Is there a market for domain rentals?
 

I was emailed about one of my domains yesterday, I'm not really interested in selling it because it is unlikely for it's value to ever drop (it's a product name, not a brand name) and will likely increase. However I'm not really doing much with it either and don't intend to do anything with it in the near future.

Have any of you domain guys ever entered into some type of domain 'rental' agreement, where the user would pay a monthly fee to have access to the domain for a year or so until the 'lease' is up for renogotiation?

My first thought at this was that no one would agree to it; however businesses do rent properties IRL and it might make more sense for someone to rent a premium domain comparitively cheaply instead of buying some irrelevant domain and trying to brand it.

Any thoughts on this?

Yeah it happens, but it is usually more of rent for awhile with the option to buy. Or they simply take the traffic and direct to a site they own. There is no point to build and brand a site you are renting. You build up all the traffic and then when the lease is done, the owner will just take it back.

Yes leases are becoming more and more common for significant domains.

If you need a lease agreement structured let me know and I'll help you with it.

A friend of mine rents www.guysanddolls.com It was originally a sex/swingers cluib in Phoenix, until the city council got ignorant. Now he rents the domain to a musical theater in London.

Straight leasing doesn't make sense to me. Maybe someone can list out more compelling reasons for this. "Lease to Own"... now, that makes more sense. Allows the lessee to try out the domain and expend some test effort. If it pays off, he/she goes all the way and maximizes the value of the domain and eventually acquires it. You'll need a very tight contract though to prevent the domain owner from skipping out.

yes its a good idea I lease mine for typeins it can work well if you don't have time / energy or quite enough traffic to setup with the PPC sponsors or whatever yourself

thanks for the offer KRL I'll keep that in mind if anything materializes with this