A homeowner can pay the builder and still end up with a lien. Under the payment problem Florida contractors keep running into, the check to the person holding the contract does not, by itself, retire what is owed to the subcontractors and suppliers who did the work.
That is the warning in a WFLA report built around a consumer attorney's advice. Naples already has a paperwork rule sitting under it: a recorded notice of commencement on jobs above a modest dollar line, filed with the city before the first inspection.
The Check That Does Not Clear the Job
WFLA reported the sequence in plain terms. If the contractor fails to pay subcontractors, homeowners can still face liens filed against their property. The people who hung the board, poured the concrete or delivered the lumber are not required to treat the builder's unpaid invoice as the homeowner's solved problem.
The attorney's list was unglamorous, which is the point. Verify the license. Confirm the insurance. Look for prior lawsuits. Make sure the permits actually being pulled match the work. None of that is a guarantee. It is the difference between finding a problem while money is still in the account and finding it on a lien notice.
Timing is the other half. The attorney's line was direct: "You don’t owe them for the next phase if they haven’t completed the prior one." Before the last payment, the same advice was to demand a final contractor affidavit. That document is supposed to confirm that the subcontractors and suppliers have been paid, not that the builder intends to pay them later.
What Naples Wants on File
The city's threshold is low enough to cover far more than a waterfront rebuild. A Naples notice-of-commencement instruction says a recorded notice must be posted if the project valuation exceeds $2,500.
A separate permit instruction puts a filing duty on the applicant before anyone is waiting on an inspector. The applicant shall file with the city, prior to the first inspection, a certified copy of the recorded notice of commencement, or another filing the same instruction permits. The recorded copy is the requirement the page states in full.
Posted and filed are not the same errand. One is the notice on the job. The other is the certified record the city wants in hand before the first inspection. A homeowner who assumes the builder's permit application already did both is assuming a step the city's own language assigns to the applicant.
A Waiver Signed Too Early
Florida's lien statute is equally specific about documents signed before the work exists. Under section 713.20, a right to claim a lien may not be waived in advance. A waiver is effective only to the extent of the labor, services or materials already furnished.
That is a narrower piece of paper than a promise, at contract signing, that nobody will ever lien the house. A release tied to work that has not been done yet does not, under that text, wipe the claim out. Partial releases are useful when they match payment for work already performed. They are not a substitute for the affidavit at the end, or for the notice Naples wants recorded once the job clears $2,500.
An Indictment, and a Conviction
Two Naples-area contractor cases show how far apart these disputes can land. They are not the same facts, and neither one is a template for every unpaid invoice in Collier County.
Gulfshore Business reported that Luis Emilio Hernandez was indicted in an alleged scheme to obtain more than $1.26 million from an elderly Naples couple for Hurricane Ian repairs that were not completed. The report said a federal grand jury indicted him Sept. 24, and that U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Nicholas P. Mizell arraigned him Oct. 16 in Fort Myers. Those are the charges as reported, not a verdict.
Gulf Coast News Now reported a conviction in a different case. Naples contractor Scott Louis Kish was convicted in March after a three-day jury trial involving a Bonita Springs home remodel. He was sentenced to prison for theft and misapplication of construction funds, with the sentences running concurrently. Investigators said he did not pay numerous subcontractors even though he had been given money to do so, and the property incurred multiple liens.
Kish's case is the lien mechanism with a jury verdict attached. Hernandez's, as the indictment was described, was about repair money taken for work that was not finished. Same stretch of coast. Not the same allegation, and not a finding that every builder who falls behind is running either scheme.
Before the Next Draw
The leverage is in the unpaid phase. A homeowner who still holds the check can refuse the next draw when the last one is unfinished, ask who has actually been paid, and match that answer to a permit and a recorded notice. Once the money has moved and the suppliers are calling the house directly, the statute is explaining a claim rather than heading one off.
In Naples, that earlier moment includes a form most custom-home stories never bother to mention. Cross $2,500 and the recorded notice of commencement has to be posted. Before the inspector arrives, a certified copy has to be on file with the city. A waiver signed before the lumber shows up will not do the job the homeowner hoped it would.
