Dark During Refinancing Boom — Refinance.com Is

Valuable mortgage domain name goes unused as interest rates drop below 5%.

With 30 year fixed mortgages going for 4.5% in the United States, mortgage refinancing activity has been brisk. But for most of this year a key generic refinancing domain name – refinance.com – has been dark thanks to woes at Homebridge Mortgage Bankers Corp.

Legendary domainer Garry Chernoff sold Refinance.com to Homebridge, which later did business as Refinance.com, back in 2005 for just over $700,000. Homebridge did a brisk mortgage business handling more than 7,500 applications in 2006. But the firm sputtered from there. Mortgage Lender Implode-o-Meter writes that the firm was embroiled in a number of lawsuits. The firm had difficulty meeting payroll last December, and in January lost its Fresh York State license.

Last year the ownership record for Refinance.com changed from the firm’s CEO Nicholas Bratsafolis to a DNS admin, and the site no longer resolves. I couldn’t find any bankruptcy filings for the firm in Fresh York (where it’s incorporated), but presumably this asset won’t sit dormant forever.

The big question is, what would refinance.com sell for in today’s market?

Loading ...