Born and raised in New Orleans, I was around in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina came through and caused monumental damage in the city. The years that followed the storm saw billions of dollars in insurance proceeds circulate through the city and lots of damage repair construction projects.
I had a unique perspective to this. My father has a construction company that specialized in damage repair, and they remediated hundreds of homes post-Katrina. I was also an attorney both helping many business clients with their insurance claims and helping contractors get paid for repair work. I saw the insurance and damage repair trade from every angle.
While the massive volume of damage repair work is gone from New Orleans, damage repair and restoration remains a strong industry.
Companies that specialize in damage repair and restoration work have unique payment challenges. They frequently contract with the property owner, but understand that payment for services will come only when the insurance claim is processed and paid out. Insurance claims, as many of us know, involve a lot of procedure and delay and can sometimes take longer to process than the construction work.
To the damage repair and restoration companies, this means they are sometimes off the project before the insurance claim gets paid, and they must wait some time before getting that payment. It is a concern that the property owner will receive the insurance check and fail to forward the money onto the restoration company. That’s why these companies can find signficant benefits in filing a mechanics lien.
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If a property restoration or repair company files a mechanics lien, they have security against the property in the event the property owner fails to make payment after receiving the insurance proceeds. Usually, it’s the best and only security for payment a property repair and restoration company can get.
Using a service like Levelset to help benefits these companies by:
- Reducing the number of mechanics liens you need to file (and thus reducing expense) because Levelset can help you monitor when the mechanics lien deadline is approaching, so you need only file if the deadline is near expiring;
- Managing the lien documents, as you’ll likely have a few being juggled at any given time;
- Verifying or researching property ownership records and legal property descriptions to ensure they are accurately included in your mechanics lien;
- Taking care of all the work in preparing, filing and serving the mechanics lien.