Methodology
How the score works
No hype, no estimates — here's exactly what feeds the number, in plain language.
Where the numbers come from
Official government sale records (DLD)
Every fair-value read starts with cleared sales from the Dubai Land Department (DLD) — the government's own record of what actually sold, not what someone is asking. This is ground truth for price.
Registered tenancy contracts (Ejari)
Yield is calculated from Ejari — Dubai's official rent-contract registry — never from asking rent. Asking rent is what a landlord hopes for; Ejari is what tenants actually signed.
Property Finder — context only, never the score
Live listing details from Property Finder (asking price, photos, and — when a building has too few Ejari contracts — supplemental rent data) appear for context. They are shown on the report but never used to calculate the number.
How the Property Score is weighted
The score is built from four components. Value carries the most weight because what you're paying versus what the building actually sells for is the biggest driver of whether a deal is good — market timing is a smaller, capped input.
| Component | Weight |
|---|---|
| Value vs market | 45% |
| Resale ease (liquidity) | 25% |
| Rent return (yield) | 20% |
| Price trend | 10% |
Value vs market (45%): How far the asking price sits from the building's typical price per square foot.
Resale ease (liquidity) (25%): How actively this building and bedroom count actually trade.
Rent return (yield) (20%): Rent return against the Dubai market average, from Ejari contracts.
Price trend (10%): Whether the building or community is rising or cooling — capped, because what a property is worth today matters more than short-term market timing.
The confidence system
Every score ships with a confidence read — Very High, High, Medium, or Low — shown as dots next to the number. Confidence follows a weakest-link rule: the overall level is set by the thinnest input, not an average. A building with very little transaction history gets pulled to community- or area-level benchmarks — and each fallback step caps confidence lower: community data caps it at Medium, area data caps it at Low. If the rent-return figure is flagged as statistically unreliable, that alone caps yield confidence at Low, no matter how many contracts fed the price side. Thin data should never look as trustworthy as thick data.
When there isn't enough data
When a building has too little official transaction history to support a number, Nestly returns an honest insufficient-data state instead of a score — never a guess dressed up as a number. A missing score is a feature, not a bug: a confident wrong answer is worse than telling you the evidence isn't there yet.
What Nestly does not do
Score off-plan projects. A project that hasn't been built has no real sale history yet — Nestly returns a project intelligence card (developer tier, delivery risk, ready-property comps) instead of a deal score.
Score Abu Dhabi properties. That coverage isn't live yet — you'll see a straightforward "coming soon" instead of a number.
Use asking rent for rent return. Asking rent is shown for context only; the yield figure is always calculated from registered Ejari contracts.
Treat every property type the same. Apartments and studios get the full score. Villas, townhouses, and penthouses are scored from community-level benchmarks only, at Medium confidence or lower. Commercial units, hotel apartments, plots, and land aren't scored at all.
Questions about how a specific report was built? Read more on About or continue in the app on Home.