Washington notice of furnishing professional services, free and word for word from RCW 60.04.031(5)
This is the notice for work that leaves nothing to look at. A surveyor sets the corners, an engineer draws the plans, a testing firm takes the borings, and a buyer or a lender who walks the property a month later sees an empty lot. RCW 60.04.031(5) lets you record a notice in the county records instead, so the property itself carries the warning. Fill the form in below and download it, or print it blank and write on it.
Subsection (5): if this notice is not recorded, the lien claimed shall be subordinate to the interest of any subsequent mortgagee and invalid as to the interest of any subsequent purchaser, where the mortgagee or purchaser acts in good faith and for valuable consideration and acquires an interest before an improvement is commenced, without notice of the professional services being provided. Nothing suspends that. It is the whole of the penalty and it arrives quietly.
Read the law: RCW 60.04.031, 60.04.011, 60.04.021, 60.04.091 and 60.04.141app.leg.wa.gov
Fill it in online Type your details in and download it already filled in.Download a blank Washington notice of furnishing professional services
Word for word from the form in RCW 60.04.031, subsection (5). This one is recorded in the county real property records rather than mailed to anybody. Print it and fill it in by hand, or use the builder below and get it back already filled in.
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Professional services is a defined term, and it is narrower than it sounds
RCW 60.04.011(13) defines it: surveying, establishing or marking the boundaries of, preparing maps, plans, or specifications for, or inspecting, testing, or otherwise performing any other architectural or engineering services for the improvement of real property.
Surveyors, architects, engineers, geotechnical and materials testing firms, plan preparers. Not a general contractor doing preconstruction. Not a consultant writing a feasibility study with no map or plan in it. Not a real estate professional. If your work product is a map, a plan, a specification, a boundary or a test result on the property, you are inside the definition.
That definition matters twice. It is what puts you in RCW 60.04.021 with a lien at all, through RCW 60.04.011(5)(c), which makes improvement include providing professional services upon real property or in preparation for or in conjunction with the intended construction or landscaping activities. And it is what makes this particular notice available to you and to nobody else.
The problem this form solves is that nobody can see your work
A construction lien is partly a warning system. A buyer who walks a site with a half framed house on it knows somebody has been working and knows somebody might not have been paid. That visible work is what the law treats as notice to the world.
Professional services break that. Subsection (5) is written for the potential lien claimant providing professional services where no improvement as defined in RCW 60.04.011(5)(a) or (b) has been commenced, and the professional services provided are not visible from an inspection of the real property.
Both halves have to be true. Nothing has been built, cleared, graded, filled, planted or landscaped yet, and your own work cannot be seen on the ground. A survey with stakes and flagging in the dirt is a harder call than a set of drawings produced in an office, and the cheap answer is to record either way.
Once construction starts, the visible work does the job and this notice stops being the thing standing between you and a subsequent mortgagee. It does not become wrong to have recorded it. It becomes unnecessary to record a new one.
What happens if you skip it, and why you will not find out for months
Subsection (5) does not void your lien and does not fine you. It rearranges who gets paid first, and only against people who arrive later.
If the notice is not recorded, the lien claimed shall be subordinate to the interest of any subsequent mortgagee and invalid as to the interest of any subsequent purchaser, where that mortgagee or purchaser acts in good faith and for a valuable consideration and acquires an interest in the property prior to the commencement of an improvement, without notice of the professional services being provided.
Read that against how these jobs actually go. You survey and draw for a developer in March. The construction loan closes in July. Ground breaks in September. The lender that closed in July acquired its interest before any improvement commenced and, without your recorded notice, had no way to know you existed. Your lien goes behind that deed of trust for the full amount of the loan, which on a development parcel is usually the entire value of the property.
Nobody tells you this happened. You find out when you record a claim of lien two years later and discover there is nothing underneath the loan to reach.
A sale is worse than a loan. Against a subsequent good faith purchaser the statute does not say subordinate, it says invalid.
This is not the notice to owner, and you may owe both
Subsection (1) of the same section makes every person furnishing professional services, materials or equipment give the owner or reputed owner a notice in writing of the right to claim a lien. Subsection (5) is a different instrument with a different audience, and nothing in either one excuses the other.
The notice to owner is mailed certified or registered, or served personally, and it protects what you supplied in the sixty days before you gave it. The notice of furnishing is recorded with the county, it is not sent to anybody, and it protects your position against people who acquire an interest after it goes on record.
If you contracted directly with the owner you are exempt from the notice to owner under subsection (2)(a), and you are not exempt from this one. Subsection (5) has no exemption list at all. That combination catches a lot of design professionals, because contracting directly with the owner is the normal way an architect or a surveyor is engaged.
Subsection (6) sits over both of them: a lien authorized by this chapter shall not be enforced unless the lien claimant has complied with the applicable provisions of this section. Applicable is the word doing the work. Read subsections (1) through (5) and send or record whichever ones reach you.
The legal description is mandatory and the form says so on its face
The statutory form prints the words Legal Description is mandatory in brackets, in the middle of the form, which is unusual and deliberate. This is a recorded document. A street address does not index against a parcel and the recorder is being told what will not do.
Take it from the deed, the title commitment, or the county assessor's parcel record, and copy it exactly, including the lot, block, plat name, volume and page, and the county. If you are working for a developer, ask for the title commitment, because the description on it is the one the later mortgagee will be searching against.
The rest of the content comes straight out of subsection (5): the professional service provider's name, address, telephone number, legal description of the property, the owner or reputed owner's name, and the general nature of the professional services provided. The form prints a blank for each of them.
General nature is the standard for the description of your work and it is a low one. Boundary survey and site plan preparation is enough. An itemized scope is not asked for and gives a later reader something to argue about.
Recording does not stop the other two clocks
This notice protects your priority. It does not extend your lien, and the two deadlines in the rest of the chapter run exactly as they would have.
RCW 60.04.091 still gives you ninety days after you ceased to furnish professional services to file a claim of lien for recording in the county where the property is, and still says that period is a period of limitation. For a design professional, ceasing to furnish is often the day you delivered the final drawings, which can be a year before anything is built on the site.
That gap is the real hazard of this lane. The notice of furnishing is recorded early and can sit on record for a long time, and it is easy to read it as the thing that keeps you alive. It is not. If you finished your work in May, the claim of lien is due in August whether or not a shovel has ever moved.
After recording the claim, RCW 60.04.091 gives you fourteen days to mail a copy to the owner or reputed owner by certified or registered mail or serve it personally, and failing that forfeits attorneys' fees and costs against the owner under RCW 60.04.181. RCW 60.04.141 then gives the lien eight calendar months from recording, unless an action is filed in superior court in that county within the eight months and the owner is served within ninety days of filing.
Questions people ask
Who records a Washington notice of furnishing professional services?
A potential lien claimant providing professional services where no improvement has been commenced and the services are not visible from an inspection of the property, under RCW 60.04.031(5). In practice that is surveyors, architects, engineers, plan preparers and testing firms who worked on a site before construction started.
Where does it go?
Into the real property records of the county where the property is located. It is recorded, not mailed and not served. The recording is the entire mechanism, because it is what a later buyer or lender searching title will find.
What happens if I do not record it?
Your lien becomes subordinate to the interest of any subsequent mortgagee and invalid as to the interest of any subsequent purchaser, where that party acts in good faith and for valuable consideration and acquires its interest before an improvement is commenced, without notice of your services. On a development parcel that usually means the construction loan sits ahead of you for its full amount.
Does this replace the notice of right to claim a lien?
No. They are different instruments in the same section. Subsection (1) is the notice mailed to the owner and subsection (5) is this one, recorded with the county. Contracting directly with the owner exempts you from the first under subsection (2)(a) and exempts you from nothing here, because subsection (5) has no exemption list.
What counts as professional services?
RCW 60.04.011(13) defines it as surveying, establishing or marking boundaries, preparing maps, plans or specifications, or inspecting, testing or otherwise performing any other architectural or engineering services for the improvement of real property.
Do I still have ninety days to record a lien?
Yes, and recording this notice does not extend it. RCW 60.04.091 gives you ninety days after you ceased to furnish, and says that period is a period of limitation. For a design professional that often means ninety days from delivering the final drawings, long before anything is built.
Is this the official Washington form?
The wording is the form printed in RCW 60.04.031(5), sliced out of the statute rather than rewritten. The statute says the notice shall be substantially in that form. Nothing on this page is legal advice.
Once the job is running and you are getting paid on it, the paperwork that comes next is the waiver: see the Washington statutory lien waiver forms, and conditional vs unconditional lien waiver for which of the two to sign.