The top-level domain (TLD) “.PROPERTIES” is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) in the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet. Top-level domains are those parts of the URL that come after the last dot, such as .com, .org, .gov, and so on.
The “.PROPERTIES” TLD entered the market targeting specifically real estate businesses, property management firms, and essentially any entity related to property or real estate transactions. However, as it is an unrestricted domain, it can technically be used by anyone for any purpose, similarly to .com or .org domains. The TLD “.PROPERTIES” is managed and operated by Donuts Inc, a domain name registration company.
The purpose of the “.PROPERTIES” TLD is to provide a dedicated domain space for the evolving property market and to offer businesses, organizations, and individuals within the industry a definitive and authoritative web presence. By using a .PROPERTIES domain, real estate brokers, agents, leaseholders, and anyone else within the property or real estate sector can have a more industry-specific and user-friendly means of promoting and driving their online activities.
Examples of use could be a real estate agency using the .PROPERTIES TLD for a more specific branding of their online presence (e.g. smith-real-estate.properties), or a property management firm using it to advertise available properties to the market (e.g. city-centre-properties.properties).
Another example could be individual property owners or sellers, who wish to sell their properties themselves, utilizing .PROPERTIES to establish a unique and unambiguous web presence for advertising their properties (e.g. johns-property.properties).
The introduction of the .PROPERTIES TLD, like other gTLDs, came about as part of ICANN’s expansion of the pool of TLDs in order to adjust to the evolving nature and the demands of the Internet user landscape, per some reports and websites on Domain Name News and updates (such as Domain Name Wire, CircleID, ICANNWiki, etc.).
Since 2013, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is in charge of managing and coordinating the Domain Name System to ensure every address is unique and that all users of the Internet can find all valid addresses, has introduced hundreds of new gTLDs, including the “.PROPERTIES”.
Sources:
- ICANN’s official reports on New gTLD Program, accessed via https://newgtlds.icann.org/en/
- DomainIncite, a premier site for domain name industry news and analysis, available at https://domainincite.com
- Various articles and updates on Domain Name Wire, available at https://domainnamewire.com
- Donuts Inc’s official site, accessed via https://www.donuts.domains
- Key-Systems’ gTLD overview, accessed via https://www.key-systems.net/en/domains/new-gtlds/gtld-overview
- ZookNic’s gTLD usage statistics, accessed via https://zooknic.com/Domains/counts.aspx
