A general meeting creates three lots out of the common parts of a floor, then sells one of them to the company already occupying it, for one euro. Two years later, a co-owner points out at a meeting that these common parts had a market value and had produced rent. Seven years on, the co-owners’ syndicate turns against its former syndic for failing to advise it to have a fair price fixed by an expert. Too late, rules the Cour de cassation (the French supreme court for civil and commercial matters) on 12 February 2026: the limitation period ran from that intervention at the meeting. The ruling is about the time limit, but it says a lot about the value of common parts.
In a French co-owned building, the parties communes (common parts) are the areas owned collectively by all the co-owners: stairwells, corridors, landings, attics, structure. The syndic is the managing agent, usually a professional firm, appointed by the general meeting to run the building and carry out its decisions. The co-owners as a body form the syndicat des copropriétaires (co-owners’ syndicate), which has legal personality and can sue.
The facts
An SCI (société civile immobilière, a French property-holding company) owned lots 30 to 35 on the ground floor of a building. On 20 June 2013, the general meeting decided “to create three lots out of the common parts formed by the first floor of building C, occupied by SCI Bella, including lot no. 105, and then, on 24 July 2014, to sell that lot to SCI Bella for the price of one euro” (translated from the French). A second SCI then acquired the ground-floor lots on 5 February 2015 and lot 105 on 28 April 2015.
On 7 May 2018, the co-owners’ syndicate sued the two SCIs “for compensation for its losses resulting from the failure to collect occupation indemnities for the common parts that became lot no. 105, on account of their unlawful appropriation, and from their sale at a price below their real value”. A judgment of 21 October 2021 ordered the first SCI to pay a certain sum.
On 5 December 2022, the syndicate sued its syndic from 2013 to 2021 and the syndic’s insurer, for breach of the duty to advise. The Montpellier Court of Appeal, on 7 March 2024, held the claim time-barred.
The decision
The appeal was dismissed (Cass. 3e civ., 12 February 2026, appeal no. 24-14.646).
The syndicate argued that the limitation period for a liability claim against the professional assisting it could only run from the day the decision partly dismissing its claim against the third party, here the SCI, became final.
The Cour de cassation approved the Court of Appeal. The latter had noted that the syndicate accused its former syndic of breaching its duty to advise “by not suggesting that it enter into an occupation agreement for the common parts incorporated into SCI Bella’s lots and by not proposing that they be sold at a fair price fixed by a property valuation expert”. It had then found, within its sovereign power of assessment, that the resulting damage, which arose before the 2021 judgment, “had been brought to its attention at the general meeting of co-owners of 19 June 2015 by one of the co-owners, who had stated that the common parts sold had a market value and had generated rent for several years which should have been paid to the co-ownership, that intervention having been recorded in the minutes”.
The damage relied on “did not depend on the litigation” brought against the SCI; the syndicate “had been put in a position to act against its former syndic from 19 June 2015”. Brought on 5 December 2022, the claim was time-barred under article 2224 of the Civil Code, which sets a five-year period running from the day the holder of the right knew or should have known the facts enabling him to exercise it.
What the expert takes from it
A floor of common parts has a market value, even when occupied. The ruling says so in the words of a co-owner, taken up by the judges. A corridor, a landing, an attic or a whole floor is worth something to the lot that can absorb it: additional living or commercial area, private access, scope for conversion. The Charte de l’expertise en évaluation immobilière (the French property valuation charter) distinguishes market value, which assumes any buyer, from the special or synergy value specific to a particular buyer for whom the property has a specific interest (6th edition, November 2025, Title III, § 1.1 and § 1.11). For common parts sold to the neighbouring co-owner, it is often this second notion that governs the price: what the enlarged lot is worth, less what it was worth before, less the cost of the works to incorporate the area.
A fair price is fixed before the vote, not after. Article 26 of the law of 10 July 1965 on co-owned buildings subjects the disposal of common parts to a qualified majority. A valuation report, attached to the notice of meeting, allows the co-owners to vote with full knowledge and the notaire (French civil-law notary) to draw up a deed whose price will not be challenged. The valuation describes what is being sold, the areas, the shares of the co-ownership to be recalculated and the value retained, with its supporting evidence.
Past occupation can be quantified too. The syndicate claimed occupation indemnities for the years during which the common parts were used without an agreement. That item is calculated from the market rental value (Charte, Title III, § 1.4), applied to the area occupied and to the duration, with the rent actually collected by the occupier as a point of comparison. Finally, the ruling shows that these figures must be claimed within the time limit: knowledge of the value, recorded in the minutes, starts the limitation period running.
Further reading
The Market value page describes the valuation of a property or of part of a building, the timescale and the fee. On the same theme: Valuing common parts of a French building, including a stairwell and Pre-emption price in France: valued as it stands at judgment. The ruling is available on Légifrance.
What next
Your co-ownership is considering selling a corridor, a landing, an attic?
I value the common parts at a fair price, taking into account what they bring to the lot that absorbs them and what they are worth to the co-ownership. The report secures the vote of the general meeting and the deed of sale.
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