• Florida is an UNPAID BALANCE lien state.
• Owners must record a Notice of Commencement and post a copy at the jobsite before the work starts.
• In order to exempt its property from liens, the Owner must also record a copy of the Bond with the Notice of Commencement.
  
  • The purpose if the Notice of Commencement is to provide all lienors with the information that they will need to perfect and their lien rights, comply with notice provisions and perfect their rights against any payment bond surety and lender.
    
• “Furnish Materials” includes the delivery of rental equipment to project. The furnishing period includes the actual use of the rental equipment from the delivery through the time the equipment was last available for use, or 2 business days after the lessor of the rental equipment receives a written notice from the owner or the lessee to pick up the equipment, whichever occurs first.
  

Notice Speed Bumps

• The Notice to Owner must be in substantially the statutory form, must contain all required statutory warnings and must be served on all persons in the chain of contract as well as all persons listed in the Notice of Commencement.
  
• A laborer, defined as a natural person who is not a professional lienor (architect, landscape architect, engineer, surveyor etc.) who personally performs work on the construction site, is not required to serve a Notice to Owner.
  

Mechanic’s Lien Speed Bumps

• The Claim of Lien must be served upon the owner within 15 days after recording

Foreclosure Speed Bumps

• Foreclosure: Owner can shorten deadline to 60 days by filing notice of contest of lien, or to 20 days by serving an order to show cause why the lien should not be discharged.

• Any claimant may apply to the governmental entity having charge of the work for copies of the contract and bond and shall thereupon be furnished with a certified copy of the contract and bond.
  
  
• The claimant shall have a right of action against the contractor and surety for the amount due him or her, including unpaid finance charges due under the claimant's contract.
  
  
• The amount of the bond shall equal the contract price, except that for a contract in excess of $250 million, if the state, county, municipality, political subdivision, or other public entity finds that a bond in the amount of the contract price is not reasonably available, the public owner shall set the amount of the bond at the largest amount reasonably available, but not less than $250 million.
  
  
• In lieu of the bond required by this section, a contractor may file with the state, county, city, or other political authority an alternative form of security in the form of cash, a money order, a certified check, a cashier's check, an irrevocable letter of credit, or a security of a type listed in part II of chapter 625.