In September 2019, Valrus specialists valued the Lukoil building, which is located on Olympic Avenue. By itself, this is a very unconventional object. In terms of architecture, the building looks like a ship with a small gas station under its nose, and in terms of its use, 2/3 of the building is a multi–level parking lot. Thanks to its appearance that, when you drive by, you might think that the building is completely office, and you won't even guess about parking…
Now directly about the case. In August 2019, the plaintiff appealed to the court to challenge the cadastral value and establish it at the market value, and the court of first instance entrusted the examination to our expert organization. It is necessary to say separately that within the framework of the cadastral valuation, this object was valued according to the group "office buildings as a whole", without taking into account the actual composition of the premises. During the work, all the characteristics of the object were taken into account, which means that we were able to distribute the areas according to their functional purposes, and in accordance with the explications to establish leasable areas. Thus, the market value, excluding VAT, was determined even lower than in the report with which the plaintiff initially appealed to the court. We assume that this happened because parking spaces were overestimated in their materials, since the plaintiff was based on the results of previous challenges.
The resulting cost raised a lot of questions, and in court we had to respond to the comments of the City Property Department. Thanks to our rather detailed and convincing answers, the court decided that the value we received was reliable.
After that, the case began to be considered in the appellate instance, and as we have already written in previous cases, it was in the fall of 2019 that judicial practice changed, and the First Court of Appeal of General Jurisdiction became the appellate instance. At that time, the court adhered to the position of determining the market value, actually including VAT, while saying that the value should be determined regardless. That is, it was meant that analogues and prices should not be adjusted and reduced by the amount of VAT. In order to avoid new legal costs, the court appointed an additional forensic examination to our organization, which we were working on just during the pandemic.
As a result, we made calculations again and calculated the cost of the object, regardless of VAT. However, in fact, the value added tax was included in the price, since all rental rates, operating expenses, and all parameters were used with it in mind. Naturally, the figure came out higher than the initial one, nevertheless, the decrease in the cadastral value was quite significant. The cost that we obtained based on the results of an additional forensic examination and was established for this object as cadastral.