What it means
A transfer lock is a 60-day period in which a domain cannot move to a different registrar. It exists at the level of ICANN policy rather than registrar preference, which means no amount of support-ticket persistence removes it. It is a protection against domain hijacking, and it works, at the cost of being an obstacle to legitimate sales that nobody thought to check for.
What starts the clock
Registering a new domain. Transferring one between registrars. And, at most registrars, changing the registrant's name or email address, which catches sellers who tidy up their records in preparation for a sale and thereby lock the asset they were preparing. That last case is the one worth remembering, because the action taken to make the sale smoother is what delays it.
How to check
Look at the domain's status codes in the registrar control panel, or read the public WHOIS record. A status beginning clientTransferProhibited, or a recent transfer or update date, both indicate a lock or a recent trigger. Check this before you list rather than after you accept an offer, because a buyer discovering it during the inspection period reasonably wonders what else was not checked.
Selling around it
A lock prevents transfer between registrars, not a change of ownership. Two options work. Push the domain to the buyer's account within the same registrar, which is immediate and free, and let them transfer out later if they wish. Or complete the sale with a written agreement that the registrar transfer happens on a stated date, with escrow released against the account push rather than the transfer. Both are ordinary practice, provided the arrangement is agreed in advance.
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