You have decided to put the agreement in writing. The next question is where the words come from.
You can write a lease yourself, and some landlords do. Most start from a form somebody has already drafted and fill in the parts that are theirs — the names, the property, the rent, the term. This page is about doing that well.
There are two things to get right. The first is the form. A lease written to be sold in every state is not the same thing as a lease that works in Arizona. The second is what you do with the form once you have it, because several of Arizona’s rules are about how a lease is filled in and handed over rather than what it says.
This page is written for the landlord. If you are the tenant, the guide for tenants covers the same ground from your side.
The guidance on this page is written by Toby Kay, a retired real estate broker formerly licensed in Arizona, California and Nevada, and not a lawyer. This site explains the rules and tells you when to hire one. The forms further down are sold by Standard Legal, an affiliate partner: buying through those links may earn this website a commission, at no extra cost to you.
Read the Form Before You Use It
Arizona refuses to enforce five kinds of clause in a residential lease, however plainly they are written.
A lease cannot require the tenant to sign away protections the Act provides. It cannot make the tenant pay your attorney fees, although a clause that awards fees to whoever wins is allowed if it is in writing. It cannot excuse you from liability, or make the tenant cover that liability for you. The last two protect the same thing, which is the tenant’s ability to call for help. A lease cannot take away the right to summon police or emergency assistance, and it cannot fine or punish a tenant for using it.
It matters here because of what a general-purpose form is. A form meant for use in many states may contain language written for one of the others, and a provision that is permitted elsewhere can be unenforceable in Arizona. Nobody has to intend any harm for one of them to end up in your hands.
A clause that fails is not automatically harmless, either. Where a landlord deliberately uses a lease containing provisions they know are prohibited, the tenant can recover actual damages plus up to two months’ rent.
See what each of the five clauses covers.
Before the two options: a general point about any prepared form, and one the site would rather you took away than a purchase. Nobody has read the forms below against the five clauses for you. Whichever you choose, read the finished document against the five clauses Arizona refuses to enforce before anybody signs. It takes a few minutes and it is the check this page exists to make possible.
If you decide to start with a prepared form rather than write the agreement yourself, the two options below take different approaches.
Lease Agreements Legal Forms Software
Standard Legal’s lease package, downloaded right away and yours to reuse for as many tenancies as you need.
- Apartment and house leases, furnished or unfurnished, fixed term or month-to-month
- Room, vacation rental and parking space leases — a short stay raises questions of its own, covered on seasonal and snowbird leases
- Pet addendum, renter’s insurance addendum and a general addendum
- Application for lease by tenant, plus credit and criminal background check authorizations
- Notice to tenant for late payment, non-compliance, non-renewal or eviction — Arizona is strict about what a notice must say and how the days are counted, so check any form against ending a tenancy before you serve it
- Assignment of lease, and the federal lead disclosure form and EPA booklet
- Commercial premises, office and triple-net leases if you need them
$19.95 — instant download
Get the lease forms at Standard Legal
Disclosure: affiliate link to Standard Legal, our partner — no extra cost to you.
Lease Agreement Document Preparation Service
If you would rather not work through a form yourself, Standard Legal’s staff will complete the documents from the details you send them, ready to sign.
- One lease of your choosing: apartment or house, furnished or unfurnished, fixed term or month-to-month
- Office, general premises and net leases as well, if the property is commercial
- Application for lease, credit and criminal background check authorizations, and the notice to tenant
- Assignment of lease, and the federal lead disclosure at no extra charge
$39.95 — further leases can be prepared for an added fee
Disclosure: affiliate link to Standard Legal, our partner — no extra cost to you.
One limitation worth knowing: Standard Legal states that it does not offer the preparation service to California residents, because of that state’s county-by-county registration rules for people who prepare legal documents. It is where you live that counts, not where the property is — so a California owner of an Arizona rental would need the software instead. Arizona residents are not affected.
Which of the Two Fits Your Situation
The useful difference between them is not really the price. It is how many leases you expect to sign, and how much of the filling in you want to do yourself.
The software is yours to keep. Sign a new tenant next year and you open the same files again, so it suits anyone with more than one property or more than one tenancy ahead of them. It also holds several forms the preparation service does not: the room lease, the vacation rental lease, the parking space lease, and the pet, renter’s insurance and general addenda. If you are leasing a room in your own home, or a place for the winter season, those additional forms may be useful. Each arrangement carries rules of its own; see a room in your own home and seasonal and snowbird leases.
The preparation service is one finished lease, drafted from what you tell them. You are paying the difference to have the document arrive completed rather than to complete it yourself. If you want a second lease later, that is an added fee rather than another download.
Filling In the Form
A handful of Arizona’s rules apply to the paperwork itself. A form cannot follow them for you, so they are worth having in mind as you work through it.
Decide How Long the Tenancy Runs
Settle this before anything else, because a good deal of the rest follows from it. A fixed term ends on the date it names. A month-to-month tenancy carries on until one of you gives notice, and how much notice you owe depends on which kind you chose.
If the lease never fixes a term, Arizona chooses for you and makes it month-to-month. The one exception is a roomer who pays rent by the week, where the tenancy becomes week-to-week instead. Compare the two kinds of tenancy.
Leave No Blank Spaces
Arizona requires the blanks in a written lease to be filled in. It is one of the few rules aimed at the document rather than the deal. An unanswered question does not stay unanswered. It turns into a disagreement months later, when the two of you remember it differently.
The statute treats a failure to comply with that requirement as material noncompliance with the rental agreement, which is the Act’s term for a real breach rather than an oversight. A downloaded form is nothing but blanks when it reaches you, so read it through slowly before anyone signs. More on what belongs in the lease, and what the breach actually costs.
Keep the Deposit Inside the Limit
Arizona limits the security you may demand or receive to one and one-half month’s rent, however the individual charges are labeled. A pet deposit and a damage deposit do not each get a ceiling of their own; what is held as security is counted together, whichever blank on the form it went into.
A tenant may volunteer more rent in advance, and the section says so expressly. What you may not do is require it as a condition of the tenancy, which would be the security limit avoided by another name.
If a fee or deposit is money you intend to keep, the lease has to say in writing that it is nonrefundable. Anything not marked that way is refundable, whatever either of you assumed.
One wrinkle no form will warn you about: Arizona’s definition of security excludes a reasonable charge for redecorating or cleaning, and never says how to tell such a charge from a deposit held against the same thing. Holding and returning a deposit takes that apart, along with the rest of the procedure.
Write Down the Late Fee, If You Want One
Filling in the form is the only moment this question can be dealt with, and it is the rule landlords most often discover too late. Arizona names no figure of its own. Where the Act does touch late fees, at one point only, what it contemplates is a charge that is reasonable and was in the agreement before the rent came due. So the blank the form sets aside for it needs filling in now, at a level you would be comfortable defending. Rent, fees and charges works through the section, including the part it leaves open.
Sort Out the Disclosures
Three things have to reach your tenant in writing at or before the tenancy starts:
- who manages the property, and how to contact them;
- an owner or agent’s address for service of legal papers;
- and word that the Act itself is on the Arizona Department of Housing’s website.
None of it has to be a separate document. Most lease forms already set aside a space for the owner and manager details, and the lease will hold the rest perfectly well. What a lease cannot handle alone is the part that comes later, because these details have to stay current and be handed over again whenever your tenant asks. What an Arizona landlord must disclose covers all of them, including the ones that depend on the property, such as a house built before 1978.
Sign It and Hand Over the Right Paperwork
You give the tenant a signed copy of the lease, and the tenant signs and returns one fully completed copy to you within a reasonable time. Arizona treats a failure on either side as material noncompliance with the rental agreement. A signature is all either of you needs: an Arizona lease does not have to be notarized.
Two other pieces of paper go to the tenant at move-in, and no lease form will remind you about them. One is a move-in form, so the tenant can write down damage that was already there. The other is written notice that the tenant may be present when you carry out the move-out inspection. Both exist for the same reason. They are the record the two of you will use when the deposit is settled at the end of the tenancy.
What a Form Cannot Do
A form gives you a structure to work through and language you do not have to write from scratch. It does not know your property, your tenant, or anything unusual about the arrangement, and it cannot tell you when your situation has stopped being an ordinary one.
When that happens, what helps is somebody who can read the actual documents, not a better blank form. Information about finding a lawyer.
Where These Rules Come From
Arizona’s laws are collected in a set called the Arizona Revised Statutes, usually shortened to A.R.S. The number that follows points to one section of it.
You do not need these numbers to use this page. They are here so that you, or a lawyer you hire, can check the exact wording. Each one links to the official text on the Arizona Legislature’s website, which opens in a new tab.
- A.R.S. 33-1315 is the prohibited clauses section. Subsection A lists the five, in the order described above. B is the consequence: a prohibited clause is unenforceable, and deliberate use of one known to be prohibited exposes the landlord to actual damages plus up to two months’ periodic rent.
- A.R.S. 33-1314 covers what a rental agreement may contain. Subsection D is the one that matters here: it supplies month-to-month, or week-to-week for a weekly-paying roomer, when the agreement fixes no term.
- A.R.S. 33-1321 is security deposits. Subsection A sets the one and one-half month ceiling, counting prepaid rent, and says a tenant may still choose to pay more in advance. B is the rule about stating nonrefundable purposes in writing. C is the paperwork that has to change hands at move-in, including the form your tenant uses to record damage that was already there.
- A.R.S. 33-1322 is disclosure and tender. Subsections A and B are the manager, owner and Department of Housing disclosures, and C is the duty to keep them current. Subsection E carries the copies and the completed blanks, and says failing either is a material noncompliance — the Act’s term for a real breach.
- A.R.S. 33-1310 supplies the definitions, and paragraph 15 sits behind the deposit note above. Security is money or property given to assure payment or performance, and the sentence after that expressly puts a reasonable charge for redecorating or cleaning outside the term.
Common Questions
Is a Standard Legal lease valid in Arizona?
Standard Legal says its documents are valid in every USA state and territory, with state-specific language or forms supplied where a state requires them. The lease package carries no Arizona exclusion. What still falls to you is checking that the completed lease does not contain one of the five clauses Arizona will not enforce.
What is the difference between the software and the preparation service?
The software is an instant download you complete yourself, and you can reuse it for later tenancies at no further cost. The preparation service is one finished lease, completed by Standard Legal from details you supply, for a higher one-off price. A second prepared lease costs extra.
Can a California resident use the preparation service?
No. By their own statement, the preparation service is not offered to California residents, because of that state's county-by-county registration rules. It turns on where the buyer lives rather than where the property is. The software is still available to them.
Does the package include an eviction or late payment notice?
Yes. Both options include a notice to tenant covering late payment, non-compliance, non-renewal and eviction. The software also carries the room, vacation rental and parking space leases and the three addenda, which the preparation service does not.
Do I still have to make the disclosures if I use one of these forms?
Yes, but they do not have to sit outside the lease. Arizona asks only that the manager and owner details, and the note about the Act, reach your tenant in writing at or before the tenancy starts. A lease is a perfectly good place for them. The duty to keep them current and supply them again on request carries on after signing.
Will a free template work instead?
It may. The risk is that a form written to suit the whole country often carries clauses Arizona voids, and those clauses are ordinary law in other states. They are unenforceable here, and deliberately using provisions known to be prohibited exposes a landlord to actual damages plus up to two months' rent.
Standard Legal is one of the two affiliate arrangements on this site. The other is JustAnswer, the legal question service linked from finding a lawyer. Both are described in full on the disclaimer. As an affiliate we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you, which helps support the site and its content. We do not prepare documents, and we are not a law firm.