Comment by bickeringyokel

I have been able to pick up a handleful of useful domains like firstnamelastname.net without much effort and my total spend every year on domains is probably less than 50$. Maybe a dotcom is hard to come by but other TLD are not so bad. Your milage will totally vary, but I would say things are not totally broken, you can find decent domains at good prices if you're a l bit flexible or patient.