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Idaho Lien Law: Listing Defendants in Lien Foreclosure Lawsuits
Recently, in the case of Parkwest Homes, LLC vs. Barnson, 294 Pacific 3d 1125 (Idaho 2012), the Idaho Supreme Court reaffirmed the long standing position that a valid lien timely filed may still be lost as to certain parties, if, when the lawsuit foreclosing the lien is filed, the owner, lenders, other lien claimants, and any person with a claim to title is not included as a defendant in the lawsuit.
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Utah Construction Lien Laws: Lien Legislation 2013
On Monday, February 11, 2013 a committee of representatives from the Construction, Banking and Title Industry met to discuss changes to the State Construction Registry and other Lien and Bond laws. As a result of the discussions, changes are going to be made to the operation of the Utah State Construction Registry for allowing Banks to payoff Preliminary Notices which have been filed before a Construction Loan has closed. Additionally, since the State Construction Registry fails to adequately provide for operation of projects where multiple parcels are included in one project or where one parcel includes multiple projects, changes will be made to the State Construction Registry to allow General Contractors and Banks to know and understand the specific Preliminary Notices applying to individual construction projects and to be able to manage their risks appropriately.
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Utah Construction Lien Laws: 2013 Construction Legislation
Currently, there are a handful of bills being considered by the Utah Legislature which affect the construction industry. The first is House Bill 277 Building Code Amendments which is adoption of the 2012 International Building, Plumbing and other codes. This bill is based upon recommendations to the international building codes by the Utah building code commission and was approved by the interim business and labor committee during the interim session.
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Utah Lien Laws: Utah State Construction Registry (SCR) Programming Changes
On Wednesday, January 9, 2013 I met with Tom Harper the Director of the Utah State Construction Registry at DOPL, and with Ray Walker to discuss the programming changes for parcel numbers in the SCR. The purpose of the discussion was to understand the reasons why Utah Interactive changed the SCR website to require that tax property ID numbers be put in according to a specific format. Based upon the information in that conversation, it appears that there have been concerns about the quality of parcel number information coming into the State Construction Registry and in order to try and facilitate more accurate searching and more accurate input of the numbers, DOPL and Utah Interactive decided to require formatting according to fixed formats from the various counties. As a result of these changes, parcel numbers must follow the formatting requirements which the counties provided to DOPL and Utah Interactive.
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Utah Construction Lien Laws: Recent SCR Changes
Recently, there have been some changes to the State Construction Registry regarding the entry of parcel numbers. Multiple Tax Parcel ID’s are still separated by a comma, but now there can no longer be a space in between the comma and the next Tax Parcel ID. Also, in the counties which have standard formatting, the dashes or colons are now required to be included in the Tax Parcel ID. Also, you can no longer put “Unknown” or other words as the Tax Parcel ID, rather if you are filing on a public project you need to link to a Notice of Commencement or include a Tax Parcel ID.
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Idaho Construction Payment Bond Law & Deadlines
In Idaho, first and second tier subcontractors are entitled to make payment bond claims on public projects. Idaho does not have any requirement for a preliminary notice or other notice to owner at the start of the job to the owner or the general contractor, but it is wise to send such a notice if you are not working for the general contractor. However, Idaho restricts payment bond rights to only first and second tier subcontractors.
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Wyoming Lien Law: Wyoming Notice of Lien
In Wyoming, contractors and suppliers have several requirements in order to obtain and enforce lien rights on property. First, contractors and suppliers are required to provide property owners with a preliminary notice and this notice is required to include the legal description for the property. The notice is due within 30 days of the contractor or suppliers’ first work or furnishing of materials. Once a contractor or supplier decides to file a lien, they are required to give the owner 20 days’ notice of intent. After the 20 days’ notice of intent has been given, then a lien can be filed subcontractor liens are due within 120 days of last work and general contractors liens are due within 150 days of last work. In the lien statement, Wyoming has certain unique requirements including an itemization of the amounts claimed, and also a requirement that unpaid invoices and a copy of the contract be attached to the lien.
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Utah Lien Law: Legislation for 2013
In January, the Utah Legislature will convene and there will be work done on State Construction Registry Rules and other lien law. Some of the issues will be deciding whether or not an owner has the responsibility to post parcel information at the job site in a conspicuous location so that contractors and material suppliers would be able to have information directly at the job site to use to identify the project in the state construction registry.
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Liens for Maintenance and Snow Removal
In Utah, lien rights are limited to work which is done for the alternation, repair, or improvement of property. Often, landscape contractors and others who do maintenance work want to file liens for the work that they have done. Since maintenance work does not qualify for liens, nor does snow removal, we often have contractors call and ask whether they can get paid for maintenance work. Of course, the answer is: no. But, even though a construction lien cannot be used for maintenance or snow removal, a judgment lien can.
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Colorado Lien Law: Colorado Preliminary Notice
In Colorado, subcontractors and suppliers are not required to file a preliminary notice or notice of right to claim lien in order to have lien rights on a construction project. However, if the property owner records a copy of their contract with the general contractor/builder, then the owner’s liability is limited to the face value of the contract. As a result, if the owner can show that they have fully paid their contractor, and even if subcontractors and suppliers are unpaid, they will not be able to enforce the liens against the property because Colorado caps the owner’s liability at the face value of the contract. However, if the owner fails to record a copy of the contract, unpaid subcontractors and suppliers are entitled to enforce liens against the property even if the owner has fully paid the contract with their contractor.
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Colorado Lien Law: Notice of Intent to Lien
In Colorado, prior to filing a Mechanics Lien, lien claimants are required to serve the owner and general contractor a Notice of Intent to Lien. This Notice must be served no less than 10 days before the Lien is recorded. Colorado Courts recognize that failure to serve the Notice will invalidate the lien right.
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Colorado Mechanics Lien Deadlines
In Colorado your lien filing deadline is 4 months after your last work, unless:
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Montana Construction Lien Law: Lien Priority
In Montana, the liens of contractors, suppliers, architects, engineers and others relate back to and take effect prior to construction loans. In most states, lien claimants must discover the date of first visible work on the property and if that date is before a loan is recorded, then the liens will have priority over the loan. However, in Montana, the law specifically provides that construction loans are behind the liens of those who improve the property. Therefore, it is not required that visible work occurred before a loan is in place for the liens of contractors and suppliers to be ahead of the construction loan.
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Social Media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter
As many of our Lien Counsel customers know, we have spent a great deal of time adding content to the website which includes expanding the information available on our social media sites. Now, in addition to our regular blog posts, we will also be providing information about Lien filings throughout the state every week on Tuesdays. The filing information will be on a landing page on the Lien Counsel website and links to that landing page will be available on our LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter feeds. Additionally, once a month we will be including information about contractor discipline handed down by the Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing. The purpose of this information is to help suppliers be able to know whether any of their customers have had their licenses revoked, placed on probation, or have had other adverse impact from DOPL. If you follow these links on a regular basis, it will help you to stay tuned on troubled projects throughout the state and also troubled contractors.
Bonding Private Property
What private projects are required to be bonded?
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