Is virtual real estate the next big investment craze? Will everyone start buying words online? And are financial words/URL’s going for more than porn words now? I’m consulting a startup web company right now and buying a name is a real problem. I heard a rumor that Mint.com paid $200,000 for their name. At some point, high prices will drive away potential buyers and the public will become accustomed to seeing more two and three word names for websites.

WallStreet.com has been idle since it was sold four years ago for $2.3 million by a Caribbean-based casino, Cahn said. That company paid $1 million for it in 1999.

Numbers like $5 million or more are starting to float around as the price for this web property. I have looked everywhere to see what it actually sold for, but it seems that information is private. I did see a transfer of the name in whois dated April 2008.

For a list of some auction prices, check out this domain auction industry site.

You can recognize a mania when items are being sold for way more than they are economically useful, in the hopes that a greater fool will make a bigger mistake. Just think about all of those empty homes in Florida bought by speculators hoping to sell them to other speculators. When you see a hedge fund set up for domain name investing, it will be time to sell all your domain names for whatever you can get.

Photo: *MarS’, Creative Commons, Flickr

Disclosure: I own about 20 URLs, including thepanelist.net, Neubie.com (my nickname) and DavidNeubert.com. For investment purposes I own bullandfrog.com, frogpig.com, frogheaded.com and a bunch of derivations thereof. For now, they just point to thepanelist.net or DavidNeubert.com because I can’t figure out what to do with them. I wish someone would offer me $200,000 for one of them. My favorite URL that I do no own, but was able to convince my friend and owner, David Blumenstein to let me use as a forwarding email, is david.com.