Home>Levelset Community>Legal Help>We entered into an agreement with a Contractor to locate street survey monuments & utilities within a subdivision. Who should the Notice of Right to Lien be sent to? There are 100's of homeowners.
We entered into an agreement with a Contractor to locate street survey monuments & utilities within a subdivision. Who should the Notice of Right to Lien be sent to? There are 100's of homeowners.
Not sure how to order a Notice of Right to Lien when the project is in the streets of a residential subdivision with 100's of homeowners. There is a Homeowners Association. Who should receive the Notice?
1 reply
Apr 17, 2018
That's a tough question, and unfortunately the Nevada lien statute doesn't help much to clear things up. Under § 108.245 of the Nevada lien statute, a lien claimant shall deliver a Notice of Right to Lien to the owner - except for claimants that only perform labor. This notice may be given by hand or by certified mail - and a copy must also be sent to the prime contractor. When there are a large number of owners involved, obviously providing Notices of Right to Lien can become a nightmare. Again this notice must be made to the "owner" - but "owner" is defined pretty loosely by the statute. An owner includes: the actual owner(s); the reputed owner(s); the person or persons whose name appears as owner of the property or an improvement on the building permit; and a person who claims an interest in less than a fee simple estate in the property, among a few others. Before getting too far into the weeds - it's important to note that since a Notice of Right to Lien is required prior to filing, taking any risks in its delivery might not be wise. The safest way to ensure that proper notice has been given to all owners is likely to identify all of the owners and provide each with notice. Anyway, taking a look at the building permit for this project, if there is one, might be a way to find some relief in sending notice to a large number of homeowners. If one party is listed as the "owner" for the purposes of the building permit, presumably, notice might only need to go to the "owner" on the building permit. Further, an owner includes parties who are less than a fee simple owner in the property. Depending on how a homeowners association is organized, it's possible that a homeowners association's interest in the property might qualify as less than fee simple ownership.Again, the safest way to ensure that lien rights will be preserved will be to send a Notice of Right to Lien to each individual owner. However, there is some gray area here, and depending on how an "owner" is defined, a claimant might be able to send notice(s) to some other party.