage was at about 25-28%. It then jumped at about 42% as Buy Now sales commission is 10%.

Other stats are showing that .com domain name sales always amount for about 50% of the total Sedo sales transactions in each quarter. .de sales have dropped a bit and are currently at 15% of total Sedo sales. .net and .co.uk are tied at about 5% each and .org follows at 4%. .info, .eu and .es are all tied at about 2% of the total sales transactions.

46% of the sales at for a value up to $500. That has been the case since Q2 2011. $501-$2500 sales are also stable at about 40%. $2501-$5000 are consistent at about 8% and sales about 5k take up 7%. These stats have mostly stayed the same since Q2 2011.