Philadelphia Construction Law Blog

In July of this year, we reported on a change to the Pennsylvania Mechanic’s Lien Law that revised the statute to give priority to construction loans secured by open-end construction loan mortgages. The revisions also broadened the definition of cost of construction to cover a range of things – to include attorneys’ fees and accounting fees – which are part of the costs incurred to build the project. This marks a significant change in the law which can be reviewed further in our previous blog post here.

On July 9, the Pennsylvania Legislature amended the Mechanic’s Lien Law to change lien priority rules flowing from the 2012 Kessler decision by the Pennsylvania Superior Court. The Kessler Court had established that mechanic’s liens had priority over open-end mortgages where visible commencement of work at the site pre-dated the recording of the mortgage and advances on the mortgage were made for costs other than “hard construction costs”.