Notice of Commencement (Florida)

What a notice of commencement does

Florida’s construction lien law lets subcontractors, sub-subcontractors and suppliers who are not paid claim a lien on the property they improved — even when the owner has paid the general contractor in full. The notice of commencement is how the owner starts that system on the right foot. Recorded before work begins, it puts every future lienor on notice of who the owner, contractor, surety and lender are and where to send their notices, and it gives constructive notice that liens may be recorded against the property with the priority the statute sets.

In practice it is also a permit document: the warning printed on the form says the notice must be recorded and posted on the site before the first inspection, and the building department must accept a recorded notice in the statutory form. Subcontractors pull the recorded notice from the clerk’s records to address their notice to owner.

The form, item by item

• Permit and tax folio numbers, state and county. Header fields from § 713.13(1)(d). The prepared-by block and the blank recording space are for the clerk; check your county’s formatting rules.
• 1. Description of property. The legal description, plus the street address if available. An incorrect description that misleads a lienor can make the owner’s payments improper as to that lienor, so copy it exactly.
• 2. General description of improvement. One line: what is being built or renovated.
• 3. Owner information. Name and address, the interest in the property (fee simple, leasehold), and the fee simple titleholder if different — a tenant build-out lists the tenant as owner and the landlord as titleholder.
• 4–6. Contractor, surety, lender. Names, addresses and phone numbers. If there is a payment bond, state the amount and attach a copy of the bond when you record.
• 7–8. Designated persons. A Florida person who may be served on the owner’s behalf, and an optional additional recipient of notices to owner. A construction lender is typically named in item 8.
• 9. Expiration date. One year after recording unless you specify another date.
• Warning, signature and notary. The warning to owner is statutory and printed verbatim. Only the owner (or an authorized officer, director, partner or manager of an owner entity) signs, before a notary.

A worked example

The completed example is a Florida job for the same owner and general contractor as the rest of our sample set: Harbor Point Development LLC is building a three-story, 42,000 sq ft medical office in Tampa, with Brightline Builders as contractor, a $6,850,000 payment bond from the surety, and construction financing from a bank. The owner names its Tampa attorney in item 7, designates the bank’s construction loan administration in item 8 to receive copies of notices to owner, and — because the build runs close to two years — sets the expiration date at September 8, 2028 instead of accepting the one-year default. It is signed by the owner’s managing member, acknowledged before a notary in person, and recorded on September 8, 2026. The mechanical subcontractor’s notice to owner example is addressed from this notice.

Common mistakes

• Recording it after work or the first inspection has started, or not posting a copy on the site.
• A street address with no legal description, or a legal description for the wrong parcel.
• Letting the contractor sign for the owner — the statute does not allow it.
• Leaving the default one-year term on a job that will run longer, then paying after it expires.
• Forgetting to attach the payment bond, or to amend the notice when information changes.
• Using a Florida form in another state, or another state’s form in Florida.

Once work starts, the payment side of Florida lien law runs on conditional and unconditional lien waivers exchanged with each payment; note that Florida prescribes its own waiver forms in § 713.20. The owner-side contract terms belong in the construction contract.