Saunders & Associates is poised to return two registered domain names to the Corcoran and Prudential Douglas Elliman agents they’re named after, with founder Andrew Saunders labeling the move to register them as an “overzealous” internal error and an honest mistake.
Last December and this past February, the agency purchased SusanBreitenbach.com and Michaelakeszler.com, respectively, for $12.17 each through registrar GoDaddy.com. Susan Breitenbach is a Corcoran senior vice president and associate broker. Michaela Keszler is a senior vice president at Prudential Douglas Elliman.
Prior to Friday, May 20, those who typed in the site names for Ms. Breitenbach and Ms. Keszler would be directed to the Saunders website. As of Friday afternoon, the sites in both women’s names had been disabled.
“We’re just going to give them back,” Mr. Saunders said on Friday afternoon. “It’s probably a fair trade for the trauma that was caused by the whole thing.”
Saunders has long employed a web strategy that scoops up domain names proven to match search phrases entered into popular search engines, he explained. Once registered with Saunders, the domain names are then automatically redirected to SaundersRE.com.
“A couple years ago, we purchased Hamptonsrealestate.com for $100,000,” said Mr. Saunders, whose agency owns more than 3,000 domain names. “That event was very constructive.”
Mr. Saunders said the issue was brought to his attention by Curbed Hamptons, an online real estate blog.
“When, I guess, my guys saw the names that you could buy very inexpensively, they did it—and they shouldn’t have,” Mr. Saunders said. “It was improper. The names are being returned. There was no intention to hurt anybody. We do have a very aggressive web strategy, but in this case what was done was clearly an internal mistake. Our strategy does not include buying the names of non-Saunders brokers.”
Mr. Saunders said he planned to transfer the domain names to the two agents through GoDaddy.com on Friday afternoon. The agency is setting up GoDaddy accounts for Ms. Breitenbach and Ms. Keszler where the domain names will be dropped. Mr. Saunders added that he will give the women the access codes to the accounts, which they will then be able to change, barring access to Saunders.
“All of this will be in their control by the end of the afternoon,” Mr. Saunders said on Friday. “They’ll then do what they want with their domain names.”
on May 20, 2011