Remember when the new gTLD .Realtor rolled out giving members of the National Association of REALTORS as well as the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) the chance to register a free .Realtor domain name?
.Realtor went to far to warn its members just over a year ago not to “pre-register or pay money to an outside company for a .REALTOR top level domain because NAR will oversee registrations for .REALTOR…only NAR members are eligible for a .REALTOR domain and membership will be verified via the NRDS system at registration. Additionally, NAR plans to provide members a free .REALTOR domain that is associated with their name for one year on a first-come, first-serve basis”
Well the 1st year is now over and the cost (rack rate) to renew a .Realtor domain name appears to be $39.95 according to the .Realtor website
.Realtor reached over 110,000 registrations but now that domains are coming up for renewal and renewals appear not to be free, the number of registered domain names has dropped closer to 98,000.
We will keep our eye on this extension to see the percentage of domains that get renewed.
Good business model I guess. Get them to build up a business/reliance on the domain and then start charging.
When these realtors got their FREE domain names were they set up as auto-renew or did they have to make a choice to auto-renew or not?
Did .Realty .Realestate , .Real, .Property get launched? In which case what were the first year registration charges and renewal rates for alternatives ?
Registrants are lucky they are only charging them 40 bucks to renew. I bet the renewal rate will be very high.
Nothing is absolutely free, even in Freetown. Let’s hope majority of these realtors are able to renew these domains.