The Distribution Safety Score answers a simple question: how likely is this REIT to keep paying its current distribution next year?
It's a 0-100 score with four equally weighted components. Each component awards 25 points if the REIT clears the threshold, 0 if it doesn't. Missing data = 0 (we don't extrapolate).
Components
| # | Component | Threshold | Why |
| 1 | Payout ratio | < 90% | Distributions covered by accounting earnings |
| 2 | Coverage ratio | > 1.1× | Distributable income covers actual cash payouts |
| 3 | Occupancy | > 90% | Property income base is full |
| 4 | Debt / Assets | < 40% | Balance sheet has room before refinancing pain |
Reading the score
| Range | Read |
| 75–100 | All four boxes ticked. Distribution is well-covered on every visible metric. |
| 50–74 | Two or three boxes. Likely missing one of: high payout ratio, vacancy creeping up, or leverage above 40%. |
| 25–49 | Only one box ticked. Either yield trap material or genuinely missing data we can't fetch. |
| 0 | Either every threshold failed (rare) or none of the four metrics is available from our data sources. |
Honest caveats
A 0 doesn't always mean the REIT is unsafe — Yahoo Finance simply may not expose bookValue, occupancy, or coverage ratio for that ticker. We render 0 anyway because publishing partial scores would mislead. Cross-check by reading the REIT's most recent earnings release.
A 100 doesn't mean the distribution is bullet-proof either — hospitality REITs can lose occupancy in months, debt covenants can trip on revaluations. Use the score as a starting filter, not a final verdict.
Our full criteria, source fields and refresh schedule are in [methodology](/en/methodology).