In January of this year we checked the available CCCC (4 character) .com domains. There are 1,679,616 total of these domains. When we checked in January, around 60% were registered. That suggested that around 700,000 were available.
We just re-checked these, again using random bulk searches (20 searches of 500 domains each). 63.69% were registered, and 36.31% were available. This comes out to around 609,822 available for registration, a noticeable drop since January.
These domains certainly aren't going to be bought out any time soon, especially with a 3-4% annual increase in the registration rate. Maybe around 2031. But still interesting to see increased registration trends even in a sluggish market for short domains.
But there's another point to consider. A reminder that the CCCC.com market is really several different markets. It is comprised of the NNNN.com domains (10,000 of these), the LLLL.com domains (456,976 of these), and then the rest are "true" CCCC.com domains, meaning a mix of letters and numbers. In this light, the annual increase in registration rate actually looks a little stronger. We know that there are no changes in registration year-over-year for the NNNN's or the LLLL's, so we are really talking about a smaller pool of true CCCC.com domains.
When viewed in this light, the registration increase was actually around 7% in 2018. If these rates were to hold steady, there could potentially be a buyout around 2025.