Florida Mechanics Lien Rights Overview [How to Ensure Fast Payment]

Learn about how to secure your lien rights in Florida and get help from payment experts at https://www.levelset.com/contact-us/.

In this video, we’ll cover the essentials of securing lien rights and construction payment in Florida.

The first thing you need to know about when we're thinking about getting paid in construction in Florida is about this document called a Notice of Commencement. It is required to be sent at the start of every job usually by the general contractor or the property owner. The Notice of Commencement sets off a whole bunch of deadlines for other subcontractors working on the job as a subcontractor on a job in Florida or as a sub sub or as a supplier. This is public information. It should be information that's given to you at the start but it's also pretty easy to find.

Once you get your eyes on the Notice of Commencement, the next thing you need to start thinking about, as someone who is not contracted directly with the property owner, is your Preliminary Notice, your Notice to Owner. The Notice to Owner document in Florida is a Preliminary Notice that is required to be sent at the start of the job to promote visibility. If you do not send this Notice to Owner in Florida as a party who is not contracting directly with the property owner, you will no longer have the right to file a valid Mechanics Lien should payment issues arise.

Generally sending this Notice to Owner in Florida at the start of every job should be the only thing you have to do. It protects your lien rights; it promotes visibility; it opens lines of communication. It's all you have to do to ensure speedy payment. Once you send these required Notices to Owner at the start of the job, there are a couple more really useful tools to keep top of mind and that is sending your invoices on time, sending your pay applications and exchanging lien waivers. And keep in mind, Florida is one of those states that has a statutory lien waiver template, so make sure you have the right form when you are exchanging that document.

If you have taken all of the necessary steps to ensure construction payment, you've protected yourself throughout the job. You've sent your pay apps and you still have not received payment. There is a really, really useful tool that you can use called a Notice of Intent to Lien in Florida. It's a voluntary document that means it's up to you to send it. You can send it when you'd like, and it basically gives your customers one final chance to pay you before you actually go through with filing a Mechanics Lien. So the Notice of Intent to Lien is a warning document, and it really does a good job of getting their attention because what the document says is if you are not paid in 10 days, you're going to go ahead and file the Mechanics Lien and nobody wants that. So usually this Notice of Intent to is enough to get their attention and ensure you're going to get paid real quick.

We are helping customers send these Notices of Intent to Lien every single day and it is really incredible how powerful of a tool they are, how quickly our customers are then receiving payment. And the best part is it doesn't even affect the property title.

If you have sent the Notice of Intent to Lien as a final warning shot and you have still not been paid, now it's time to use the final and most powerful tool you have in your tool belt, which is to actually file the Mechanics Lien in Florida. Your deadline to actually file the Mechanics Lien, should you have to, is 90 days from the last day of furnishing and your last day of furnishing as either last day on the job site or last day supplying materials for that project. Now let's say you file the lien and you are still not paid, the next step is to actually hire a lawyer and take it to court. And there are deadlines around that to keep in mind to make sure that you are foreclosing on that lien while it is still valid. In Florida, the mechanics lien deadline is one year from the day that the lien was filed. If the property owner files a Notice of Contest of Lien, the deadline to initiate an enforcement action is shortened to 60 days after the notice is served on the claimant. If the claimant is served with a 20-day Notice to show cause, the enforcement action deadline is actually 20 days of the claimant being served with the show cause notice. The next step, if you filed the lien and then are paid, is to release that lien and that might land on the general contractor to release that lien or that something that you can do.

Over 500,000 contractors and suppliers connect on Levelset’s cloud-based platform to make payment processes stress-free. Visit http://levelset.com for free state by state resources, free forms, we have an ask an expert center and you can even live chat with our support team and ask them more specific questions.