Arizona Lease Agreements: A Guide for Landlords

Almost nobody sets out to become a landlord.

You move in with someone and decide to keep the old house rather than sell it. You inherit a property from a parent and cannot quite bring yourself to put it on the market. You buy a place to retire to in a few years and lease it out in the meantime so that it is not sitting empty. Or there is a spare bedroom in the house, and the extra money each month would make a real difference.

However you got here, you either have a tenant now or you are about to have one, and Arizona has rules about how that arrangement works. Those rules apply whether or not you think of yourself as being in the property business.

The rules are not especially difficult. There are simply more of them than most new landlords expect, and a good number of them apply before the tenant has been handed a key.

This website explains them in ordinary English. What an Arizona lease agreement should say, what you need to give a tenant before they move in, how much notice ends a tenancy, and what happens if the two of you end up disagreeing. It is written for someone doing this once or twice rather than for a professional property manager.

If you have come here mainly looking for the document itself, start with where to get an Arizona lease form. It explains what a prepared form does for you, and what you still have to check yourself before anybody signs it.

What Is a Lease, Exactly?

The word is used in two different ways, and it helps to know which one you are hearing.

In Arizona law, a lease is a rental agreement that has been written down. The Act applies to every arrangement between a landlord and a tenant, whether the terms were typed out, agreed verbally, or never really discussed. A handshake is still an agreement, and the law still applies to it. What makes a particular agreement a lease is that somebody wrote it down.

In the property business, the word means a term of a year or more. Anything shorter is usually called a month-to-month rental. When a property manager asks whether you have a lease, that is generally the meaning being used.

Both uses are correct, so the question “do I need a lease?” does not have one answer.

There is one point where the difference matters legally. An agreement to lease for longer than a year has to be in writing and signed before anyone can enforce it. For a shorter term, putting the agreement in writing is a good idea that will save arguments later. For a term longer than a year, it is what makes the agreement enforceable at all.

Learn more about what counts as a lease in Arizona.

Which Situation Are You In?

People become landlords for different reasons, and the reason usually decides which rules matter most. Someone leasing a room in their own home has different concerns from someone leasing out an inherited property two hundred miles away.

Here are six common situations. Start with whichever one is closest to yours.

A Few Rules Worth Knowing Before You Start

If You Leave It Out, the Law Decides for You

Arizona gives landlords and tenants considerable freedom to decide what goes into their rental agreement. But if you leave certain things out, Arizona law may supply the answer for you.

Suppose the lease never says how long the tenancy is meant to run. Arizona makes it a month-to-month tenancy. That may be exactly what you wanted, or it may be the opposite of what you had in mind when you agreed that someone could move in for a year.

Or suppose you intended to charge a late fee but never put it in the written agreement. Where the Act deals with a late fee it describes one that is reasonable and already in the written lease. A fee that is in neither place has nothing behind it.

None of this is a penalty for making a mistake. It is what the law provides when the agreement says nothing. That is the argument for deciding these questions deliberately while you are writing the lease.

Learn more about what an Arizona lease should include.

Some Things a Lease Cannot Say

Signing a lease normally means you have agreed to its terms. But a landlord cannot put anything at all into a lease and make it enforceable. Arizona will not enforce certain provisions in a residential rental agreement, however clearly they are written.

This matters because blank lease forms are usually written to be sold in every state, so they tend to include whatever is permitted somewhere. A clause that is ordinary in another state can be void in Arizona. If you download a form, fill in the names and hand it to a tenant without reading it closely, you may be handing over one of these provisions without intending to.

There are also consequences for a landlord who uses one knowingly. It is worth knowing what is on the list before you put a lease in front of anyone.

See the provisions Arizona will not enforce.

Security Deposits Have a Limit and a Deadline

Two things about deposits are worth knowing at the start, because both are easier to handle before the tenancy begins than after it ends.

The first is the limit. Arizona allows you to hold no more than one and one-half month’s rent as security, and that limit covers everything taken as security regardless of what the lease calls it. A cleaning deposit, a pet deposit and prepaid rent all count toward the same total. That is how a landlord goes over the limit without meaning to.

The second is the deadline for returning the deposit after the tenancy ends. You will see it quoted almost everywhere as fourteen days, which leaves out two things. Those fourteen days do not count weekends or legal holidays, so the real date lands closer to three weeks out. And they do not start on move-out day. Three separate things have to be true first: the lease is over, the property is back in your hands, and the tenant has asked for their money back. Miss any one of the three and the clock has not begun.

Read the complete guide to Arizona security deposits.

Where to Get a Lease Form

You can write a lease yourself, and plenty of landlords do. You can also start from a form drawn up for Arizona rather than adapt one written for the country as a whole.

Our lease form page sets out the two options available through Standard Legal, our partner. One is a set of forms you complete yourself. The other is a service where their team prepares the documents for you.

We do not draft or sell the forms ourselves. Standard Legal does. If you buy through us we earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.

See the lease form options.

Ending a Lease, and What Happens If You Disagree

Ending a tenancy takes written notice, and the amount depends on the kind of tenancy and on the reason it is ending. A month-to-month tenancy takes thirty days’ written notice. A week-to-week tenancy takes ten. Where rent has gone unpaid, the landlord must give five days’ written notice of the nonpayment and of the intention to terminate before the tenancy can be ended.

Most disagreements are settled without anyone going to court. If yours is not, residential eviction cases are normally filed in the justice court for the precinct the property sits in. Cases involving larger amounts can be heard in the superior court, but the justice court is where these usually begin.

One thing worth knowing before you file anything: a justice court is a county court presided over by an elected justice of the peace, and it is not the same as a city or town magistrate court. The justice court covering your property is also not always the courthouse closest to it.

We have listed every justice court in Arizona, county by county, with addresses and the practical details of getting there.

See the notice requirements for ending a tenancy.

Find Arizona justice courts by county.

Where This Website Stops

Our purpose is to help you understand Arizona’s landlord-tenant rules in ordinary English. We are not a law firm, and the information on this website is not legal advice.

There will always be questions a general website cannot answer, because the answer depends on the particular facts and the particular documents in front of you. Maybe a tenant has raised something you have not come across before. Maybe you inherited a property along with an existing agreement, and you cannot tell what one of its clauses is supposed to do. Those are the situations where it is worth talking with a lawyer who can read the actual paperwork.

Information about finding a lawyer.

The guidance on this website is written by Toby Kay, a retired real estate broker formerly licensed in Arizona, California and Nevada. More about who writes this.