On a Notice of Commencement, the grantor is the property owner and the grantee is the public, though some county clerks instead list the general contractor or the interested parties who benefit from the recorded notice. Nothing is actually being conveyed. The labels are there because county recording offices index every document through a grantor-grantee system, and a Notice of Commencement has to fit that system to be found later.
Why These Labels Appear on a Document That Transfers Nothing
County recording offices maintain grantor-grantee indexes. Every document recorded in the public land records is cataloged under two headings: the party giving or creating the obligation (grantor) and the party receiving the benefit or interest (grantee). The point is searchability. Anyone looking at the records for a property or a person can pull up every document that touches them.
A deed fits the framework cleanly because one person hands ownership to another. A Notice of Commencement does not transfer ownership, but it is recorded in the same system and has to be indexed the same way. Clerks solve this by putting the property owner on the grantor line, since the owner is the one filing the document and creating the record, and by putting the public, the contractor, or the interested parties on the grantee line. The exact convention varies by county. The owner is always the grantor.
The Grantor: The Property Owner
The grantor is the property owner, or in some cases the owner’s authorized agent. The logic is straightforward. The owner is the one initiating the construction project and the one causing the document to enter the public record.
If title is held by a business entity such as an LLC or corporation, the entity name goes on the grantor line, and an authorized representative signs for the entity. The signer is not the grantor; the entity is.
There is one wrinkle worth knowing. In states that require a Notice of Commencement, a lessee who contracts for improvements to leased property is typically treated as the “owner” for NOC purposes. A commercial tenant building out a leased space would appear as the grantor, usually with a notation that the ownership interest being described is a leasehold rather than fee simple.
The Grantee: The Public or Interested Parties
The grantee line is the less intuitive one, because nobody is receiving property. The grantee designation represents whoever benefits from the public notice.
In most recording systems that means the public at large. The whole point of a Notice of Commencement is to put the world on notice that construction is happening and to identify the key players. Some county clerks instead list the general contractor in the grantee field, on the reasoning that the contractor is the primary party who benefits from the project being publicly documented. Others leave the field as “public,” and some simply list the property address. All of these are acceptable depending on local practice.
None of this changes the legal effect of the document. The grantee entry is an indexing choice, not a conveyance. Subcontractors and suppliers do not need to appear on the grantee line to use the NOC; they rely on the information in the body of the document to send preliminary notices and preserve their lien rights.
Using This to Find a Notice of Commencement in County Records
The practical consequence of all this matters most when you are searching. If you need to locate a Notice of Commencement in the county records, search under the property owner’s name in the grantor index. That is almost always where the document will be cataloged. Searching under the contractor’s name may or may not turn it up, depending on how that particular county handled the grantee field.
If you know the property but not the owner’s name, you can usually work backward from the tax roll or the deed index to get the owner’s name, then run the grantor search from there. A title company or a real estate attorney running the search will do the same thing.
Other Parties on the NOC Are Not Grantors or Grantees
It is easy to confuse the grantor-grantee question with the broader list of parties named on the face of the document. A Notice of Commencement identifies several people and companies whose roles matter for the project, but these appear in the body of the NOC, not in the recording index fields.
- The general contractor hired by the owner to oversee the construction, usually listed with name, address, and license number.
- The construction lender, if the project is financed, so that subcontractors and suppliers have a point of contact regarding project funding.
- The surety, if a payment bond has been issued, along with the bond amount, so that subcontractors know whether a bond exists to claim against.
- A designated agent, in states that allow one, who can accept legal notices on the owner’s behalf and whose in-state address appears on the document.
None of these parties is the grantor, and none of them is the grantee in the recording-index sense, even where a clerk happens to drop the contractor’s name into the grantee field. Their legal significance comes from being named in the body of the NOC, which is what gives subcontractors and suppliers the information they need to serve preliminary notices and protect their lien rights. Getting these names and addresses right matters. Incorrect or missing information can create real problems for everyone on the project.
If Your State Does Not Use a Notice of Commencement
Not every state uses this document. The requirement exists in roughly a dozen states, including Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Texas, and some states use a different name for it. Texas, for instance, calls it an Affidavit of Commencement. If your state does not require an NOC at all, the grantor-grantee question does not arise, because there is no document to record. Mechanics’ lien rights still exist in those states but run on different triggers and timelines, usually tied to the date work physically begins or materials are first delivered.