Illustration: precedent ruling of the district court (photo: ShutterStock)
The district court ruled: a local committee will not be able to charge an improvement levy for the possibility of living in an apartment that was not destroyed and whose owners continued to live there until moving to the new apartment.
This is a new and precedential ruling, which according to attorneys Eli Vilchik and Ariel Pell of Cohen Vilchik & Co., who represented the owner of the apartment, "will lead to a significant reduction of the improvement levies in building eviction projects, and make it easier for the tenants and the execution of those projects".
what's the story?
The issue dealt with by the court focused on the owner of an apartment who lives on Histadrut Street 4 in Givatayim, which is in a complex subject to a construction eviction plan.
As part of the agreement signed by the apartment owners, this specific building should not be destroyed, but handed over to the ownership of the Givataim municipality for use by public institutions, and therefore the apartment owners are allowed to live in their apartments until the new apartments are moved in.
The owner of the apartment did not wait for the project to be completed and she sold her apartment in early 2018. Following the sale, the municipality of Givatayim issued an improvement levy that included two components: one, about which there was no dispute - the improvement arising from the value of the new and larger apartment, compared to the existing apartment.
The second, regarding which the parties disagreed - an improvement for the right to continue living in the apartment until it is handed over to the municipality.
The second component included rent for an interim period, which, according to a decisive appraiser's calculation, reached about half a million shekels.
The appeal filed by the Givatayim municipality was rejected in my district
The owner of the apartment appealed to the Appeals Committee for Compensation and the Improvement Levy, which accepted her argument and determined that there is no reason to charge the improvement levy for the second component, thereby canceling the decision of a decisive appraiser appointed for the purpose of determining the amount of the improvement levy.
The Givatayim Municipality did not accept the decision and filed an appeal with the Tel Aviv District Court, which rejected the appeal. Judge Hari Kirsh stated that according to the agreement signed with the developer, there was a choice regarding the building in question: evacuate the tenants and hand the building over to the municipality only when the new apartment building is ready for residence, or to evacuate them earlier and provide them with alternative housing.
In the contract between the tenants and the developer, the first option was implemented, and if the alternative was chosen not to evacuate the building's tenants in the meantime, the clause according to which "the continued use and activity of the existing residential buildings shall remain..." according
to the judge, and thus The appeals committee also believed, "when the plan clarifies that 'continuation of uses will remain', it is not favorable,
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