13.1 Construction Lien Overview & Claimants

13.1 Construction Lien Overview & Claimants

Business & Finance (B&F) Area F — Complying with Government Regulations is 15% of 120 questions, roughly 18 items. Florida Statutes Chapter 713, Part I (Construction Liens) sits on the 2026 B&F path through the Contractors Manual 2025 (used beginning February 1, 2026) and the statutes themselves. Chapter 12 told you who may contract. This chapter tells you who still gets paid when someone up the chain does not. A construction lien is a statutory charge on private real property that secures unpaid labor, services, or materials that improved that property. It is not a lawsuit by itself, not a collection letter, and not a right that attaches to a public-school rooftop.

The primary qualifying agent owns the financial side of the business unless a Financially Responsible Officer (FRO) is appointed. Leaving valid liens on an owner's property more than 75 days after the contractor was paid is a F.S. 489.129 disciplinary ground. Chapter 713 is therefore both a payment tool and a license-risk statute. Candidates who treat “lien” as one blob miss the exam. The statute splits who is in privity with the owner, who must serve a Notice to Owner (NTO), and what property can even be liened.

Privity versus non-privity

Privity means a direct contract with the owner. F.S. 713.01(9) defines a direct contract as a contract between the owner and any other person. The HVAC contractor who signs with a clinic owner to replace two 12.5-ton splits is in privity. The sheet-metal shop that contracts only with that HVAC contractor is not in privity with the owner. The supply house that sells condensers to the HVAC contractor is not in privity with the owner. A person who personally performs on-site labor, furnishes no materials, and furnishes no labor of others is a laborer under F.S. 713.01(17) — whether the check comes from the owner or from a contractor — and is not an architect, landscape architect, engineer, or surveyor.

F.S. 713.05 is the privity statute. A materialman or laborer in privity with the owner, or a contractor who complies with Part I, has a lien on the real property improved for money owed for labor, services, materials, or other items required by or furnished in accordance with the direct contract, plus unpaid finance charges. No lien under 713.05 is acquired until a claim of lien is recorded. Those privity lienors shall not be required to serve a notice to owner as provided in 713.06(2). A lienor other than a laborer or materialman who is in privity with the owner and claims under 713.05 shall furnish the contractor's affidavit required in 713.06(3)(d). That is why a direct HVAC contractor still has an affidavit duty even though the contractor never serves an NTO.

F.S. 713.06 is the non-privity statute. A materialman or laborer not in privity with the owner, or a subcontractor or sub-subcontractor who complies, has a lien on the real property improved for money owed under that person's contract and the direct contract. The total of all liens allowed under Part I for furnishing covered by any certain direct contract must not exceed the amount of the contract price fixed by that direct contract, except as provided in 713.06(3). Non-privity lienors, except laborers, must serve an NTO as a prerequisite to perfecting a lien and recording a claim of lien. Failure to serve the notice, or to serve it timely, is a complete defense to enforcement. The NTO is not itself a lien, cloud, or encumbrance, and serving it does not dispense with recording the claim of lien.

A lienor who starts as a subcontractor, sub-subcontractor, laborer, or materialman not in privity, and who later becomes in privity with the owner, has a 713.05 lien only for money owed for labor, services, or materials furnished after becoming in privity. That person may record one claim of lien covering both the privity work and the non-privity work (713.05).

Who may be a lienor — the closed list

F.S. 713.01(19) is exhaustive. A lienor is a contractor; a subcontractor; a sub-subcontractor; a laborer; a materialman who contracts with the owner, a contractor, a subcontractor, or a sub-subcontractor; or a professional lienor under F.S. 713.03. No other person may have a lien under this part.

Unlicensed contractors, subcontractors, and sub-subcontractors have no lien (F.S. 713.02(7)). F.S. 489.128 already makes a contract entered in violation of Chapter 489 unenforceable by that unlicensed contractor; 713.02(7) closes the lien door. Other persons' contract, lien, or bond rights are not destroyed by the unlicensed actor, and a surety cannot defend a bond claim solely because the principal was unlicensed.

F.S. 713.02(5) exempts an improvement whose direct contract price is $2,500 or less from all other provisions of Part I except 713.05. A tiny privity changeout can still support a 713.05 claim of lien; the NTO machinery of 713.06 does not run on that small direct contract. Do not tell the exam that every residential service call is “too small to lien” — the cutoff is the direct contract price, and 713.05 still applies.

Public property is not lienable

F.S. 713.01(24) defines owner as a person with a legal or equitable interest that can be sold by legal process who enters a contract for the improvement. The term does not include any political subdivision, agency, or department of the state, a municipality, or other governmental entity. F.S. 713.01(27) defines real property as the land improved and the improvements thereon, except property owned by the state or any county, municipality, school board, or governmental agency, commission, or political subdivision. You do not lien a public school RTU job. The remedy is a claim against the payment bond required by F.S. 255.05, taught in section 13.3.

A lessee who contracts for improvements is an owner (713.01 and 713.13(1)(a)3.) and must be listed as owner with a statement that the interest is a leasehold. HVAC contractors who contract with a tenant to set a package unit on a leased strip-center roof are liening the leasehold unless the fee owner has also contracted or authorized the improvement in a way that supports a lien on the fee. That is a fact pattern, not a loophole around public property: a school board is still not an “owner” under 713.01(24).

HVAC equipment and specially fabricated materials

F.S. 713.01(15) defines improve to include building, altering, repairing, furnishing materials, performing labor on the improvements, and equipping an improvement with fixtures or permanent apparatus. A rooftop unit, air handler, condensing unit, chiller, cooling tower, and ductwork that become part of the building's permanent HVAC plant are improvements. F.S. 713.01(16) defines improvement as any building, structure, construction, demolition, excavation, or any part thereof done on land for its permanent benefit.

F.S. 713.01(14) defines furnish materials to include materials incorporated in the improvement, including normal wastage; specially fabricated materials for incorporation in the improvement (not design work, submittals, or the like preliminary to actual fabrication); materials used for construction and not remaining, diminished by salvage value; and rental equipment, but not handtools. Delivery of materials to the site of the improvement is prima facie evidence of incorporation. That sentence is why a supply house that drops a 10-ton condenser at the curb has a lien path even if the installing contractor later walks off.

Special-order HVAC equipment is the high-yield application. A custom 40-ton packaged rooftop, a built-to-order air handler with a specified coil, or a chiller fabricated off site for a particular Fort Myers hospital is specially fabricated material. F.S. 713.08(1)(c) requires that materials specially fabricated at a place other than the site for incorporation in the improvement but not so incorporated, and the contract price or value thereof, be separately stated in the claim of lien. A supplier who special-orders an 80-ton chiller that never leaves the factory still has a statutory path, but the claim of lien must break that amount out. Class B candidates still need this theory; installing a 40-ton or 80-ton unit is Class A work under F.S. 489.105(3)(f)–(g) — Class B is limited to 25 tons of cooling and 500,000 Btu of heating in any one system. The lien statute does not expand the license.

Final furnishing (F.S. 713.01(12)) is the last date the lienor furnishes labor, services, or materials. That date may not be measured by a certificate of occupancy or a certificate of final completion, and it does not include correction of deficiencies in the lienor's previously performed work or materials. Returning to fix a leaking condensate pan does not restart the 90-day claim-of-lien clock. For rental equipment, final furnishing is the date the equipment was last on the site and available for use.

Priority when the money is short

When the unpaid claims exceed what the owner still owes on the direct contract, F.S. 713.06(4) ranks payment: (1) liens of all laborers; (2) liens of all persons other than the contractor; (3) the lien of the contractor. A class is allowed in full before the next class gets anything. Inside a class that cannot be paid in full, claims are pro rata. If the same labor, services, or materials are covered by more than one class, they are allowed only in the earliest class; if covered by two lienors of the same class, only in the lien of the lienor farthest removed from the contractor. HVAC takeaway: unpaid helpers on the roof outrank the unpaid supply house, who outrank the unpaid prime contractor, all inside the direct-contract price cap.

Florida HVAC scenario

Elena's certified Class A company, Gulf Breeze Mechanical, signs a $186,000 direct contract with a private clinic owner in Pensacola to install a 40-ton rooftop — Class A work. Elena is in privity. She does not serve a Notice to Owner. She will need a contractor's final payment affidavit at least 5 days before any suit. She buys a special-order RTU from Panhandle Supply. Panhandle is a materialman not in privity and must serve a Notice to Owner within 45 days of commencing to furnish. Tomas, a registered Class B sub Elena hired for the under-25-ton split in the clinic annex, is a subcontractor not in privity and must serve his own Notice to Owner. The helper who only brazes is a laborer and is excepted from the NTO. If the same 40-ton RTU were instead a public school replacement, none of them liens the school board's real property. They look to the 255.05 bond.