v1.5 · effective Jun 2026
LANGMOOR RATING METHODOLOGY

How the grade is made.

One number, one rule: how easily could you sell? Here is exactly how we answer it — in plain English first, then the full math. No black box. Every figure traces to official data anyone can re-derive.

In plain EnglishThe exact mathInvestment GradeLocation indices
Version 1.5 Effective Jun 2026 131 communities · 2,072 buildings 197,176 official DLD sales ● Independent — no listings, no fees
IN PLAIN ENGLISHread this first
We rate one thing: how easily you could sell. That's it.

A community where 500 homes resold last year is far easier to exit than one where 5 did. The Langmoor grade is that idea — real resale activity — made fair and comparable across all of Dubai. A higher grade means a deeper, busier resale market, so if you ever need to sell, there are real buyers. Nothing more, nothing less.

1
Count the real resales

Completed homes that actually changed hands on the open market — not off-plan launch hype.

2
Adjust for handovers

A wave of new towers completing isn't real demand. We discount supply-heavy areas so they can't look more liquid than they are.

3
Give it a grade

More genuine resale depth → a higher grade, from Aaa (deepest) down to Caa (thinnest).

WHAT EACH GRADE MEANSthe one thing to remember
Aaa
Deepest, most liquid — a constant stream of resales; exit almost anytime
Aa
Very deep & stable — a strong, reliable resale market
A
Established & liquid — sells steadily
Baa
Solid mid-market — a healthy, working resale market
Ba
Adequate, thinner — it sells, but with fewer buyers
B
Shallow — slower to exit; be patient on timing
Caa
Thin / early — few resales; hardest to exit — caution
NR
Not rated — under 5 resales; too thin to grade honestly. We'd rather say nothing than guess

Same letters you know from credit ratings. A community grade is on an absolute scale; a building grade ranks it among all Dubai towers — why they differ →

WHAT THE GRADE IS — AND ISN'T
It measures resale liquidity. It is not a price, a prestige score, or a forecast.

A cheap, busy market out-grades an expensive, quiet one — and that's the point. Prestige and price show up in our PSF and yield figures, never in the grade. We earn no commission, list no property, and take no fee on any deal — so the number has no reason to flatter anyone. It answers the one question an owner actually cares about: if I needed to sell, is there a real, repeating market here?

THE EXACT MATHfor the analyst

We count only secondary (Ready) resales over the trailing window and deliberately exclude off-plan from the depth count — a launch selling out off-plan proves primary demand, not that you can exit later. Off-plan enters in one place only: the maturity discount. Source: official Dubai Land Department open data, AED, May 2025 – June 2026.

Base (depth)
20 + 7.4 × ln(resales)  —  more secondary sales ⇒ deeper, more liquid
Maturity
resales ÷ off-plan  —  genuine resale vs un-handed-over supply
Discount
min(1, 0.6 + 0.4 × maturity)  —  caps at 1.0; floors at 0.6 for supply-heavy areas
Score
(20 + 7.4 × ln resales) × min(1, 0.6 + 0.4 × [resales ÷ off-plan]), clipped 0–100
Not rated
NR below 5 secondary resales — too thin to grade honestly

Why discount maturity? A handover wave makes a brand-new district look liquid — thousands of first-sales and quick flips. Maturity (resales ÷ off-plan) catches it: where new supply dwarfs true resale, the score is marked down so supply can't masquerade as exitability.

Worked examples
Burj Khalifa (building)
142 resales, 0 off-plan → discount 1.0 → 20 + 7.4·ln(142) = 57. As a building, that ranks in the top ~2% of all Dubai towers → Langmoor Aaa (the same 57 on the community scale reads Baa)
Supply-heavy area (community)
1,000 resales but 4,000 off-plan → maturity 0.25, discount 0.70 → 71 × 0.70 = 50Langmoor Ba (a would-be A, correctly marked down)
TWO CALIBRATIONS — COMMUNITY vs BUILDINGfor the analyst

A community is graded on its absolute liquidity score; a building by where its liquidity ranks among all ~2,072 Dubai buildings. One tower trades far less than a whole district, so scoring buildings on the community scale bunched them all at the bottom — the percentile fix lets the most-traded towers earn Aaa/Aa and actually separates them. A building "Aa" means top-tier among buildings, like a corporate Aaa and a sovereign Aaa each rated within their own universe.

COMMUNITY · absolute liquidity score
GradeThresholdMeaning
Aaa84+Deepest, most liquid
Aa74+Very deep & stable
A64+Established, liquid
Baa55+Solid mid-market
Ba46+Adequate, thinner
B38+Shallow
Caa< 38Thin / early
BUILDING · rank among all Dubai towers (v1.5)
GradePercentileMeaning
Aaatop 2%The most-traded towers in Dubai
Aanext 7%Very deeply traded
Anext 14%Established, liquid
Baanext 22%Solid mid-pack
Banext 25%Adequate, thinner
Bnext 18%Shallow
Caabottom 12%Thinnest-traded

Bands re-calibrate each monthly refresh as the building cohort shifts. Thinly-traded buildings (under ~15 resales) are most sensitive — one extra sale can cross a band — so weight 20+-resale grades most heavily.

THE Langmoor INVESTMENT GRADEthe composite
A second, optional read for investors — the liquidity grade plus location and income, in one transparent number.

The pure liquidity grade above stays exactly as it is — that purity is the point. The Investment Grade sits on top of it: a published, weighted blend of five normalised dimensions, every component shown on the page so it's fully reproducible. It never replaces the liquidity grade.

Liquidity 35%
Accessibility 22%
Amenity 15%
Yield 16%
Stability 12%

Weights renormalise to whatever dimensions a place has. Price-stability = how tight and consistent its resale prices are (an efficient market prices steadily). A building inherits its community's location dimensions and contributes its own liquidity — so two towers in one community can score differently on what truly separates them: how actively each one trades.

LOCATION INDICESdata: Google

Langmoor Accessibility — traffic-aware drive-time from each community to Dubai's key hubs (DIFC, Downtown, DXB, Marina and more), percentile-ranked across communities into a 0–100 score and an A+–D band. Langmoor Amenity density — a weighted count of everyday amenities (metro, schools, supermarkets, healthcare, parks, retail) within 1.5 km of the community centre. Both are derived from Google Maps Platform data and stored as our own scores only; they feed the Investment Grade and are shown beside it — never inside the pure liquidity grade.

PRICES & YIELDS — SEPARATE FROM THE GRADE

Alongside the grade we publish, where the data supports it: sale PSF (median resale AED/sqft), villa PSF, and net yield = (annual rent PSF − service-charge PSF) ÷ sale PSF, from official Ejari rents and Mollak service charges. These carry prestige and income — kept deliberately separate so they never inflate the liquidity grade. Where coverage is thin, the figure shows "—" rather than a guess.

DOES THE GRADE HOLD UP?for the analyst
Yes — and we're precise about what the test shows: the grade is a stable, reproducible measure of liquidity, and liquidity itself is highly persistent.
The validation, in full
Temporal split
persistence
Grade from the first ~6 months, then actual resale volume in the next ~6. Rank correlation 0.69 (n=91); top-quartile communities went on to trade ~300 vs ~8 next-period resales. Read honestly: liquidity is highly persistent — raw past volume carries forward at 0.97 — so the grade is a stable, maturity-discounted measure of that, not a forecast that beats past volume. The discount trades a little raw persistence (0.97→0.69) so a handover wave isn't credited as exitability.
Cross-source
The grade lines up with our exit-pressure metric: rank correlation −0.52 (n=46) — higher grade, faster-selling market. Only partially independent (shared DLD denominator makes much of it mechanical), so we report it as corroboration, not proof.

A rating you can stress-test is a rating you can trust. Every figure is reproducible from the same official data, baselines included, re-run each refresh — if the grade ever stopped tracking realised liquidity, we'd publish that too.

WHAT THIS METHOD DOES NOT DO
  • It does not rate prestige, quality, or whether a price is "good" — only how liquid the resale market is.
  • It does not forecast prices. It measures the trailing window, it doesn't predict the next one.
  • It does not grade off-plan-only projects with no secondary market — those stay NR until real resales appear.
  • It is not investment advice. It is indicative market intelligence.
INDEPENDENCE
Langmoor earns no commission, lists no property, and takes no fee on any deal. The grade has no agenda — which is the entire point. Every number traces to official DLD open-data prints anyone can re-derive. We grade our own house as coldly as anyone's.
GOVERNANCE & VERSIONING
One published, versioned rulebook. When the method changes, the version increments and the change is recorded — grades are never quietly re-cut.
v1.5 · Jun 2026
Building grades re-calibrated to a building-relative percentile scale; pure area/villa-community aggregates excluded. Langmoor Investment Grade (5-dimension composite) + Accessibility & Amenity indices added, on top of the unchanged liquidity grade. 2,072 buildings.
v1.4 · Jun 2026
Maturity adjustment added; whole-market migration to the full official DLD warehouse — 197,176 sales, apartments + villas.
v1.3 · Jun 2026
Liquidity redefined as secondary (resale) depth only; off-plan excluded. Score recalibrated to 20 + 7.4·ln(resales).
v1.0–1.2
Initial liquidity grade; interim feed superseded; the finding that short-term momentum mean-reverts — which is why we grade on liquidity, not momentum.
Langmoor Rating Methodology v1.5 · effective Jun 2026 · basis: official Dubai Land Department open data, May 2025 – June 2026, in AED
Indicative market intelligence — not investment advice. © Langmoor Intelligence.