Why This Site Exists
Most people who lease out a property in Arizona are not in the property business. They have inherited a house, moved in with a partner and kept the old place, taken in a lodger, or bought somewhere they will retire to and lease it out in the meantime. They need to know what the paperwork has to say, and they need it in language that does not require a law degree.
The people on the other side of those agreements need the same thing. Every rule here runs in two directions — a deadline for the landlord is a protection for the tenant, and the reverse — so the site is written for both, with a separate way in for tenants rather than asking them to read it backwards.
The information exists, but it is scattered between a statute written for lawyers and a great deal of general advice written for no state in particular. Arizona differs from its neighbors in ways that matter: the deposit cap, the notice periods, the clauses that are simply void here, the courts that hear the cases. This site tries to set that out plainly and get it right.
Who Writes It
The guidance is written by Toby Kay, who ran an Arizona real estate brokerage for many years and is now retired. She is not a lawyer, and nothing here is legal advice.
More about Toby Kay — the licenses, the brokerage, and what that background is and is not good for.
How the Information Is Checked
Everything described here about Arizona law comes from the statutes themselves rather than from summaries of them. Most of it is the Arizona Residential Landlord and Tenant Act, at Title 33, Chapter 10 of the Arizona Revised Statutes. But a good deal of what a landlord has to do sits outside that chapter, so the site follows the law where it goes. Fair housing is in Title 41. The county rental register is in Title 33, Chapter 19. Court jurisdiction is in Title 22. The statute of frauds and electronic signatures are in Title 44. The list of conditions that count as materially affecting health and safety is in Title 9, the cities and towns title, because the Act sends you there. The older eviction machinery, which is what is left where the Act does not reach an arrangement, is in Title 12. And the lead-paint and fair housing rules are federal. Where a rule has a detail that most summaries flatten, we keep the detail. The deposit deadline is the clearest example: it is commonly given as "fourteen days," when the statute excludes weekends and legal holidays and requires the tenant to have demanded the deposit before the clock starts at all.
The court information is assembled per county and checked against the courts' own published details. Where counties have consolidated their justice courts, we say so, because a good deal of published information still lists courts that closed years ago.
What We Do Not Do
We do not draft documents, we do not review anyone's lease, and we are not a law firm. The lease forms this site describes come from Standard Legal, and the legal question service comes from JustAnswer — both independent companies. How those arrangements work, and how this site earns money, is set out on the disclaimer.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, out of date, or unclear, we would rather know. Court details in particular go stale, and a reader who has just been to a courthouse knows more about it than we do. There is a contact page.
Publisher
ArizonaLeaseAgreement.com is published by Kaktus Productions, which also publishes a family of state-specific guides to property deeds. It is independent of the State of Arizona and of any court or government body.