§ 8.01-175.When plaintiff may require his estate only to be valued; how determined; how he may elect to relinquish his title to defendant.

Section 8.01-175 gives the plaintiff a counter-move once the defendant has claimed credit for improvements. Under subsection A, the plaintiff can enter a request on the record asking the court to also determine the value of the plaintiff’s estate in the premises as it would be without the improvements — the value of the bare land, stripped of whatever the defendant added.

Subsection B tells the jury how to reach that figure: the same way it values improvements elsewhere in this article, valuing the premises as they would have been at the time of the inquiry had the improvements never been made.

Subsection C then gives the plaintiff a choice most litigants never get in an ordinary property dispute. If judgment favors the plaintiff, the plaintiff may enter an election on the record — at any time — to relinquish the estate in the premises to the defendant altogether, at the bare-land value the jury determined. If the plaintiff makes that election, the defendant takes over all the estate the plaintiff held when the suit began, provided the defendant pays that value, with interest, as the court directs. In effect, the plaintiff can turn a hard-won recovery of improved land into a cash payment, letting the improving defendant keep the property outright.