A Renovated Estate, and a Bill Nobody Told You About
A buyer closes on a fully renovated waterfront home in Fort Lauderdale. New kitchen, new pool deck, new seawall. Six weeks later, a document arrives in the mail: a claim of lien, filed by the pool contractor who says the previous owner never paid the final invoice. The buyer did not hire that contractor. The buyer did not even know the pool had been redone until the listing photos showed it off. None of that matters under Florida law.
Construction liens, commonly called mechanic’s liens, attach to the property itself, not to the person who ordered the work. That single fact is why every buyer of a recently renovated, newly built, or partially finished luxury property in Florida needs to understand how the lien process works before signing a contract, not after a demand letter shows up.
South Florida’s luxury market runs on renovation. Spec builders gut and rebuild waterfront homes in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties on tight timelines to catch the winter buying season. Investors flip pre-construction condo units before closing. Estate owners finish a dock, a summer kitchen, or a full interior remodel right before listing. Every one of those projects creates lien exposure that can survive the closing table.
This is not a rare edge case. Florida’s construction industry processes hundreds of thousands of active permits at any given time, and a portion of those jobs end in a payment dispute somewhere down the contractor-to-supplier chain. Most of those disputes never touch the property owner directly. The ones that do are almost always renovation and improvement projects, since a production builder rarely resells a home before every trade on the original build has been paid. A resale of a recently improved luxury home is where the risk concentrates.
How Florida’s Construction Lien Law Actually Works
Florida’s construction lien statute, Chapter 713 of the Florida Statutes, gives contractors, subcontractors, and material suppliers the right to record a lien against a property when they are not paid for labor or materials. Before any project over $2,500 begins, the property owner or their agent is supposed to record a Notice of Commencement in the county’s public records and post a copy at the job site. That notice starts the clock and tells everyone involved, including a future buyer’s title search, that construction is underway.
Here is the part that catches buyers off guard: the lien does not require the buyer to have done anything wrong. If the seller paid the general contractor in full but the general contractor never paid a subcontractor or supplier, that unpaid party can still record a lien against the property. The debt follows the real estate, not the person who spent the money. A buyer who closes without checking for open liens can inherit someone else’s unpaid bill.
The Paperwork Timeline: Commencement to Claim of Lien
The lien process runs on strict deadlines. A subcontractor or supplier who wants lien rights generally must serve a Notice to Owner within 45 days of starting work, and always before the owner makes final payment to the general contractor. Once work wraps up, that same party has up to 90 days after the last labor or materials were furnished to record a formal claim of lien under Section 713.08. From the date a claim of lien is recorded, the lienor has one year to file a lawsuit to foreclose it, or the lien expires and becomes unenforceable.
Notice how long this window actually is. A lien can be recorded up to 90 days after a subcontractor’s last day on a job that closed months earlier, and that lien can sit valid for a full year after that. A buyer who closes on a home two months after renovation work wrapped up could still see a claim of lien land on the property after they own it.
Why Renovated and Flipped Luxury Homes Carry More Risk
South Florida’s luxury renovation and flip market runs on compressed timelines, and that pace is exactly what creates lien exposure. A spec builder in Coral Gables or Delray Beach juggling five projects at once has every incentive to push subcontractors on price and schedule, and disputes over change orders or final payment are common on high-end finish work: custom millwork, imported stone, smart home wiring, impact glass. Any one of those trades can walk away unpaid and still hold lien rights, and the more subcontractors a job involves, the more separate 90-day clocks a buyer has to account for.
Pre-construction and newly delivered luxury condo buildings in Miami and Fort Lauderdale carry a parallel risk. Developers coordinate dozens of subcontractors across a single tower, and a payment dispute on one unit’s finish-out or on shared amenity space can, in some circumstances, cloud title across multiple units until it is resolved. Buyers closing near a building’s certificate of occupancy date are closing during the exact window when lien deadlines are most likely to still be open, since many subcontractors finish their scope in the final weeks before delivery.
Owner-occupants face a version of the same issue on a smaller scale. A seller who redid the primary suite, replaced the roof, or added a summer kitchen eighteen months before listing has almost certainly cleared any lien risk, since the deadlines will have long since run. A seller who finished the same work three months before listing has not, and the closer a renovation sits to the listing date, the more that timeline matters to a buyer’s due diligence.
None of this means a renovated or newly built property is a poor purchase. It means the purchase needs the same scrutiny a commercial buyer already applies to a warehouse or office deal: verify the paper trail before wiring the deposit.
Due Diligence Before You Close
A handful of steps, done before closing, resolve almost every lien surprise:
- Order a full title search that covers the construction period. A search that only looks back to the seller’s purchase date can miss a Notice of Commencement or claim of lien recorded during the renovation itself.
- Ask for a contractor’s final affidavit. Under Chapter 713, the general contractor can sign a sworn statement listing every subcontractor and supplier and confirming each one has been paid in full. This single document, required at closing, is one of the strongest protections a buyer has.
- Request lien waivers from major trades. On large renovation jobs, ask for final, unconditional lien waivers from the general contractor and key subcontractors, not just the interim, conditional versions tied to a single payment.
- Pull the permit history from the county building department. Open or expired permits on recent work are a signal to dig further, and unpermitted renovations create separate risk around code compliance and insurability.
- Verify the contractor’s license and standing. Florida requires most contractors performing work over a certain value to be licensed. A search through the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation confirms whether the general contractor and major subs were properly licensed for the work performed, and a corporate entity search through Sunbiz.org confirms the contractor’s business is active and identifies its officers.
- Carry an owner’s title insurance policy. A lender’s policy protects the lender, not the buyer. A separate owner’s policy is what actually pays to resolve a lien that surfaces after closing on a matter the title search missed.
On a renovated luxury property, this due diligence typically runs in parallel with the standard inspection period, not after it. A closing attorney or title company experienced in construction lien issues can request the affidavit and waivers directly from the seller’s side as a condition of closing.
If a Lien Surfaces After Closing
Even careful buyers occasionally close before a lien is recorded, since the 90-day window can run well past the closing date. If that happens, the first call is to the title insurance company, not the contractor. An owner’s policy that covers construction liens will typically defend the claim and pay to have it resolved or removed, which is the entire purpose of carrying the coverage.
Florida law also gives property owners a faster path than waiting out a lawsuit. Under Section 713.24, an owner can transfer the lien from the real estate onto a surety bond, which clears the lien from title immediately while the payment dispute plays out separately between the contractor and whoever hired them. This is a standard tool title companies and real estate attorneys use to keep a sale or refinance moving without paying a disputed bill in full.
What a buyer should not do is ignore a claim of lien because they believe they did nothing wrong. The one-year foreclosure deadline is the contractor’s clock, not the owner’s, and doing nothing simply lets that year run while the cloud stays on title, which can complicate a future sale or refinance long before the deadline arrives.
Liens on Commercial and Investment Property
The same statute governs commercial acquisitions, and the stakes scale with the deal size. An investor buying a South Florida multifamily property mid-renovation, or acquiring a retail or office building where the seller recently completed a tenant build-out, is exposed to the identical Chapter 713 timeline. A lien recorded against a commercial asset after closing can delay a refinance, trip a lender’s title covenant, or complicate a 1031 exchange timeline if the replacement property’s title is not clean when the exchange period closes.
For value-add and cost-segregation deals in particular, where a buyer is underwriting a property specifically because of recent or planned renovation work, the contractor’s final affidavit and lien waiver package should be treated as a closing condition with the same weight as an appraisal or environmental report, not a formality handled by the title company in the background. On a commercial deal, the dollar amounts involved make a post-closing lien dispute considerably more expensive to unwind than on a single-family purchase.
Working With a Team That Catches This Before It Becomes a Problem
A construction lien is a solvable problem when it is caught before closing, and an expensive one when it is not. The fix is not complicated: a title search that reaches back through the construction period, a contractor’s final affidavit, lien waivers from the trades that mattered most on the job, and an owner’s title insurance policy as a backstop. What matters is making sure someone on the transaction is actually running that checklist on a renovated or newly built property, rather than assuming a standard title search catches everything.
At MJI Realty Group, we work every luxury and premium transaction, renovated, new construction, or otherwise, with that level of scrutiny before a client signs a contract, not after. Our clients also get the discretion typical Florida brokers do not offer as a matter of course. We don’t have to provide that confidentiality, but we do, on every listing and every purchase.
If you are evaluating a recently renovated or newly built luxury property in South Florida, or preparing to sell one, MJI Realty Group can help you get ahead of a lien issue before it reaches the closing table. Real estate decisions depend on individual circumstances, and this article is general information, not legal, tax, or investment advice for your specific situation. Buyers and sellers should consult a Florida real estate attorney on any open lien or title question tied to a specific property.
