The .homes new gTLD was relaunched on 14 January with a removal of registration restrictions making it open to anyone, anywhere. Currently registrants are required to be in real estate, property development or providing mortgage services.
The eligibility liberalisation has come about in part at least to boost registration numbers. Since launching its General Availability in May 2016, .homes has only gained around 400 registrations, clearly not enough to make the new generic top level domain sustainable.
Dominion Registries is seeking to boost registrations across all its new gTLDs after they gained ICANN’s permission to open up .homes, along with their other industry specific new gTLDs - .autos, .boats, .yachts, and .motorcycles.
One of these, .boats, had its registrant eligibility requirements dropped 11 months ago. In February 2018, .boats domain names became available to anyone everywhere, without the need for verification. Since then .boats domains under management have grown from 196 to today’s 452. Dominion’s remaining new gTLDs will have their eligibility restrictions reduced during 2019.
