many times when this happens they failed to renew their name in time. They have 30 days to renew it before the price goes sky high. They have 1 year before they can not renew it and it goes back up for sale to anyone.
Not always. Sometimes it goes up for sale the next day, or simply gets dropped and someone snaps it up.
This particular one now has an expiration date of 2/18/16, and was updated 3/8/15.
I worked for a web hosting company for a few years. We dealt with this all the time. They can not be sold till they have been expired for a year. The new date on there is the one year date before it is released. Sometimes with really hot names the name will be "reserved" by a company and an automatic bit on it will go out the very minute it is released. They will then put it out for bid to the highest bidder.