United States · pre-construction notices
Most U.S. states with a construction-lien statute require some form of pre-construction notice. Florida calls it a Notice of Commencement; other states use Notice of Project Commencement, Notice of Furnishing, Preliminary Notice, or similar. Pick your state for the recording office, deadlines, and lien-rights implications.
States split roughly into two camps. In the first, a notice is recorded in the public record at the start of the job — Florida's Notice of Commencement is the best-known example, and Ohio, Georgia, and Michigan have their own versions under different names. In the second, nothing is recorded up front; instead each subcontractor and supplier serves a preliminary notice on the owner and others within a fixed window after they first furnish labor or materials.
The distinction matters because the deadlines behave differently. A recorded commencement notice is usually the owner's obligation and happens once per project. A preliminary notice is each lienor's own obligation, runs from that lienor's own first day on the job, and is unforgiving — miss it and the lien right is gone even if the debt is undisputed.
Each page below covers the governing statute, the dollar threshold, who files, when, where it is recorded, any jobsite posting requirement, and what happens to lien rights if it is skipped.
Florida · Georgia · Ohio · Michigan · Tennessee · Louisiana · North Carolina · Pennsylvania
These states protect lien rights through notices served on the owner, general contractor, and construction lender rather than a document recorded at the start of the job.
California Preliminary Notice · Texas Notice to Owner · New York Lien Law Notice · Arizona 20-Day Prelim · Nevada Preliminary Notice · Illinois 90-Day Notice
No. It is a feature of some state lien statutes and absent from others. Several large construction states, including California and Texas, use preliminary notices served by each lienor instead of a single recorded commencement notice.
No. The required contents, deadlines, and recipients are set by each state's statute, and a form drafted for one state routinely omits something another state requires.
Florida, including county-specific NOC forms for all 67 counties and electronic signature with a full audit trail. The other state pages are reference guides to the statute and its deadlines.
General information about state construction-notice statutes, not legal advice. Statutes change and courts interpret them differently; consult a licensed construction attorney in the state where the property is located.