Code enforcement and municipal liens

How a code fine becomes a lien

A code case is a sequence, and the lien is the last step, not the first.

It starts with an inspector. When a Florida code inspector finds a violation, the inspector notifies the violator and gives a reasonable time to correct it, and if the violation continues past that time, the inspector asks an enforcement board for a hearing, under Fla. Stat. 162.06¹. Told that its order was not met by the compliance date, or finding a repeat violation, the board may order the violator to pay a fine for each day the violation continues. Fla. Stat. 162.09(1)².

The daily number has a ceiling. A fine may not exceed 250 dollars a day for a first violation or 500 dollars a day for a repeat one, and it may add the cost of repairs. For a violation the board finds irreparable, the ceiling is 5,000 dollars, under Fla. Stat. 162.09(2)(a). For one kind of violation the local government may make reasonable repairs and charge their cost alongside the fine. Fla. Stat. 162.09(1).

The fine keeps running until the violator complies or a court enters judgment on it, whichever comes first, under Fla. Stat. 162.09(3). None of that is yet a lien. The lien exists only when a certified copy of the order is recorded in the public records, and from that moment it attaches to the land where the violation sits and to any other real or personal property the violator owns. Fla. Stat. 162.09(3). It runs in favor of the local governing body, which can release it. A daily fine on paper is not a cloud on title. The recorded order is.

What a code lien can do, and for how long

A recorded code lien behaves like a judgment for enforcement, and it carries both a waiting period and a clock.

On petition to the circuit court, the order is enforceable the way a court judgment is, by the sheriffs, including execution and levy against the violator's personal property, under Fla. Stat. 162.09(3). It is not treated as a court judgment for any other purpose.

Three months after the lien is filed and still unpaid, the board may authorize a foreclosure of the lien or a suit for a money judgment plus accrued interest, under Fla. Stat. 162.09(3). One door stays shut: the lien may not be foreclosed on a homestead. Fla. Stat. 162.09(3). The debt survives. The house, if it is a homestead, is not the way to collect it.

The lien lasts no more than 20 years from the recording of the order, unless an enforcement action begins within that time. Fla. Stat. 162.10³. And the continuation an action buys is quieter than it looks: it is not good against creditors or later purchasers for value without notice unless a notice of lis pendens is recorded. Fla. Stat. 162.10.

The charges with no statute here

Two municipal charges people expect to find in this chapter are not in it, and one utility rule is worth knowing precisely because it is a limit.

The cost of demolishing an unsafe building is one. How a Florida county or city recovers it, and whether it becomes a lien on the land, is a matter of local ordinance that no section here settles. The closest thing the code enforcement statute offers is the repair cost it lets the local government charge with a fine, and that is a repair, not a demolition.

Unpaid utility charges are the other. Water and sewer systems and revenue bond financing have their own lien provisions outside this chapter, and whether those must be recorded is not a question the sections here answer. One section does answer a limit in the tenant's favor: a municipality may not cut off service, or lay a lien on a rental property, over a former occupant's unpaid bill, except to the extent the present owner or tenant benefited directly from the service to that former occupant, under Fla. Stat. 180.135(1)(a)⁴.

Assessments are the one place to be careful with the word. A non-ad valorem assessment, one not based on millage that can reach a homestead, may be collected with the taxes under the uniform method, and then it rides the same certificate and tax deed process if unpaid, under Fla. Stat. 197.3632(1)(d)⁵ and 197.3632(8)(a). A plain service charge the tax collector gathers for the county is different: it cannot lead to a tax certificate or deed, and it is kept off the tax bill. Fla. Stat. 197.363(5)⁶. Same collector, two very different consequences for nonpayment.

Where they are recorded, and where they are not

Whether a municipal lien has to be recorded to bind a buyer depends on what kind of lien it is, and the exceptions are the whole point.

A government lien that attaches to real property for an improvement, service, fine or penalty is good against creditors and later buyers for value only if it is recorded in the county's official records, under Fla. Stat. 695.01(3)⁷. The recorded notice has to name the owner of record, describe or give the address of the property, and carry the parcel number as of the date of recording. Fla. Stat. 695.01(3). That is the condition a code enforcement fine lien must meet.

Now the exceptions. That recording rule does not reach liens for taxes, for non-ad valorem or special assessments, or for utilities, under Fla. Stat. 695.01(3). Those classes can bind without the official records condition the fine lien carries. In Broward County, recorded liens on a property can be searched online through the County Records Division. That search finds what was recorded. It does not find what never had to be.

The division runs down a tax collector's path instead. Property taxes are a first lien from January 1 of the year they are levied, and they do not wait on recording, under Fla. Stat. 197.122(1)⁸. When they go unpaid, the collector lists the delinquent parcels with the amount due, including interest at 18 percent a year from delinquency to the sale, and the tax certificate process begins. Fla. Stat. 197.402(3)⁹. For the mechanics of which filing creates a lien and when, see priority by recording date.

Which ones come ahead

Rank is where this question gets dangerous, and it is where the statute goes quiet on the lien people most want ranked.

Property taxes are a first lien, superior to all other liens, under Fla. Stat. 197.122(1). Chapter 170 special assessments sit coequal with those taxes and superior to all other liens, titles and claims until paid. Once the final roll is filed they stand as binding first liens, under Fla. Stat. 170.09¹⁰ and 170.08. But that rank belongs to assessments the authorizing statute puts there. Whether any given assessment lien shares the first-lien rank of taxes depends on the law that created it, and this page will not guess for one it cannot see.

The code enforcement lien is where the statute goes quiet. Chapter 162 does not say whether a recorded code lien outranks an earlier mortgage or an earlier judgment lien, and so neither does this page. What can be said is what happens at a tax deed. A lien of record held by a municipal or county governmental unit, a special district, or a community development district survives the tax deed if it is not paid from the sale proceeds, when nearly everything else is cut off. Fla. Stat. 197.552¹¹. From any surplus the clerk pays governmental units for their liens of record before any nongovernmental claimant, and the holder of a recorded governmental lien, other than a federal government lien or an ad valorem tax lien, must ask within 120 days. Fla. Stat. 197.582(7)¹². Survival after a tax deed is not the same as priority over a mortgage.

Two outside rules round this out. Florida's homestead protection does not reach taxes and assessments, yet a code enforcement lien still may not be foreclosed on a homestead. Fla. Const. art. X, sec. 4¹³; Fla. Stat. 162.09(3). And a filed federal tax lien gives way, even after its notice is filed, to the holder of a lien that local law entitles to priority over earlier security interests when it secures one of three charges: a tax of general application levied by a taxing authority on the value of the property, a special assessment imposed to defray the cost of a public improvement, or charges for utilities or public services furnished to the property by a government. 26 U.S.C. 6323(b)(6)¹⁴. New York draws a similar line at a foreclosure sale: in cities of the sizes RPAPL 1354¹⁵ names, the officer pays from the proceeds any city agency liens that already have priority over the foreclosed mortgage, though the section leaves it to other law to say which ones those are. RPAPL 1354(2).

What this does not cover

The rank of a code lien against the mortgage already on the property, which is the one question a buyer in this spot asks first.

Chapter 162 does not answer it, so this page does not. Demolition liens and the statute that creates a plain utility lien are outside what this page can speak to as well, and they stay questions rather than answers. What survives a tax deed, and what is paid first from its surplus, is described above because the sections say so. How a recorded code lien ranks against an older mortgage is not, because they do not.

Nobody writing this is a lawyer and none of it is advice. Whether a particular city lien stands ahead of your interest, or can be foreclosed, or has already lapsed, is a question for counsel with the title work open. What a page can do is narrower. It can tell you that the parcel search shows one half of the liens, that taxes, assessments and utilities are the half it may miss, and which of the charges here even become a lien in the first place.