Liquid Domains Market: Quality is in, Quantity is out

GGRG Brokerage Consulting and Giuseppe Graziano published the 2nd quarter of 2017 Liquid Domains Market Overview partnering with Escrow.com and Estibot’s parent company Intelium and ShortNames.com.

QUALITY IS IN, QUANTITY IS OUT.
Increased end user sales in the 3Ls and lower 5th percentile values in 4Ls and 5Ns signal that this might be the right time to invest in less, but better quality domains.
As the wave in cryptocurrencies sways across the investment world, the second quarter of 2017 showed a return of end user interest towards high quality 3L .com domains.

This report is focused on 2017 Q2 and presents key statistics of the domains that are considered liquid in the domain name aftermarket. The new report has a new and very interesting stats section.
There are separate sections for each liquid domain name category: LL.com, LLL.com, LLLL.com, LN.com / NL.com, NN.com, NNN.com, NNNN.com and NNNNN.com.

The report provides the percentage of domain name ownership of major regions (US, Europe, China, Rest Of the World), development percentage, turnover and public sales volume.

You can download the complete 18-page report here: http://ggrg.com/industry-report/

Here are some of the most interesting parts of Giuseppe Graziano’sexecutive summary:

COUNTRY OWNERSHIP AND DEVELOPMENT INDEX
For this fifth edition of the LXDO, we are excited to announce the extension of our report coverage to the 3C .com category.

In terms of geographical distribution, US continues to lead the way in the most developed categories (LLs and 3Ls) with over 50% ownership.
China continues to dominate the less developed numeric categories, supporting the hypothesis that end users are often US based, while most Chinese owners are investors. According to our last report* China owns about 37% of the liquid domains, followed by US (32%), rest of the world (22%) and Europe (9%).

SALES DATA
According to Escrow.com, 3C domains rank surprisingly as the most traded category for the quarter with $5.8M USD in gross volume, which could be the result of large end user sales or portfolio transactions. For the same period, ShortNames.com reported $700k+ in disclosed 3Cs sales, featuring the highest turnover per category ever reported at 2.70% (758 sales). The overall liquid market turnover is slightly up at about 0.9% (5,512 transactions) for the quarter.
Even if we do not account 3Cs transactions, the aggregate value of disclosed transactions grew 50%, from $8M to over $12M. The majority of this can be attributed to a notable $3M increase in 3Ls sales, which featured this quarter a significant number of disclosed end user sales: xyb.com, pep.com, dcc.com, lev.com (all in the 6 digits) and most notably fly.com, sold for $2.89M. Escrow.com confirms this trend by reporting $4.7M in 3Ls transactions last quarter.
Escrow.com also showed a decrease in transaction volume in the categories most affected by volatile end user demand (LLs, CCs), however, CCs sales remain at a healthy $140k+ average per transaction as reported by shortnames.com.

FORECAST
Unique .com domain names command and will probably continue to command amounts that are much above market averages. Freedom.com sold for $2M and Elon Musk repurchased x.com from PayPal for an amount that we presume is well into the 7 digits (z.com sold for $6.8M).
The stabilization in floor values means that underpriced domains are becoming increasingly harder to find, and that the most successful investors will be the ones able to pick the right domains with end user potential, rather than purchasing in bulk and waiting for capital appreciation.
Buying a domain with end user potential in highly developed categories near floor prices, seems like a strategy that could yield good returns and reasonably contained downside.

You can download the complete 18-page report here: http://ggrg.com/industry-report/

(OnlineDomain.com is a media partner of the Liquid Domains Market Overview.)