Appraiser Biron even claimed that if he had referred to the opinion of the decisive appraiser, it would have strengthened his claims, since it was given after the Corona crisis, which damaged the data. According to him, for the sake of caution he did not comment on this opinion.
In the cross-examination of the appraiser Moshe Sapir (the defendant's appraiser), he was asked why he set a betterment rate of 0.8 while the decisive appraiser set it at 0.9. The appraiser Sapir claimed that he took this factor into account from the opinion of the decisive appraiser, who determined that there is betterment for the expansion of commercial uses.
Counsel for the plaintiff argued that the appraiser Sapir was not accurate in describing the opinion of the decisive appraiser, who determined that "there is no betterment", and only alternatively, if one wants to be stringent, the betterment is at most 10%-15%. The appraiser Sapir replied that he did not come to interpret the words of the decisive appraiser, but rather took the paragraph that was relevant to him.
In the defendant's motion dated July 14, 2025, it was claimed that the plaintiff's appraiser (the appraiser Biron) claimed that the amount of rent for commercial use was less than the value of ILS 162 per square meter, as determined by the decisive appraiser. It was also claimed that the plaintiff was charged betterment levy due to the change in the designation of the property from a catering facility to a factory for commercial use.
The Court's Expert
- The court's expert, engineer and appraiser, Zvi Ron, was appointed on January 8, 2026, to give his opinion on the questions in dispute between the parties, as they arise from the expert opinions on their behalf. The main disputes relate to the permitted use of the property and the amount of the appropriate monthly rent in the period between 2016 and 2019.
The expert based his assessment on the comparison approach, taking into account the location of the property in the Science Park in Rehovot, its legal and planning situation, and changes in permitted uses over the years. In his opinion of March 30, 2026, the expert Ron noted the decision of the decisive appraiser as a decisive factor for determining rent for commerce. The expert adopted the determination of the decisive appraiser (and he reiterated and clarified the matter in the framework of his cross-examination in the hearing paragraph of May 14, 2026), according to which the rent he determined for the commercial areas on the determining date (April 11, 2022) is ILS 162 per square meter.