How to Complete and Serve a Nevada Preliminary Notice Form

A Nevada preliminary notice — formally the Notice of Right to Lien under NRS 108.245 — is the short statutory form that subcontractors, material suppliers, and equipment providers serve on a property owner to preserve their right to record a mechanic’s lien later if they aren’t paid. If you don’t have a direct contract with the owner and you don’t send this notice, you lose your lien rights for everything except pure labor. The form itself is simple. The timing is where money gets lost.

Who Has to Send One

Anyone providing materials, equipment, or services on a Nevada project who doesn’t have a direct contract with the property owner needs to serve this notice before they can perfect a mechanic’s lien. That covers subcontractors, sub-subcontractors, material suppliers, and equipment rental companies. The statute is explicit: no lien for materials, equipment, or services other than labor alone can be perfected or enforced under NRS 108.221 through 108.246 unless the notice has been given.¹

Two groups don’t have to send it. Prime contractors and anyone else who contracts directly with the owner (or sells materials directly to the owner) are exempt under subsection 5 of NRS 108.245.¹ Pure laborers are also exempt, along with potential claimants under NRS 608.150. If you supply both labor and materials, you are not a pure laborer, and the notice requirement applies.

What Goes on the Form

NRS 108.245 sets out the form itself and requires you to follow it “substantially.” That means every listed element has to be there, even if the exact wording varies. The required content:

The property owner’s name and address.
A general description of the materials, equipment, work, or services you’re supplying. A plain summary like “electrical wiring and fixtures” or “concrete supply for foundation” is enough — you don’t need an itemized invoice.
The street address of the job site or the legal property description.
The name of the general contractor or subcontractor you are working under.
The statutory language stating that the document is not a claim of nonpayment but a notice, required by law, that the claimant may record a lien in the future if not paid.
Your name or business name as the claimant.

The notice does not have to be notarized, sworn to, or acknowledged.¹ You also don’t need to state an estimated cost of the work or materials; that’s a common misconception, but the statute doesn’t list it as a required element.²

When to Serve It

NRS 108.245 doesn’t set a fixed deadline. You can serve the notice “at any time after the first delivery of material or performance of work or services under a contract.”¹ No 21-day or 31-day clock starts running the day you show up on site.

But subsection 6 punishes waiting. Your lien only reaches materials, equipment, or services provided in the 31 days before you served the notice, plus everything provided after that.³ Anything you delivered or performed more than 31 days before service falls outside the lien window permanently.

Practically, that means serve the notice on your first day of work or delivery, or as close to it as you can. Wait two months and then send it, and you can only lien for work done in the last 31 days of that gap plus everything forward. The earlier work is gone. On a long project where costs pile up over months, that gap can represent serious money you’ll never collect through a lien.

How to Serve It

The statute allows two delivery methods and no others: personal delivery or certified mail.¹ Fax, email, and regular first-class mail don’t qualify. The notice goes to the property owner. If you’re a subcontractor or supplier, you must also send a copy to the prime contractor, though the prime contractor’s copy is informational only.

Failing to send the prime contractor its copy doesn’t invalidate the notice to the owner, but it exposes you to disciplinary proceedings under Chapter 624 of NRS, the contractors’ licensing statutes.¹ Send both.

Certified mail is the common choice because it creates its own record. The postal receipt fixes the mailing date, which is what you’ll count back 31 days from. Adding the return receipt (the green card) gives you proof the owner actually received it, and that evidence protects a lien claim if the owner later says they never got the notice.

If you hand-deliver, keep a written record of the date, time, location, and who accepted it. The statute doesn’t require an affidavit of service for personal delivery, but drafting one anyway is cheap protection. Two years later, in a payment dispute, your uncorroborated word about a hand-off won’t carry much weight.

Residential Projects Need a Second Notice

On any project involving the construction, alteration, or repair of single-family or multifamily residences, including apartment buildings, Nevada requires a second, separate notice before you can record a lien. Under NRS 108.226, you must serve a 15-day notice of intent to lien on both the owner and the prime contractor.³ Laborers are exempt from this one too.

The 15-day notice must contain substantially the same information as the lien itself, and it must be delivered by personal service or certified mail. Skip it on a residential project and your lien cannot be perfected or enforced, the same consequence as skipping the preliminary notice. Commercial and other nonresidential projects don’t have this extra step.

What the Notice Actually Preserves

Serving the preliminary notice keeps your lien rights alive; it does not create a lien. If a payment dispute develops, you still have to record a notice of lien with the county recorder in the county where the property is located. Under NRS 108.226, the lien must be recorded within 90 days after the latest of three events: completion of the entire work of improvement, your last delivery of materials or equipment, or your last performance of work.³

That 90-day window can shrink if the owner records and properly serves a notice of completion, which shortens the recording deadline to 40 days from the recording date.³ Because a preliminary notice puts you on the list of parties the owner must send that notice to, sending your preliminary notice also puts you in position to know when the shorter clock has started.

Mistakes That Kill the Notice

Waiting until a payment problem starts. The 31-day look-back means most of the work you’re worried about is already outside your lien window by then.
Using regular mail instead of certified. Regular mail doesn’t satisfy the statute, and the notice is legally ineffective even if the owner reads it.
Leaving out the statutory statement that the document is a notice required by law, not a claim of nonpayment. Without that language, the form doesn’t substantially conform.
Skipping the copy to the prime contractor. Your notice to the owner still stands, but you’ve handed a licensing complaint to anyone who wants to file one.
Confusing the preliminary Notice of Right to Lien with the residential 15-day notice of intent to lien. On residential jobs you need both. Missing either blocks the lien.

The form is short, and certified mail is inexpensive. Serving the notice on every project as a matter of routine, at the beginning rather than after trouble starts, is the only reliable way to keep your Nevada lien rights intact.

1
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Code 108.245 – Notice of Right to Lien: Form; Service; Effect
2
State Bar of Nevada. A Guide to the Validity of Mechanic’s Liens in Nevada
3
Nevada Legislature. Nevada Revised Statutes 108 – Statutory Liens