.homes

Overview

.homes is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) proposed under ICANN's New gTLD Program and operated by DERHomes, LLC, a subsidiary of Dominion Enterprises. The string was intended as a trusted, hierarchical namespace to contain listings of homes for rent or sale and a repository of goods and services related to homes.

History

• Applicant / Registry Operator: Dominion Enterprises (DERHomes, LLC).
• Application: Submitted as part of ICANN's New gTLD Program.
• Registry Agreement: Signed by ICANN on 09 January 2014.
• Delegation: .homes was delegated to the DNS Root Zone on 22 May 2014.

Usage and Audience

• Target audience: real estate consumers and professionals seeking home listings, rental/sale information, and home-related goods and services.
• Intended use: a hierarchical and intuitive namespace for home listings (by property type, style, and geography) and related services.
• Operator background: Dominion Enterprises is a marketing services company serving real estate and other industries, with many real-estate related properties and services.

Registration Rules

• Initial allocation model: Dominion planned to reserve or allocate generic strings (e.g., property types) and geographic names to its online real estate properties to create a hierarchical naming framework.
• Phased rollout:
  • Stage 1: Allocated strings and registrations by existing Dominion clients (ensuring known registrant identities via pre-existing business relationships).
  • Stage 2: Potentially opening registrations to non-Dominion registrants subject to a validation/verification process; timing and exact mechanisms were to be determined by DERHomes.

SEO and Brand Impact

• Brand positioning: The operator intended .homes to be a "trusted" and consumer-friendly namespace tied to Dominion's existing real-estate brands.
• Leveraging existing assets: The gTLD was designed to capitalize on Dominion's real-estate audience and properties (e.g., Homes.com) to provide recognizable, industry-specific domain names.

Notable Cases or Examples

• Homes.com: A key Dominion property referenced in the application, described as a premier real estate search destination with substantial monthly traffic and listing inventory.
• Homes Connect: Dominion's marketing platform for agents and brokers (noted as serving tens of thousands of real-estate professionals).
• Homes.com Mobile: Mobile site presence highlighted as part of the operator's ecosystem.

% IANA WHOIS server
% for more information on IANA, visit http://www.iana.org
% This query returned 1 object

domain:       HOMES

organisation: XYZ.COM LLC
address:      4425 Spring Mountain Rd., Suite 2
address:      Las Vegas NV 89102
address:      United States of America (the)

contact:      administrative
name:         General Counsel
organisation: XYZ.COM LLC
address:      4425 Spring Mountain Rd., Suite 2
address:      Las Vegas NV 89102
address:      United States of America (the)
phone:        +1 702 757 6555
e-mail:       hello@xyz.com

contact:      technical
name:         CTO
organisation: CentralNic
address:      Saddlers House, 4th Floor
address:      44 Gutter Lane
address:      London EC2V 6BR
address:      United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the)
phone:        +44 20 33 88 0600
fax-no:       +44 20 33 88 0601
e-mail:       tld.ops@centralnic.com

nserver:      A.NIC.HOMES 194.169.218.132 2001:67c:13cc:0:0:0:1:132
nserver:      B.NIC.HOMES 185.24.64.132 2a04:2b00:13cc:0:0:0:1:132
nserver:      C.NIC.HOMES 212.18.248.132 2a04:2b00:13ee:0:0:0:0:132
nserver:      D.NIC.HOMES 212.18.249.132 2a04:2b00:13ff:0:0:0:0:132
ds-rdata:     33262 8 2 d9f3c8d72738eba7ed5002404c5e2748e1aa47c83e36d33d2d4eb72360e49d80
ds-rdata:     64382 8 2 252b825350b3fb0d15cc087d7e7e52af81ce901db0f3a614d927ad153c909560

whois:        whois.nic.homes

status:       ACTIVE
remarks:      Registration information: https://nic.homes/

created:      2014-05-01
changed:      2025-08-12
source:       IANA