Liases Foras
Overview
Liases Foras is a Mumbai-based real estate data, research and valuation firm, formally Liases Foras Real Estate Rating and Research Pvt Ltd. Founded in 1998, it is an independent, non-brokerage research company that tracks residential markets, prices, sales and unsold inventory across Indian cities and publishes quarterly market data and indices. Its figures and the commentary of its founder are widely quoted by Indian newspapers and business publications reporting on housing trends, affordability and property cycles.
The firm emphasises that it is a non-broking company: it does not sell property, and its income comes from data, research, valuation and advisory work for banks, housing finance companies, developers, funds and government-linked bodies. That independence is central to its credibility as a media source, because its price and inventory statistics are not produced by a participant trying to transact in the market it measures. Its office is in Andheri East, Mumbai, Maharashtra, and its website is liasesforas.com.
History and Founding
Liases Foras was founded in 1998 by Pankaj Kapoor, who remains its Founder and Managing Director. Company histories state that within a decade it had shaped up as a foremost authority on Indian real estate research, at a time when organised data on the sector barely existed. Kapoor brought a valuation background to the venture: profile material records more than twenty years of experience in valuation, consulting and risk analytics, affiliation with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, membership of the central advisory council of the Real Estate Regulatory Authority framework, a role leading implementation and development of RESIDEX, the National Housing Bank's housing price index, membership of the external valuation committee of the Asset Reconstruction Company (India) Ltd, and a place on an expert panel at Axis Bank. He received a Bharat Nirman Award from the Global Achiever Foundation for developing his Magnet Theory and Urban Price Setting Model.
The firm grew by doing on-ground data collection quarter after quarter. Where Indian property discussion had previously relied on broker opinion and asking prices, Liases Foras built a structured database of projects, prices and inventory from field research, and turned that database into indices and advisory products.
Data, RESSEX and Quarterly Research
The company's best-known creation is RESSEX, described as India's first ever Real Estate Sensitivity Index and the first organised database on the industry put online, including demand, supply and price movements among other market dynamics. The firm collects real estate market trends and data every three months and compiles the Ressex market update from those quarterly rounds. Its proprietary database of residential developments has been described as collecting inventory and pricing data on the top 25 cities in India, covering around 15,000 new build projects from over 8,000 developers on a quarterly basis.
Quarterly collection is the methodological core of the business. A fleet of on-ground researchers and a core team of architects, urban planners and civil engineers track projects city by city, recording new launches, sales velocity, prices and the stock of unsold units, often expressed in the firm's widely reported measure of how many months or quarters of inventory remain unsold. Because the series is collected consistently over many years, it can show turning points — the build-up of inventory before a correction, or the clearing of stock during a boom — that one-off surveys cannot.
Liases Foras has also worked on valuation science. Its Urban Price Setting Model is described as a simulation model providing market valuation of any property, old or new, in any city in India, and its Magnet Theory of future price projections attempts to predict development and prices from the attractiveness of a region and the impact of economic hubs. In 2014 the firm was reported to be launching a property search portal that would evaluate properties and suggest value based on density of the area, location, surroundings and product quality, with Kapoor saying the firm had tried to decode the science behind the price of a property, taking into account risk, location and density to suggest the right price to consumers, initially for properties across 25 cities.
Services and Clients
Liases Foras serves institutional clients with data subscriptions, research, valuation and risk advisory. Clients named in company material include HDFC, India REIT, Axis Bank, the Hiranandani Group, Deutsche Bank, Godrej Properties, Raheja Universal and Oberoi Realty — a list spanning housing finance, banking, funds and major developers. For lenders, its valuation and risk work helps assess whether collateral values and project prices are sustainable. For developers, its data help test pricing and product mix before launch. For investors and funds, its city and micro-market series help compare locations.
The firm specialises in risk advisory within real estate, a positioning reported when it planned its consumer portal: the portal was intended to give instantaneous analytical advice on whether a property was a risky investment. That risk lens also shapes its public commentary, which frequently warns when prices have run ahead of incomes or when inventory is concentrated in uninhabitable or poorly served locations.
Media Role and Market Commentary
Liases Foras data underpin a large share of Indian housing trend reporting. Its quarterly numbers are used to establish whether sales rose or fell, whether prices corrected, and which segments are driving the market. In Hindu BusinessLine reporting on affordable housing, Liases Foras numbers showed the contribution of homes costing less than 25 lakh rupees rising to 21 percent of sales from 8 percent three years earlier, becoming the fastest growing segment with maximum new launches, while the share of luxury homes above two crore rupees fell from 14 percent to 5 percent between the first quarter of 2016 and 2019, and affordable sales grew 32 percent year on year in the June quarter discussed. Kapoor's explanation quoted in that coverage was that the market had rationalised, with builders directing supply toward the affordable segment instead of the premium segment above 50 lakh rupees.
In earlier cycle coverage, BusinessLine reported Liases Foras data showing Mumbai and the National Capital Region as the worst hit by a real estate slowdown, with Mumbai prices falling and NCR rates down by about six percent since 2015 amid waning investor interest and incomplete projects, while Bengaluru and Hyderabad saw appreciation and Chennai rose less than five percent. Kapoor attributed NCR's weakness to very high investor participation and speculative pricing in locations with poor liveability, arguing the bubble had to burst. In still earlier commentary during a post-recession price surge, he warned that sales volumes would subdue if prices that had risen sharply did not correct. This pattern — data release plus a quotable, often cautionary interpretation from the founder — is why the firm's name recurs in housing coverage across decades and cycles.
People and Expertise
The firm's public identity is closely tied to Pankaj Kapoor, founder and managing director, an MRICS-qualified valuer with an MBA, whose roles in the RESIDEX index, regulatory advisory councils and bank valuation panels give the firm's commentary institutional weight beyond a private database. Profile material for the firm lists a core team including chartered accountancy, architecture, planning and valuation professionals, a team of more than twenty architects, urban planners and civil engineers, and an on-ground fleet of more than fifty people whose market knowledge has been built over decades. That staffing reflects the firm's model: property data in India cannot be scraped from a single registry, so it employs field staff to verify projects physically.
The Mumbai base matters as well. Mumbai is India's most expensive and most closely watched housing market, and a research firm headquartered there, in Andheri East, sits close to the developers, lenders and housing finance institutions that are both its clients and its subjects.
Industry Role
Liases Foras represents the first generation of organised Indian real estate research. Before firms like it, there was no consistent, independent series on housing prices and inventory; after RESSEX and the quarterly database, journalists, regulators and lenders had a common factual reference. Its work on RESIDEX with the National Housing Bank connected private research to official statistics, and its founder's regulatory and bank committee roles connected it to policy.
Its non-brokerage stance also made it a counterweight in public debate. When prices rise rapidly, transaction-driven voices tend to emphasise momentum; Liases Foras has often provided the opposing data on unsold inventory, affordability and speculative excess. For a media directory, it belongs among research and data agencies whose statistics and analysis are inputs into news, rather than among property portals or brokerages.
Digital Presence and Availability
Liases Foras' official website is liasesforas.com, where it presents its data, research, valuation and advisory services and publishes market material. Institutional clients subscribe to its database and quarterly research directly. The general public encounters the firm mainly through media quotation: national newspapers, business dailies and magazines cite its quarterly figures on sales, prices and inventory and interview its founder on the direction of the housing market, making those citations the principal public record of its long-running data series.
