Oregon notice of right to a lien, free and word for word from ORS 87.023

Eight days, counted backwards, and weekends do not count

The line is measured from the day the notice is delivered or mailed, and it runs eight days back, not including Saturdays, Sundays and other holidays as defined in ORS 187.010. So it is eight working days, and on an ordinary week that lands roughly twelve calendar days behind you.

Everything provided after that line is inside the lien. Everything provided before it is not, no matter how well documented it is, no matter that the owner knew you were there, and no matter that you are plainly owed the money. The lien and the debt are two different things in Oregon as everywhere else, and this section decides only the first one.

That is why the practical advice on an Oregon job is to send the notice at the start rather than when the payment goes bad. A notice mailed in week one covers the whole job. A notice mailed in week six covers the job from about week four onward and quietly writes off the rest.

It also explains why the form asks for the date of mailing rather than the date of signing. On most forms on this site the date is the day you put your name to it. Here it is the day it goes out, because that is the date the statute measures from, and a form signed on Friday and mailed the following Wednesday moves the line by three working days.

Who has to send it, and the exception that swallows commercial work

The duty in ORS 87.021(1) is written around ORS 87.010, which is the section that creates Oregon construction liens in the first place. Subsection (1) of that section covers any person performing labor upon, transporting or furnishing any material to be used in, or renting equipment used in the construction of any improvement. Subsection (2) covers preparing a lot or parcel of land, or improving a street or road adjoining it. Subsections (5) and (6) cover architects, landscape architects, land surveyors and registered engineers who prepare plans, drawings or specifications intended for use in the construction, or who supervise it.

Those are the four groups named in 87.021(1), and they are the ones who must send this notice. Note which subsection is missing. Trustees of an employee benefit plan get a lien under ORS 87.010(4), and 87.010(4) is not in the list, so this notice is not their route.

The exception is the one worth reading twice. ORS 87.021(3)(b) says a person who performs labor upon a commercial improvement, or provides labor and material for a commercial improvement, or who rents equipment used in the construction of a commercial improvement need not give the notice in order to perfect a lien created under ORS 87.010.

The same paragraph defines its own terms. A commercial improvement means any structure or building not used or intended to be used as a residential building, or other improvements to a site on which such a structure or building is to be located. A residential building means a building or structure that is or will be occupied by the owner as a residence and that contains not more than four units capable of being used as residences or homes.

Two things follow from that definition and both catch people out. A rental fourplex the owner does not live in is not a residential building under this paragraph, because the definition turns on owner occupancy, not on the building being houses. And the exception is written for labor, labor with material, and rental equipment. A supplier furnishing material alone is not in that list, which is the safest reading of why suppliers on commercial jobs still send this notice as a matter of routine.

Work the owner ordered directly does not need it

The first words of ORS 87.021(1) are an exception: except when material, equipment, services or labor described in ORS 87.010 (1) to (3), (5) and (6) is furnished at the request of the owner. If the owner hired you, the owner already knows you are on the job and the notice has nothing to tell them.

In practice that means the original contractor on a residential job is usually outside this section and everyone below them is inside it. If you are a subcontractor, a sub-subcontractor, a supplier or a rental yard, your contract is with the general contractor and not with the owner, and the owner may have no idea you exist. That is exactly the gap the notice was written to close, and the form says so in its own opening line: protect yourself from paying any contractor or supplier twice for the same service.

There is a second carve out in the same subsection, and it is narrow but sharp. No lien is created under ORS 87.010(5) or (6) for any services provided for an owner-occupied residence at the request of an agent of the owner. Those are the design and survey subsections. So an architect, landscape architect, land surveyor or engineer engaged by the builder rather than by the homeowner has no lien at all on an owner-occupied residence, and no notice fixes that, because the problem is with the lien and not with the notice.

If you are in one of those professions the question to settle before the drawings go out is who is actually engaging you. Engaged by the owner, you have a lien and, being at the owner's request, you are outside the notice duty. Engaged by the contractor on a house the owner lives in, there is nothing to protect.

In writing, in person or by registered or certified mail

ORS 87.018(1) is one sentence and it governs almost every notice in the chapter: except as provided in ORS 87.093, all notices required under ORS 87.001 to 87.060 and 87.075 to 87.093 must be in writing and be delivered in person or by registered or certified mail.

That is a closed list. First class mail is not on it. Certificate of mailing is not on it, which is worth noticing, because ORS 87.093 expressly allows first class mail with certificate of mailing for the Information Notice to Owner and this section expressly excludes 87.093 from its rule. The legislature knew how to allow the cheaper option and chose not to allow it here.

In person is a real option and on a small residential job it is often the better one, because it puts the sheet in the owner's hand and starts a conversation while the job is still going well. Get something signed and dated if you do, because the date of delivery is doing the same work as a postmark.

ORS 87.018(2) adds a filter that matters when you send a copy to the bank. A notice that must be given to a mortgagee must be delivered only if the name and address of the mortgagee appear in a mortgage of record or a trust deed of record as required under ORS 205.234(1)(b), or in the instrument that assigns a mortgage or trust deed as required under ORS 205.234(1)(g). If the recorded instrument does not name and address the mortgagee, there is nobody to serve.

The same sheet has a second job, and it goes to the bank

This is the part most Oregon suppliers find out about too late. ORS 87.025(3) says that no lien for materials or supplies shall have priority over any recorded mortgage or trust deed on either the land or improvement unless the person furnishing the material or supplies, not later than eight days after the date of delivery of material or supplies for which a lien may be claimed, delivers to the mortgagee either a copy of the notice given to the owner under ORS 87.021 or a notice in any form that provides substantially the same information as the form set forth in ORS 87.023.

So the same sheet, in the same eight working day rhythm, does a second job when a copy goes to the mortgagee. Without it a materials lien can be perfectly valid and still sit behind the construction loan, which on a job that goes wrong is usually the difference between being paid and not.

Notice what that subsection does and does not require. It asks for a copy of the 87.021 notice, or any form providing substantially the same information as the 87.023 form. It is the information that is prescribed, not the paper, so the sheet you already built for the owner is the obvious thing to send.

The mortgagee gets a right in return. Under ORS 87.025(4) a mortgagee who has received notice of delivery of materials may demand a list of those materials or supplies including a statement of the amount due. The list must be delivered to the mortgagee within 15 days, not including Saturdays, Sundays and other holidays as defined in ORS 187.010, of receipt of the demand, evidenced by a receipt or a receipt of delivery of a registered or certified letter containing the demand. Failure to furnish the list or the amount due is a waiver of the preference. Having sent the notice, answer the demand.

One more thing lives in that section and it is the reason Oregon appears on this site's waiver pages at all. ORS 87.025(5) says that upon payment and acceptance of the amount due to the supplier, and upon demand of the person making payment, the supplier shall execute a waiver of all lien rights as to materials or supplies for which payment has been made. Oregon does not void advance waivers. It requires waivers after payment.

What this notice is not, and the deadline that really can be missed

The form says it on its own face: THIS IS NOT A LIEN. It is a notice sent to you for your protection in compliance with the construction lien laws of the State of Oregon. Nothing is recorded, nothing is filed and nothing attaches to the property when you send it.

The deadline that can actually be missed is in ORS 87.035(1). Every person claiming a lien created under ORS 87.010(1) or (2) shall perfect the lien not later than 75 days after the person has ceased to provide labor, rent equipment or furnish materials, or 75 days after completion of construction, whichever is earlier. Every other person claiming a lien under 87.010 has 75 days after the completion of construction. Perfecting means filing a claim of lien with the recording officer of the county in which the improvement is situated.

ORS 87.035(3) lists what the claim of lien must contain: a true statement of demand after deducting all just credits and offsets, the name of the owner or reputed owner if known, the name of the person by whom the claimant was employed or to whom the claimant furnished materials or rented equipment, and a description of the property sufficient for identification including the address if known. Subsection (4) requires it to be verified by oath, subject to the criminal penalties for false swearing under ORS 162.075.

Then two more notices follow, and both reward having sent this one properly. ORS 87.039(1) requires the person filing a claim of lien to mail notice of the filing, with a copy of the claim attached, to the owner and the mortgagee not later than 20 days after filing, and it says that notice mailed to the owner who received the notice of right to a lien under ORS 87.021 is deemed in compliance unless you have actual knowledge that ownership changed. ORS 87.057(1) then requires a written notice of intent to foreclose, delivered to the owner and the mortgagee not later than 10 days before the suit starts. Failing either one costs you costs, disbursements and attorney fees under ORS 87.060.

The back of the sheet is the state's own advice to the owner

This is a two-sided form and the statute says so on the front: IMPORTANT INFORMATION ON REVERSE SIDE. Everything after that line is addressed to the owner rather than to you, and it is printed here exactly as ORS 87.023 prints it.

The heading is IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR YOUR PROTECTION, and the three paragraphs under it explain in plain words that those who work on your property or provide labor, equipment, services or materials and are not paid have a right to enforce their claim for payment against your property, that if the contractor fails to pay the people below them those people can look to the property even if the owner paid the contractor in full, and that the law states that all people hired by a contractor to provide materials, equipment, labor or services must give a notice of right to a lien.

Then seven bullets under WAYS TO PROTECT YOURSELF ARE, and one of them is the reason the joint check exists as an industry habit: when paying your contractor for materials, equipment, labor or services, you may make checks payable jointly to the contractor and the firm furnishing them for which you have received a notice of right to a lien.

Another bullet points the owner at a different document, the Information Notice to Owners. That one is not printed in the statute at all. ORS 87.093(1) directs the Construction Contractors Board to adopt it by rule, in nontechnical language and in a clear and coherent manner using words in their common and everyday meanings, and 87.093(2) puts the duty to deliver it on the original contractor, at the time of signing a residential construction or improvement contract with the owner, and to the first purchaser of residential property sold before or within the 75-day period following completion. It applies only where the aggregate contract price exceeds $2,000, and under 87.093(5) it is not required at all if the owner is a contractor licensed with the board.

So if you are a subcontractor or a supplier, the Information Notice to Owner is not your job and this notice is. If you are the general contractor on a residential job, the Information Notice to Owner is your job and this one usually is not, because your work was furnished at the request of the owner.

And if it is your job and you skip it, ORS 87.093(6) takes your lien away. Notwithstanding ORS 87.010 and 87.030, an original contractor who does not deliver an owner or agent an Information Notice to Owner as required under subsections (2) to (4) of that section may not claim any lien created under ORS 87.010 upon any improvement, lot or parcel of land of the owner for labor, services or materials supplied under the residential construction or improvement contract for which the contractor failed to deliver it. Not a shorter deadline and not a smaller claim. No lien at all, on a job you have already built. ORS 87.093(7) adds a second consequence that does not depend on the first: the board may suspend the license of the original contractor for any period of time the board considers appropriate, or impose a civil penalty of not more than $5,000 as provided in ORS 701.992.

Two details in 87.093 are easy to miss and both of them cost generals money. The $2,000 line moves with the job. ORS 87.093(4) says that if the price of a residential construction or improvement contract was initially less than $2,000 but exceeds that amount during performance, the original contractor shall deliver the Information Notice to Owner not later than five days after the contractor knows or should reasonably know that the contract price will exceed $2,000, so a change order can start a five day clock on a contract that needed no form the day it was signed. And this is the one notice in the chapter that ordinary mail can carry: ORS 87.093(3) allows personal delivery, registered or certified mail, or first class mail with certificate of mailing, which is exactly why ORS 87.018(1) excepts 87.093 by name from its own stricter rule.

Three rules, two captions, and the one thing the statute leaves open

The site's rule is that a statutory form is reproduced as the legislature printed it, including the parts that are awkward, and the owner block on this form is the awkward part.

The legislature typesets it as a three column table. The first column holds To. The middle column holds a rule, then the caption Owner, then another rule, then the caption Owner's address, then a third rule. The right column holds Date of mailing and its own rule. So there are three rules in the middle column and only two captions, and both captions sit below a rule rather than above one.

Read one way, each caption names the rule above it: the first rule is the owner's name, the second is the address, and the third is unlabeled. Read the other way each caption introduces the rule below it, which leaves the first rule unlabeled and makes the third the address. The statute never says. It is the sort of thing that is obvious on paper and ambiguous in text, and the form has to make a choice because the rules have to be filled in.

The reading taken here is the first one, because it is the ordinary convention for a caption on a paper form and because it leaves the answers in the order anyone writes an address. The name goes on the rule beside To, with Owner captioning it underneath. The street address goes on the next rule, with Owner's address captioning it underneath. The city, state and ZIP go on the last rule, which the statute leaves uncaptioned and which this form also leaves uncaptioned. Every caption sits exactly where the legislature puts it.

What is not done is inventing a caption for the third rule. It is unlabeled in ORS 87.023 and it is unlabeled here. Printing a guess as if it were the statute is the one thing this site does not do, so the guess is disclosed on this page and on the sheet's own disclaimer line instead.

Questions people ask

Once the job is running and you are getting paid on it, the paperwork that comes next is the waiver: see the Oregon statutory lien waiver forms, and conditional vs unconditional lien waiver for which of the two to sign.