What to put in writing before you list a premium .au with a domain broker

Someone hands a domain name broker a premium .au or .com.au name. Outreach begins. Six weeks later momentum dies because the seller cannot tell overseas interest how to satisfy Australian eligibility, or the written brief said domain only but the seller now expects a trademark and Twitter handle to follow. At Perfect Domain that chaos is not the broker's negotiation problem to triage. It is a missing intake packet that should have been filled before the listing started.

This article names the fields and documents an Australian seller should put in writing before a domain broker begins outreach. It is not the full sell playbook from how to sell a premium .au domain. It is not the legal brokerage agreement checklist from domain brokerage agreement: what to get in writing. It is the pre-listing brief itself: the answers needed so outreach can quote price, eligibility, and inclusions without inventing them on the fly.

It is written for Australian owners considering a brokered sale (quiet or marketplace) and operators who hand sellers a written intake form. It is not legal advice. It does not tell you what your domain is worth. It does not give tax, investment, or regulatory guidance. It does not appraise any named domain, guarantee a sale, invent asking prices or domain name valuation numbers, promise rankings or traffic, or commit Perfect Domain to any purchase. It describes what written fields a complete seller brief contains.

Some sellers assume outreach starts with the string alone, and clarity arrives only after a prospect emails questions. That assumption breaks when overseas interest needs the eligibility pathway explained, or when a walk-away ceiling was never confirmed in writing and the broker guesses wrong mid-negotiation.

Brokered domain name valuation outreach is not a discovery phase. It is promotion to qualified prospects using the posture, inclusions, and constraints the seller already locked in writing. If the brief is thin, the broker invents or stalls. Stalls kill interest. Invention opens liability.

The written intake packet solves this by forcing clarity before the first outreach template is personalised. The next sections name the fields that packet must contain.

Write the domain name exactly as it appears at the registrar. Include the extension: .au, .com.au, .net.au, or another Australian namespace. Write the current registrar name and the registrant legal name that appears on the WHOIS or registry record.

If the registrant is a company, trust, or other non-individual entity, write its full legal name and the jurisdiction where it is registered. If the listed registrant differs from the beneficial owner instructing the sale, note that split and confirm the instructing party has authority to list.

Some premium .au registrants still use privacy masking or a nominee service where permitted. If the registrant name shown publicly is not the seller's real identity, write both the public label and the actual control structure. That honesty is needed so the domain broker can plan a clean registrant-change pathway for settlement.

Australian .au and .com.au policy layers require registrant eligibility that offshore .com strings do not. Some .au pathways welcome foreign entities. Some require Australian company registration, trademark lodgement, or another local nexus. If your extension imposes eligibility gates, write which gate you satisfy today and whether a buyer may use the same path, a different listed path, or must onshore before settlement.

Overseas interest that cannot meet the eligibility requirement at close is not closeable interest. It is browsing. If your brief to the domain broker does not name the eligibility pathway, outreach will sell a string the buyer cannot legally hold. That failure wastes six weeks and blames the broker for a gap the seller left blank.

If the pathway is obvious (your registrant is an active Australian company trading under the exact label), write that too. Obvious is not the same as documented. The brief must say it so the domain name broker does not guess.

Write what you use the domain for today: parked, email only, redirected to another site, or live website with traffic. Write what happens to that use when the domain transfers. Does the buyer get a running site with content and code? Does email continuity require a handover checklist? Does the redirect need to stay live until the buyer rebuilds, or does it vanish at settlement?

If extras such as social handles, trademarks, inventory, customer lists, or design files are included in the sale, list them in the brief. If they are excluded, write that too. The assumption is domain only unless the written brief says otherwise.

Inclusions scope changes mid-negotiation wreck deals. Telling a prospect that purchase includes the trademark, then discovering the trademark is held by a different entity the seller cannot transfer, converts an honest listing into a stalled mess. Write the perimeter before outreach so the domain broker does not promote inclusions you cannot deliver.

Write your asking posture in words. That might be a fixed ask, an ask range expressed as bands (low six figures, mid six figures), or a request that the broker solicit offers above a walk-away floor without publishing an ask. Do not leave this field empty and assume the broker will pick a number that feels right.

If you have a walk-away floor, write it. If you do not, write that you are willing to consider all reasonable offers and name the criteria for reasonable. If the domain name broker is expected to conduct a valuation exercise before proposing an ask, write that instruction and clarify whether the valuation will be free coaching, a paid professional domain appraisal, or a thin automated estimate. See free domain valuation vs professional domain appraisal and domain name appraisal for sellers for the difference.

Automated domain valuation tools and thin .au comparable sales samples are useful inputs for a worksheet. They are not guaranteed asking prices. If your brief says "tool X estimated $Y so that is my floor," write how firm that floor is and what would move it. Domain name valuation estimates without local liquidity comps may still carry large error margins. The domain broker can work with a guess labelled as a guess. The broker cannot work with a guess the seller treats as a certified figure but refuses to defend in writing.

Write whether you want quiet brokered outreach only, a marketplace listing (Sedo, Afternic, Dan, or another platform), or both. Write any confidentiality constraints: can the broker mention your current company or site in the pitch, or must the sale remain anonymous until a term sheet is signed? If the domain is critical infrastructure for a running business, write how much downtime or redirect interruption you can tolerate during handover.

Write who has authority to accept an offer, counter, or walk away on the seller side. If multiple stakeholders must approve, name them and give the domain broker an expected decision timeline. Some premium .au domains sit inside company estates or family trusts where the registered contact cannot unilaterally accept. If that structure applies, the brief must say so before the domain name broker tells a prospect "we can close in 48 hours."

If prior inbound offers exist, summarise them in the brief without inventing amounts or named prospects where confidentiality bars it. The domain broker needs to know whether this is a first-time list or a restart after earlier outreach failed. Restarts require adjusted pitch framing.

Write whether the domain is currently locked at the registrar and whether you can unlock it within 24 hours of settlement. Write whether you have access to the auth code (transfer authorisation code, EPP code, or equivalent depending on the registry) or can request it immediately.

Write the next renewal date. Buyers care whether they are purchasing a domain that renews in three days or three years. If the renewal date is soon, some sellers renew before listing to remove deadline pressure. Write what you did or what you expect the buyer to accept.

If two-factor authentication, email forwarding, or DNS hosting config will delay the transfer, note those dependencies in the brief. Clean handover checklists prevent the post-settlement blame game where the buyer thinks the domain broker promised instant transfer and the seller thinks 72-hour DNS propagation is obvious.

Eligibility gates for .au and .com.au mean overseas interest cannot always close even when funds clear. A written brief that skips the eligibility pathway invites the domain broker to sell a domain the buyer cannot hold. That mistake is not a negotiation miss. It is a qualification miss that could have been caught in the intake form.

Thin .au public comparable sales make domain name valuation guesswork wider than .com guesswork. Sellers sometimes import automated .com tool estimates or offshore mega-sale ceilings and treat them as local asking truth. See using an international headline as a comparable for an Australian acquisition. The written asking posture must label the gaps so the domain broker does not quote a number the seller cannot defend and will not negotiate below.

Australian owners often want quiet brokered outreach rather than loud marketplace visibility. That preference must be written before the domain name broker uploads the listing to a public platform. Confidentiality constraints that arrive mid-campaign are scope changes, not clarifications.

Before Perfect Domain begins outreach for a premium .au or .com.au listing, we ask the seller to complete a written intake form. Until that form is returned with the fields below filled, outreach does not start. The form is not a legal brokerage agreement. That agreement is separate and follows the intake. The form is the instruction set that tells us what to promote and what constraints to respect.

The required fields:

1. Exact domain string and extension; current registrar; registrant legal name and jurisdiction.
2. .au / .com.au eligibility pathway the seller satisfies today, and whether offshore buyers can use the same path or need to onshore first.
3. Current use (parked, email, redirect, live site) and what happens to that use at transfer.
4. Inclusions perimeter: domain only, or domain plus named extras (social handles, trademarks, inventory, or other assets). Exclusions if any.
5. Asking posture in words: fixed ask, ask range, or offer solicitation above a walk-away floor. If no walk-away exists, criteria for reasonable offers.
6. Domain name valuation basis if the seller used an automated tool, hired a professional domain appraisal, or wants us to propose an ask range after comps research. Gaps and error margins labelled.
7. Channel preference: quiet brokered outreach, marketplace listing, or both. Confidentiality constraints.
8. Decision authority: who can accept, counter, and walk on the seller side, and expected decision SLA.
9. Known prior inbound offers or outreach history, without invented amounts where confidentiality applies.
10. Unlock readiness, auth code access, next renewal date, and any DNS or config dependencies that affect handover speed.

We refuse to guess what the form leaves blank. If eligibility is silent, we ask again. If inclusions perimeter is ambiguous, we ask for a cleaned list before the first pitch email is drafted. If asking posture says "make me an offer" without a walk-away, we ask what criteria define reasonable so we do not waste the seller's time bringing lowball interest.

That intake discipline is not bureaucracy. It is how Perfect Domain ensures the domain broker can pitch accurately from day one instead of improvising posture and finding out six weeks into a campaign that the improvisation contradicted what the seller actually wanted. Listings fail when the brief arrives in pieces. The intake form forces the complete brief before outreach begins.