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I lost 3 done deals in 3 days!

I was in negotiations to sell 3 domain names to different buyers. I think all buyers were from the US.

I reached an agreement with the buyers on all 3 domains but I eventually lost all 3 deals. That was last week. I lost 3 deals for a total of $20k in 3 days from Monday to Wednesday.

The domains were:

  1. a .com for $6k
  2. a .org for $4k
  3. a New gTLD (.works) for $10k

The buyers backed out of the deal in no more than 2 days after the deal was reached.

  1. She said that her team thought that there were cheaper options in the market.
  2. He said that his partner didn’t agree on the domain.
  3. He said that maybe the .works was not the right extension. That is AFTER he was negotiating with me for 2+ years to purchase this .works domain!!!

In one of the deals I had already started the escrow.com transaction. Buyers 1. and 3. went MIA after I agreed to their offer.

Finally, 2 of these idiots had the nerve to then offer me less money than the original deal. .com buyer offered me $2,5k (from $6k) and .works buyer offered me $7k. The .works buyer even played the pandemic trick before we agreed on $10k. Sorry but this never works with me and I told them to get lost.

This is certainly not a first! Buyers back out of deals all the time. But this was too many, too close.

Are you seeing more non-paying buyers or deals not completing during the pandemic? I spoke to a friend and he told that he sees quite a few deals go south and even payment plans near completion are abandoned.

I wrote last month about one of my buyers that wanted to postpone of of his payments. I said no. He finally paid on the last day like he always does.

Sold.Domains

About Konstantinos Zournas

I studied Computer Engineering and Computer Science in London, UK and I am now living in Athens, Greece. I went online in 1995, started coding in 1996 and began buying domain names and creating websites in 2000. I started the OnlineDomain.com blog in 2012.

9 comments

  1. Puneet agarwal

    Buyers are very clever these days. When s seller agrees to their price offer ,they think they have offered a higher price and backs out.
    Happened with me for toyspalace.com , vegashunks.com and psychicbar.com in last 3 days.

  2. I got one a few weeks ago that backed out of a .com for $8K one day after I accepted his offer and set up the escrow.com transaction.

  3. This is why I use BIN pricing. Why suffer fools? Give them ‘take it or leave it’ pricing and flexible financing options. Let them figure it out. Done.

  4. Stay strong bro. Its part of our business. It appears to me that buyers are bargaining like never before. But stay focused

  5. IMO- With escrow they need to implement a 20% rule regardless of which service you use.

    Buyer puts down 20% for a non-refundable deposit regardless if they back out “for any reason”.

    So you got a 10k domain make them put down 2k. They back out get the entire amount minus fee’s for escrow platform. Everyone wins!

    It eliminates these type of buyers who are messing around. When you purchase a house you normally put 5k or 10k in escrow based upon certain conditions.

  6. Serious buyers wont back out or break negotiations…players do…and specially in domaining lot of people think that sellers are desperate to sell so bargain more …in todays market also namebio has lots of big daily sales.

    I think not worth chasing such buyers after few follow ups.

  7. Think domain sales to endusers are down by 50%. Would expect a higher % than normal to fall through.

    Have you considered just having BINs/using Afternic rather than bothering with all of this chasing?

  8. This is a hard lesson. I have four options that I use to close my domain sales but make offer is the latter of them. Even though make offer can lead to higher sales, it prolongs negotiations and delays sales. Finally, make offer shows weakness, desperation,
    seeking approval, fear, doubt, makes you small, etc.

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