A metropolitan authority compulsorily purchases flats and cellars in a co-owned building subject to a dangerous-structure order. To fix the indemnity, the Court of Appeal deducts from the value of the lots the cost of works estimated in 2013 by the authority, updated in 2021, and refuses to count the area of the cellars. On 30 January 2025 the Cour de cassation (the French supreme court for civil matters) quashed on both points: structural works had been carried out in the meantime, and the court had itself found that the cellars added value in sales. The decision is unpublished, but it touches two reflexes in the computation of indemnities that a valuation report must check line by line.
The facts
The owner of several lots, flats and cellars, in a co-owned building is expropriated by a metropolitan authority. A dangerous-structure order was issued in 2014; the co-ownership carried out structural works, and the order was lifted in 2019. The Lyon Court of Appeal, on 5 September 2023, fixed the total dispossession indemnity at 303,940 €, including 275,400 € as principal indemnity and 28,540 € as reinvestment allowance, for five lots.
To get there, it started from a value per square metre, deducted the cost of works as estimated in 2013 by the authority and updated in 2021, the sale fees and the operator’s margin. It further refused to take into account a weighted area for the cellars, whose surface “cannot artificially increase that of the flats”, while noting that those cellars added value in sales.
The decision
The third civil chamber quashed the judgment (Cass. 3e civ., 30 January 2025, no. 23-22.836), under article L. 321-1 of the Code of Expropriation in the Public Interest: “the indemnities awarded cover the whole of the direct, material and certain loss caused by the expropriation”.
On the works: the Court of Appeal had noted “that the condition of the building was worse in 2014 than in 2019 and that structural works had been carried out to obtain, at the latter date, the lifting of the dangerous-structure order, from which it followed that part of the works whose cost had been estimated in 2013 by the authority had been carried out, so that that cost could not be deducted from the value of the property to be expropriated”. By deducting it anyway, it “did not draw the legal consequences of its own findings”.
On the cellars: having noted that they “added value in sales, without any reason showing that the average price retained for the expropriated flats took such added value into account”, the Court of Appeal “did not give a legal basis to its decision”. The case is remitted to the Dijon Court of Appeal for the computation of the indemnities.
What this changes for valuation
A deduction for works presumes works still to be done. Deducting the cost of restoring a lot from its value is legitimate when the buyer will actually have to incur it; that is what an informed buyer would do, and market value is defined by reference to that buyer. But an old estimate, here from 2013, no longer describes the building after the structural works voted by the co-ownership and the lifting of the order. The valuation report therefore checks, document by document, the condition at the reference date: minutes of general meetings, calls for funds paid, invoices, the architect’s report that led to the lifting. What the co-owners paid, including the expropriated owner in proportion to her shares, cannot be deducted a second time.
Annexes count, but not twice. A cellar, an attic, a parking space or a private garden are not added metre for metre to the living area; they enter the value through a weighted area, with a coefficient, or through a lump-sum value, according to local market practice. What the Court holds against the Court of Appeal is having found the added value and counted it nowhere: neither in the area, nor in the unit price, nor as a separate amount. The valuer picks a method and explains it; the only mistake is silence.
Consistency between comparables and the property valued. If the average price per square metre comes from sales of flats with a cellar, it already includes the added value, and a separate value for the cellar would double count; if it comes from sales without a cellar, or from raw unadjusted references, the cellar must be added. The report states for each comparable whether annexes were present, so the judge can follow the computation.
Fees and operator’s margin. The Court of Appeal had also deducted sale fees and an operator’s margin, as in a developer’s residual appraisal. That approach was not censured as such, but it calls for the same care: a residual method is justified for a building to be redeveloped, not for lots valued by comparison, and the two are not combined.
The reinvestment allowance follows the principal indemnity. The 28,540 € reinvestment allowance is computed in bands on the principal indemnity; any correction of the latter changes it, which the Court reflects by quashing the total indemnity.
What the valuer takes from it
- A deduction for works is justified only for works still to be carried out at the reference date; works voted and paid by the co-ownership are not deducted.
- An annex that adds value to a lot enters the indemnity, through a weighted area, a lump sum or an adjusted unit price, but only once.
- Each comparable is described with its annexes, so the judge can see whether the added value is already in the unit price.
- A residual appraisal and the comparison method are not combined on the same lot.
- The reinvestment allowance is recomputed as soon as the principal indemnity changes.
Further reading
The Compulsory purchase and pre-emption page describes the assignment, its timescale and its fee. The glossary entries surface pondérée and indemnité de remploi complement this article. On the same theme: Compulsory purchase: three recent rulings and Pre-emption: the price set by the judge and the condition of the property in co-ownership. The decision is available on Légifrance.
What next
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