2026-09-25

Buying a domain from an investor: how to tell a fair price from a fantasy

Domain pricing has no Kelly Blue Book. Here is the framework buyers can use to sanity-check an asking price, spot the red flags in a negotiation, and close without overpaying — escrow, transfers and counter-offer scripts included.

There is no Blue Book for domain names. So when a seller quotes $4,900 for a name you like, you have no way to know whether you are looking at a fair price or a fantasy number that has been sitting in their spreadsheet for three years.

I sit on both sides of this table. Here is the framework I would use as a buyer — including the questions that quickly separate a professional seller from someone who is guessing.

1. Understand how the price was built

A serious seller prices from comps: published sales of comparable names. A fantasy price comes from one of three places — the seller's mortgage, a comparable from a different league, or the fact that the name happens to end in .com.

Ask directly: "Which sales are you comping this against?" A good seller answers in one sentence, names two or three sales, and does not get defensive. A bad seller answers with the story of the brand you could become.

Useful vocabulary for the conversation:

2. Score the name before you score the price

Price is meaningless without the name's objective qualities. I grade on five axes, and each one moves the ceiling:

• Length — 6 to 9 characters is the sweet spot for recall. Every character past 12 costs you a percentage of direct traffic.
• Word structure — two real words that describe a category beat an invented spelling every time (fixedloans.com over phixdloanz.com).
• Category intent — does the name describe a search someone actually types? A geo or service name ("Seattle studio apartments") has traffic; a random brandable does not.
• Spelling risk — if you have to say it twice on a call, you will pay for that in support time forever.
• Clean history — no adult/gambling past, no redirect farm, no penalty. This one is objective and cheap to verify.

A clean, exact-match, two-word name in a commercial category comfortably justifies four figures. A long, misspelled, hyphenated name does not, regardless of the seller's story.

3. Run the 60-second history check

Before you negotiate, spend a minute on the domain's past. Ask the seller for the same information — how they answer tells you a lot.

# Who has owned it, and how long (RDAP, no paywall)
curl -s https://rdap.verisign.com/com/v1/domain/example.com | head -30

# Has it ever been a live site? Any redirect chains?
curl -sIL http://example.com | grep -iE '^(HTTP|location)'
curl -s "http://archive.org/wayback/available?url=example.com"

Then search the name plus "scam", and check whether it was ever used for a link network. A seller who volunteers this information is signalling that they are a professional you can do business with.

4. Know the three shapes of a counter-offer

Most negotiations end in one of three ways. Knowing which one you are in saves days:

• The seller has a floor and a target. Offers below the floor get ignored; offers between floor and target usually close. If the asking price is $5,000, a serious offer is $2,500–$3,500, not $300.
• The seller is a domainer clearing inventory. They paid $20 and will take $500 today. Speed matters more than the exact number: an escrowed payment in 24 hours beats a better offer next month.
• The seller is not actually selling. Some listings exist to price-anchor the whole category. If two follow-ups get no answer, walk — a name you cannot buy is worth zero.

My standard reply when the price feels high but the name is right:

"I can pay $X today, through escrow, with you keeping the name until funds clear. If that works, send the invoice; if not, no hard feelings — I'll keep looking."

The second half of that sentence is the part that gets answered.

5. Escrow, and the difference between a push and a transfer

This is where first-time buyers get burned by process, not price.

• Escrow (Escrow.com or the marketplace's own service) holds the money until the name is in your account. For anything above a few hundred dollars, refuse a direct wire. Any seller who resists escrow is telling you something.
• Registrar push: the name moves between two accounts at the same registrar. Minutes, no lock, cheapest path.
• Transfer: the name moves between registrars, and starts a 60-day ICANN transfer lock the moment it lands. If your launch is next week, ask which one you are getting.
• Confirm the WHOIS contact email on the domain actually receives mail before you start. A stale contact is the single most common reason a transfer stalls for a week.

6. Three red flags worth walking away from

1. No escrow, and urgency. "Someone else is offering more, pay in the next hour" is a pressure tactic, not a market signal.
2. Price without comps. If every answer is about your future brand rather than comparable sales, you are being sold a lottery ticket.
3. A name with a spammy history the seller can't or won't explain. The redirect chain and archive snapshot answer this in a minute; if the story doesn't match the data, believe the data.

7. What a fair deal actually looks like

A fair price is not the lowest number you could have squeezed out. It is the number where both sides stop thinking about the transaction and get on with the work:

• The name passes your objective checks (length, structure, history).
• The price sits inside the range set by real comps, not by vibes.
• Payment is escrowed, and the transfer route and timeline are written down before money moves.
• You know the renewal cost, so there are no surprises in year two.

If all four are true, the difference between $2,000 and $2,500 is noise compared with what a rebrand would cost you in engineering hours.

I sell a portfolio of 154 names — exact-match, brandable and geo — each with a buy-now price and same-day, escrow-protected transfer. Browse them at dnwai.com/d, or send me a question about a specific name or a transfer you are stuck on: elhagmousab@gmail.com.