Can I sell a domain name to our Association for profit?

Ooohh...this is a good one.

I have been registering several domain names that are logical domain names for our HOA. I have not been reimbursed for them by the HOA and they are held under my personal name.

Can I sell the domain names to the HOA for a tidy profit??

I suppose this isn't legal, but highly unethical.

Meant to say "isn't illegal".

Thank goodness this forum is anonymous.

Of course you don't want to hand them over. You're a control freak. This is truly disturbing.

For the sake of academic chatter here at the Social Club "HOATalk.com", before tea time at 4:30:

It appears to me that this depends on what trademark rights the HOA/COA has.

Many HOA/COA oriented sites say HOAs and COAs should arrange and pay for trademark rights.

Some case law chatter: https://micondolaw.com/2017/02/06/why-every-condominium-and-homeowners-association-should-trademark-its-name-and-logo/

Were these domains purchased while you were a Board members, and if so, did the Board authorize such purchase, or did YOU feel it was none of their business, because it was YOU, not them, putting all this time and energy into the community.

My first reaction was that your account has been hacked. I mean... WHAT?

Personal opinion: domain name squatting is sleazy. Some folks will buy up domain names and try to shake down prominent persons and businesses. And yeah, sometimes the targets will pay these folks to go away.

Why on earth would you want to do this to your reputation?

On the other hand, if you're sick of volunteering for your association, this is sort of the equivalent of rage quitting.

Serious answer: it is not legal to hold a domain name for the sole purpose of confusing people or requiring another entity to purchase the domain name from you. If they want the domain, and take you to court, they would almost certainly win.

Guys,

I want to be clear. I registered the logical domain name for my community not for power, control, or to hang over anyones heads. I registered it because it was (up until now) owned by the for-profit webmaster who we used to host our website through at an exhorbant annual price of $1500/year. I tried to inquire with the for-profit webmaster but they never wrote back to me on transferring the domain.

When I saw the domain was available last night, I registered it right away to make sure that the for-profit company didn't (oftentimes there is a couple day window when registration elapses for less popular websites) and I wanted to make sure we could grab it.

I have no intention of selling it or hogging it etc. If the Board approves purchasing it, I'm happy to transfer it to the Association.

I will be parting with them.

Yes, there were several domain names that are logical choices, and I think it makes sense for all of these to be transferred to the HOA and the all the links can point to the new website. The most logical domain for our website is painfully long to type in so I found some shorthand versions. My favorite - besthoa.org

Michael

I wish we had an edit feature. I make too many typo's.

I meant "information age"

Pick a dot-org and dot-com name (identical), renew it for three to five years, give it to your HOA board and have them reimburse you for actual cost.

There is no value - profit-taking value - in a community name and web address. It's legitimately a nice gesture to secure your community's name in cyberspace.

This is interesting to me as our association in NH has a similar situation. Our former Association President, who I affectionally refer to as the micro-manager registered our webhost and web builder in his personal name using his personal credentials.

Not saying he is planning to hijack the domain name, but he could and that is enough to raise a red flag.

I notified the new board that they need to commandeer all our informational capital and put in under the control of the ENTIRE BOD and not 1 individual, especially one that isn't an elected official.

John

The thing with HOA domain names is that they usually don't have that much monetary value, unlike those for well known corporations. The folks who grabbed domain names back in the day and held them hostage usually did so because they could make significant bucks. Either Big Corporation basically paid them to go away, or the bad guys could rake in some money by defrauding potential customers (at least until the law caught up with them).

Unless an HOA is pretty unusual - eg. owns golf courses or other commercial property, or the name is trademarked or something - the board would probably just tell you to get lost and would find itself a different domain name. Maybe they'd call the HOA attorney if it appeared that there was some attempt at fraud.

I did my community's website pro bono. The association reimbursed me for my expenses, assuming I remembered to turn in my receipts, but that was it. Making a profit on any of it would look too much like being paid for my work, which is prohibited by our bylaws and may lose me my protections as a volunteer.

I bet we're using the same portal. :-)

It's not horrible if you're a member of the association, but it provides nothing for potential buyers. We had a public section of our site where we had copies of our governing documents plus a FAQ/Straight Talk about Condos. Given how little many condo buyers know before signing the closing documents, I thought that this was important. I also heard from realtors who appreciated having this info available and who thought it added to the impression of a well-managed community.

As with all community websites, their value falls if the info isn't kept up to date...

when I went to find an HOA domain, several were taken, took about 5 minutes for me to come up with a decent one and not pay the high prices the taken ones wanted.

I think most hoa boards are capable of getting buy without your specific domains. it's not like most members even read the webpages anyways hahaha.

so even if possible unless the board is desperate they can work around it.

I would just add that in our 456 unit HOA in NH that Facebook is the place that all owners go now. I hate facebook and tried to replace it with an organized discussion page similar to this, but failed miserably. Facebook is just to easy and convenient.

We don't have a page or hit counter on our website, but I would suspect that it is rarely visited as another poster mentioned. There is just nothing there that owners need to see. We have our CC&R's, but >95% of our owners wouldn't even know what these are and don't care.

John

Wendy,

E-signatures are the best thing ever, especially for our HOA which is a vacation type HOA on the water and the majority of the year owners are elsewhere. Myself and a few other owners were actually able to get the 50 signatures required to call for a Special Meeting last winter and that could not have been done without the ability to collect e-signatures as all owners were home for the winter and home is dispersed all over.

Check your local Condo laws and federal laws on e-signatures. In NH and this might also be a federal requirement, BOTH parties in an e-signature transaction need to agree to the use of e-signatures. This simply means that your bylaws should have something in them to say they are allowed as the person e-signing is agreeing. You State Condo act might already allow them, NH doesn't.

Do you use Wordpress and are you using the smart version or dumbed down version? Sorry, but not sure how else to put that. One version has 1000's of "FREE" plug-ins available to you, the dumb version is very limited and charge you for enhancements.

So, after testing many of the e-signature plug-ins, I settled on a plugin called SpeakOut and I purchased the PRO version which cost me all $25. I was looking at this for petitions and nothing else, so this might not work for you.

There are online services also available such as change dog org and many HOA's used them for owner petitions, but I preferred creating our own process as the online services flood you with advertising.

If you have a similar wordpress installation I would gladly help and we could do this offline and spare folks of the details.

John

Oh well, then were are talking apples to oranges I'm afraid.

I will tell you that the Wordpress 'open source' install is very inexpensive and opens the doors to much customization. I think it costs about $50 per year. Not sure you level of interest, but you can always try it and get a FREE domain for testing. Then if your association liked it you could migrate from google to a wordpress environment.

John