.villas Domain: An Address for Holiday Property
The .villas extension entered the root zone on 6 February 2014; its ICANN agreement is dated 5 December 2013 and the contracting party is Binky Moon, LLC, part of Identity Digital. Villa rental portals, boutique accommodation businesses, resort management companies, property developers and regional housing agencies all take names here. The zone held 8,164 registrations on 14 August 2026.
Because the word describes the type of accommodation by itself, the address leaves the root free for a place or a quality. Most projects in this zone tie the root to geography, since search intent nearly always begins with a place name. Test combinations of region and attribute on the .villas domain search page.
The agreement makes protection of geographic names at the second level a contractual condition: the registry passes the list of prohibited geographic names to registrars, keeps it identical to ICANN's, and releasing any of those names requires consulting ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee and obtaining ICANN's permission. In holiday regions that is not an abstract rule: country names and some settlement names may sit on the list. The decision rule is simple — tie the root not to a country but to a district, bay or attribute; you avoid the list and meet less competition.
.VILLAS Domain at a Glance
- Registry operator Binky Moon, LLC (Identity Digital)
- Root zone entry 6 February 2014
- Eligibility None; the agreement forbids identity-based restriction
- Contractual rule Geographic name protection at the second level, matched to ICANN's list
- Zone size 8,164 registrations (14 August 2026)
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .villas domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
Related Domain Extensions
Registering the same name on more than one extension keeps someone else from taking your brand.
.villas Domain Prices — No Surprise Fees
Registration, transfer and renewal fees are listed separately. The renewal price can differ from the first-year price, so you see both up front.
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New Registration
$16.90 /year -
Transfer
$59.79 /year -
Renewal
$64.39 /year -
Restore
$149.90 -
Late Renewal
$10.39
Included With Every .villas Domain
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Free DNS management
Change A, MX, TXT and CNAME records yourself from the panel — no waiting on anyone when you move a site or mailbox.
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Domain lock
While the lock is on, nobody can move your domain to another registrar without your approval.
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Domain forwarding
Point the domain at your existing site, a campaign page or a social profile — at no extra cost.
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Free WHOIS privacy
Your name, address and phone stay out of public WHOIS records, which cuts down spam and scam calls.
.villas Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .villas domain is put on Client Hold on its expiry date, so the site and e-mail stop that same day. You can still renew during the first 20 days, but from this point a late renewal fee is added on top of the renewal price. On day 20 the registration is deleted and until day 50 only a paid restore brings it back. Nothing at all can be done in the 5 days that follow, and on day 55 the name is open to anyone. There is exactly one way never to enter this chain: keep auto-renewal on.
Domain Is Available (Available)
A .villas address at this stage has not been taken yet, and it goes to whoever registers first. Check the name you have in mind — if it is free, it can be yours within minutes.
Domain Is Active (Active Period)
Once registration is complete, the domain is registered to you for the term you selected. You can renew at any point before it expires to keep it active, or switch on auto-renewal so you never have to watch the date.
Renewal Window (Client Hold)
On its expiry date your .villas domain is put on Client Hold: the site and e-mail go down that day, but the registration is still yours. A single renewal within these first 20 days brings everything back exactly as it was — nothing is lost. The only difference is that a $10.39 late renewal fee is now added to the renewal price; renewing before the expiry date avoids that fee entirely.
Redemption Period (Redemption / RGP)
On day 20 the registration is deleted and the 30-day redemption period that ICANN requires of every gTLD registry begins. The name is not released to anyone during this time; only you can take it back, by paying the restore fee, until day 50. That fee is far higher than a renewal — renewing on time is always the cheaper route.
Pending Delete (Pending Delete)
Once the redemption window closes too, the domain enters its final 5 days and there is no way back. Neither renewal nor restore works here; nobody — your registrar included — can return the name to you. The registry uses this window as the last hold before the name goes back into the pool.
Open to Anyone Again (Released)
On day 55 the name .villas returns to the pool and anyone can register it. Sought-after names are often gone within seconds, and there is no guaranteed way to get one back. Yet staying out of this timeline is entirely in your hands: leave auto-renewal on and the expiry date will never catch you off guard.
The timeline above is the schedule Atak Domain applies and publishes. The ICANN chart you will find elsewhere shows a renewal window of up to 45 days after expiry; ICANN's policy on expired registrations (section 2.2.1) lets registrars delete an expired domain at any time, provided they disclose their policy in advance. We apply that window as 20 days and publish it here in plain sight. Full text of the policy: ICANN Expired Registration Recovery Policy
.villas Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.villas Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .villas domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 2 - 10 servers
.villas Domain Support
- IDN Support Yes
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .villas Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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It can. Because the agreement forbids the registry from limiting eligibility by identity, no agency authorisation, real estate trading registration or operating licence is requested. Professional duties remain: letting and brokerage are governed by the law of the country you operate in, and that does not change with the domain. To earn visitor trust, publish your trading name, your licence number if you have one, and your contact details plainly on the page.
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Most likely not. The agreement requires geographic names to be protected at the second level, and a large share of country names sits on the list closed to registration; releasing them is possible only with ICANN's permission and after consulting the Governmental Advisory Committee. The practical answer is to go narrower: a district, a bay or a regional name avoids the list and matches search intent more closely anyway.
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Two-word roots pairing a place with an attribute give the most consistent results: qualities such as beachfront, pool or family match the way visitors use filters. Single-word generic roots are largely taken in this zone. What to avoid is echoing the extension inside the root. Keep your candidate list wide and run it in one step through bulk domain name search.
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Holiday rental sites stay quiet for much of the year, and if the renewal date falls in that stretch it can pass unnoticed. An expired name first drops out of the zone, then enters a redemption period, and once that ends it becomes available again. Two measures cut the risk: choose a term longer than one year at the outset and leave automatic renewal switched on. A site that is down when the season opens means bookings lost outright.
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Villa sites run on high-resolution photography and page weight climbs quickly; a gallery that opens slowly on a mobile connection sends the visitor back to the listings. Compressing images and using a modern format is the first step, choosing a plan with adequate bandwidth the second. Compare the options on the hosting page.
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