Notices of commencement in Miami-Dade: what they are, where to find them, and how to turn one into a lead

Florida records a notice before construction starts, and it names the owner, the general contractor, the lender and the surety on one page. The county clerk indexes it the day it records, usually a few days before the first inspection. None of the other states Groundbreak covers has an equivalent. Here is what the notice is, where it lives in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, and how each kind of reader uses it.

What the notice is

Florida's Construction Lien Law (chapter 713, part one, Florida Statutes) gives contractors, subcontractors and suppliers a lien on the property they improve. To make that work, section 713.13 requires the owner to record a notice of commencement with the clerk of court before beginning an improvement worth more than $5,000 (the threshold was $2,500 until October 1, 2023; a repair or replacement of an existing heating or air conditioning system under $15,000 is exempt). The notice must be recorded before the first inspection, and a certified copy posted at the job site.

The form is short, and every line on it is a name:

• The property, by legal description and street address.
• The owner, with address, and the owner's interest in the land.
• The contractor, with address and phone.
• The surety, if there is a payment bond, with the bond amount.
• The lender, if there is a construction loan, with address.
• The person designated to receive notices on the owner's behalf, often the owner's attorney.
• The expiration date. One year from recording unless the notice says otherwise; big jobs state two or three years.

A notice of termination closes it out early; an amended notice changes a party. Both record the same way. See the glossary entry on the notice of commencement.

Where it records

Each county records its own.

Miami-Dade. The Clerk of the Court and Comptroller's Official Records. The clerk's public search runs by name and by document type, and the daily Official Records file is the firehose Groundbreak reads: in the last 90 days it carried about 4,800 notices of commencement, with the address on 91 percent of them, alongside the deeds, mortgages, liens and lis pendens for the whole county.

Broward. The County Records Division publishes a daily Official Records export, which carries the Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood and Pompano notices.

Palm Beach. The Clerk's Electronic Distribution Index Service, by subscription.

All three are indexed by document type, so a daily sweep for NOC, NOT (termination) and the amended form is a search, not a crawl. The notice itself is an image; the index carries the parties and the legal description, and the address where the form had one.

Reading it as a lead

The notice answers four questions at once, which the permit before it does not.

Is the job starting? Within days, in most cases. The first inspection depends on the notice, so owners record it close to mobilization. A notice recorded Tuesday is a site that mobilizes that week or the next.

Who is the general contractor? Named with a phone number. On a Miami-Dade building permit the contractor is also named, but the permit can issue weeks before mobilization and the trade subs are hired in between. The notice is the later, firmer date.

Is it funded, and by whom? If there is a lender on the notice, the construction loan closed. The mortgage records with the same clerk, usually within days, and states the amount. A notice with no lender is cash, or a job small enough not to need one. See construction loan.

Is it bonded? A surety on the notice means a payment bond. For a supplier deciding credit terms, that line is the answer.

How each reader uses it:

• Subs and suppliers. The notice and the master building permit together say "GC picked, structure not started". The shoring, concrete and electrical sub-permits come after, and in Miami-Dade each one names the sub. A formwork or rebar supplier reads the notice; an electrical sub reads it and then watches for the mechanical permit to know the job is sequencing. See trade sub-permit.
• Lenders. The lender on every notice over a dollar figure is the competitive map of who is funding what, by submarket, week by week. Groundbreak's most active construction lenders in Miami is that table, counted from the clerk's mortgages over 90 days.
• Insurers and sureties. A notice with a lender and no surety is a job where the builder's risk and the bond are being placed now.
• Owners and developers. Your competitor's notice tells you their start date, their GC and their bank.

What it does not tell you

The notice does not carry the contract value (the lien law does not ask for it), the trades, or the schedule beyond the expiration date. For the size of the job, read the building permit's valuation and square footage, which Miami-Dade publishes with the permit. For the trades, read the sub-permits as they pull. For the schedule, the expiration date is a ceiling, not a plan.

And it is a Florida record. In Austin, Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte and Dallas-Fort Worth there is no notice; the recorded loan (where the county publishes it) and the building permit are the start signals, and the Groundbreak guides for those markets say where to read them.

Who this is for, and who it is not

If you need the notice on one address, the Miami-Dade Clerk's Official Records search is free and takes a minute: search the address or the owner, filter to document type NOC, and read the image. You do not need a subscription for that.

If you sell nationally and read Florida once a quarter, a national database that summarizes projects will serve you better than a daily clerk feed; see the comparisons. The notice becomes worth reading every day when you sell into Miami, Broward or Palm Beach jobs and the week they start matters to you. For that reader, the Miami development database carries every notice from the three clerks matched to the parcel, the permit, the mortgage and the trade permits on one file, with the parties on the Pro plan. The most active contractors and most active lenders tables are computed from the same records and are free to read.