Preliminary Twenty Day Notice

A few weeks into a build, official-looking letters start arriving. A lumber yard you never hired, a truss plant, a concrete supplier. Each one announces that it has furnished materials to your property. Most owners read the first one and assume something has gone wrong. Almost always, nothing has.

That letter is a preliminary twenty day notice, and A.R.S. 33-992.01 requires it. Anyone who supplies labor, professional services, materials, machinery, fixtures, or tools to your job has to serve one to keep their lien rights alive. The statute says it must be "given not later than twenty days after the claimant has first furnished" those items to the jobsite. Miss the window and the claimant generally loses the right to lien for that work.

The notice goes to several people at once, not just you. The statute directs it to the owner, the original contractor, the construction lender if there is one, and whoever the sender actually contracted with. That is why you receive copies from firms you have no agreement with. They are on your house, so they notify you.

Read it as a signal that the paper trail is working. A supplier who serves notice is following the law. The one worth worrying about is the sub who never sends anything and later claims a lien anyway. What the notice does not tell you is whether that supplier has been paid, so pair it with lien waivers collected at each draw.

A preliminary twenty day notice is not a mechanics' lien, and not a demand for money. It is a placeholder that keeps a future lien possible. The lien itself is a separate recorded document with its own, much later deadline.