If you are buying a preowned domain name do you get the balance of the original registration period or is it lost upon new ownership.

For examle I buy domain.com from an individual that originall registered the domain for 5 years. If the owner had 4 years left on the registration would the 4 years be transferred to me or would it be lost when the domain name was transferred in my name.

Thanks
Matt

The domain will keep it's initial expiration date, if it was set to expire on 2010 before the transfer, the exp. date will remain the same after its transferred.

If you transfer the domain from one registrar to another the gaining registrar may give you an extra year too, most of them do, in this case the new exp date will be 2011.

shopperx