Third-party valuer (tiers évaluateur)

A tiers évaluateur (third-party valuer) is an expert whom the parties choose together and to whose decision they agree in advance to submit. The task is not to advise one of them or to inform a judge: it is to fix a figure that will become the agreed price or value. The mechanism is old and simple. Two people want to conclude a deal, a sale, a transfer of shares, a partition, but cannot agree on the amount; rather than litigate, they defer to a third party whose competence and independence they both recognise.

The valuer’s decision has the force of a contract: it binds the parties as if they had fixed the price themselves. It can be challenged only for gross error, for exceeding the instruction or for lack of impartiality.

Where the rule comes from

Article 1592 of the French Civil Code provides that the sale price may be left to the estimate of a third party; if the third party is unwilling or unable to make the estimate, there is no sale. The third party is neither an arbitrator in the procedural sense nor a court-appointed expert: the third party is the joint agent of the parties, charged with completing their contract. Article 1843-4 of the same code organises a comparable mechanism for the value of company shares, with appointment by the president of the court failing agreement.

The Charte de l’expertise en évaluation immobilière (the French property valuation charter) describes the joint private valuation, requested jointly by two or more parties (Title I, § 1.1), and details the content of the valuation contract (Title II, § 9.1), which must specify the purpose of the instruction and the use that will be made of the report.

In a valuation report

The valuation contract, signed by all the parties, states that the valuation will be binding on them and fixes the valuation date, the basis of value adopted and the documents to be provided. I convene the parties to the visit, collect their observations in writing, then deliver a single reasoned report. I do not negotiate and I do not look for a compromise: I determine the value according to the methods of the Charte and the European standards, explaining each choice. That reasoning is what protects the parties against gross error and makes the figure acceptable to the party who was hoping for more.

Example

Two sisters who have inherited a house in CONCARNEAU want one to buy out the other’s share, but one mentions €380,000 and the other €450,000. They sign a contract appointing an expert as third-party valuer, undertaking to accept the value found. After a visit and analysis of nine comparable sales, the report concludes at €415,000. The soulte (equalising payment) is calculated on that basis, without court proceedings, within a few weeks.

Not to be confused with

The court-appointed expert, appointed by the judge, whose opinion binds neither the court nor the parties (article 246 of the French Code of Civil Procedure), and the expert of a single party, whose unilateral report cannot on its own found a court decision.