What is a lis pendens, and what does one on your street actually mean?
A lis pendens is a recorded notice that a lawsuit affecting a property has been filed. It is not a foreclosure, and it is not a judgment. What it is, what it is not, and how to read one.
Updated 29 August 2026 · M. Bami, Tampa
A lis pendens — Latin for "suit pending" — is a notice recorded in the county's official records saying that a lawsuit has been filed that affects title to a particular property. In Florida it is authorised by Fla. Stat. § 48.23.
What it does
It puts the world on notice. Anyone who buys the property, or lends against it, after the notice is recorded takes it subject to whatever the lawsuit decides. In practice that makes the property very hard to sell or refinance until the case resolves.
What it is not
It is not a foreclosure. Most lis pendens in Florida are recorded at the start of a mortgage foreclosure, which is why the two get conflated — but a lis pendens can also come from a quiet title action, a partition between co-owners, a construction lien enforcement, a divorce, or a boundary dispute. The document itself does not tell you which.
It is also not a judgment. Nothing has been decided. A meaningful share of foreclosure cases are dismissed, settled or reinstated, and the property never changes hands.
How to read one
The recorded document gives you the case number, the court, the parties and the legal description. The case number is the useful part: it lets you look the case up in the Clerk's civil records and see what was actually filed and what has happened since. A lis pendens with no docket activity for two years means something very different from one filed last month.
Why it appears on this site
Because it is a recorded document attached to a parcel, and because it is one of the few records that genuinely changes what a property is worth to a buyer. It appears on a dossier with its recording date and instrument number, and nothing more is inferred from it.