Jay

Watch for Fake PageRank sites
When considering an established website , it may well pay off , to get a professional to check the domain out , its history , when last sold , has it been banned in Search Engines. Are links pointing to the current site (current pages) Is there a domain forwarded to it (to create fake Pagerank ) is there a 301 direction on it

There are actually websites that deal in selling domains that have the green bar showing ( google toolbar )that is actually not true of the domain. Page Ranking only goes to pages not domains ( in themselves)

Another common practice is to buy a expired domain and load it up (often in a few days) with junk links and material. Just a heads up ...