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Adapt every section, rename it, make it yours; the original stays unchanged. Have an attorney licensed in your state review this before you use it.
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A RocketLevel template for restoration owners and sales managers, backed by decades of experience in the trade.
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Starter language only. Have an attorney licensed in your state review it before anyone signs. This is a plain-language starting point, not legal advice.
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Reviewed October 2026. Lien, payment and retainage laws change, and they vary by state. Use this page to know what to ask, then confirm with your state agency or a construction attorney before you rely on it.
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A Master Service Agreement (MSA) is how a commercial relationship stops being job-by-job and becomes a standing book of recurring work. This template gives you the structure and a checklist so you walk into the conversation prepared, and so the agreement says what you think it says.
Set the framing before you open the document. An MSA solves the building's problem: no scrambling for a restoration contractor mid-crisis, known pricing and response, and a documented answer for when something goes wrong. Lead with the risk you are taking off their plate.
Adapt each section to the account.
| Section | What it covers | Your notes |
|---|---|---|
| Parties and scope | Who the agreement is between and which properties or portfolio it covers | |
| Services | The restoration services included (water, fire, mold, reconstruction, etc.) | |
| Response commitment | How fast you respond, and through what contact, when they call (here or in a Priority Service Agreement attached to the MSA) | |
| Pricing | Pre-agreed rates or pricing basis, so there is no negotiation mid-emergency (here or in a Priority Service Agreement attached to the MSA) | |
| Documentation standards | How work will be documented (photos, moisture logs, scope basis) so both sides are covered | |
| Points of contact | A named contact on both sides, not a generic line | |
| Term and renewal | How long it runs and the rhythm for revisiting it | |
| Insurance and credentials | Your coverage, safety record, and any required certifications, named by endorsement rather than by certificate | |
| Payment terms | Days to pay from invoice, what a complete invoice has to include, retainage percentage and release trigger, interest on late payment, and whether payment to you depends on the owner paying someone else | |
| Lien and notice rights | That your statutory lien and notice rights survive the agreement, and who on your team owns the calendar for the notice dates | |
| Change orders and authorization | Who can authorize added work, by name and title, up to what dollar amount, and how an emergency verbal authorization gets papered within 24 hours | |
| Indemnity and limitation of liability | Who indemnifies whom and for what, and any cap on your exposure, drafted against the anti-indemnity statute of the state the building sits in | |
| Subcontractors and compliance | Whether you may subcontract, what insurance and licensing your subs carry, and background or badging requirements at the property | |
| Standard of care and deviations | The standards and editions the work follows, and that departures get documented and signed before the work happens | |
| Termination and disputes | Notice to terminate for cause and for convenience, what you get paid for work in place, and where and how disputes get resolved |
The payment clause decides whether the account is worth having.
Find out whether the clause is pay-when-paid or pay-if-paid. They look almost identical and they are not the same instrument. Pay-when-paid sets the timing of your payment rather than whether you get paid at all, which is why it draws far less statutory attention. Pay-if-paid makes the owner's payment to your customer a condition of your getting paid at all, which moves the risk of the owner going broke onto you. Which of the two a clause actually is, and whether a court will enforce a pay-if-paid clause, gets decided under the law of the state the work sits in. Some states void it outright, Nevada judges it clause by clause, and Illinois, Indiana and Kansas let a clearly written one stand while your lien survives it. Look your state up in the state-by-state pay-if-paid survey on Commercial Contract Risk Literacy, which carries every statute and court case, before you sign, because in an enforcing state that one sentence can leave you unpaid for work you performed correctly.
Do not sign away lien rights in the master agreement. An advance lien waiver buried in an MSA is a common ask and it is worth pushing back on hard. In California, a conditional waiver that does not use the statutory form at Civil Code 8132 is void, so a homemade waiver form in an exhibit is worth nothing to either side.
Put the notice deadlines on a calendar the day the MSA is signed, not the day a job goes bad. The clock starts with your work, and a dispute later does not pause it. A few that catch people (state rules as of October 2026):