France (FR) — civil law.
Nothing on this page describes United States or Argentine practice.
La surenchère du dixième
Winning the adjudication does not end the sale. For a short window afterwards
any interested person may overbid by at least one tenth of the price
reached, which reopens the auction.
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Minimum increment | one tenth (1/10) of the prix d'adjudication |
| Who may do it | any intéressé — not only the parties |
| How | a declaration by an avocat, lodged at the greffe of the JEX that held the sale |
| Effect | a fresh auction, with new publicity, opening at prix d'adjudication + surenchère |
| Second time | a surenchère cannot itself be over-surenchéri — needs_verification |
The delay is disputed in secondary sources — do not state it flatly
Sources consulted on 2026-08-22 disagree: some say ten calendar days from the sale, others ten
jours ouvrésfrom the hearing. That difference decides whether a purchase is safe on a given date, so it must be pinned to the CPCE article text before being relied on. Recorded here as a known conflict rather than resolved by picking the more common phrasing.needs_verification
Why it is not an upset bid
The American upset bid and the surenchère are both post-auction overbids,
which is exactly why they get conflated. They are not the same device:
- The
surenchèrehas a fixed statutory fraction (one tenth). It is not a discretionary increment. - It reopens the auction with fresh publicity, rather than substituting a higher bid for the winning one.
- It must be brought by an
avocat, which prices out casual use — see monopole-avocat.
Consequence for an index
An adjudication result is provisional until the window closes. Any dataset
that records the hammer price as final, on the day of the sale, will be wrong
for a fraction of lots. A price should carry the date it became definitive, not
just the date it was struck.