When an Arizona Landlord May Enter

You own the property, and while somebody is living in it, it is their home. Arizona resolves that with a rule that is easy to state and easy to get slightly wrong. At least two days’ notice, and entry at reasonable times. Specific statutory exceptions apply, and there is a limited set of permitted reasons for going in at all.

The number is the part everybody remembers. The part that decides most disputes is the sentence next to it, which says a landlord must not abuse the right of access or use it to harass the tenant. Two days is a floor, not a defense.

This page is written for the landlord. If you are the tenant, the guide for tenants covers the same ground from your side.

The Rule

Except in an emergency, or where giving notice is impracticable, you must give at least two days’ notice of your intent to enter, and may enter only at reasonable times.

Several of those terms are left undefined. Arizona does not say what makes a time reasonable, what counts as an emergency, or when notice becomes impracticable. It also does not prescribe a form, so nothing in the section requires the notice to be written.

That is not an invitation to decide for yourself. It means a disagreement about any of them gets settled by a judge looking at what actually happened, which is a good reason to behave in a way that is easy to describe afterward.

How Do You Count Two Days?

The section does not say, and this is the sort of counting question that has sunk plenty of notices elsewhere in Arizona’s landlord and tenant law.

Arizona does have a general rule for computing time. It excludes the first day, includes the last, and pushes the last day along if that falls on a holiday. Whether it governs a notice running before an entry, rather than a deadline to act, is not a question either provision answers.

Which makes this an easy problem to sidestep. Notice given on Friday for entry on Monday is not going to be argued about. Notice pushed under the door on Friday evening for a Sunday morning visit invites exactly the argument you do not want to be having.

What You May Enter For

The tenant must not unreasonably withhold consent for you to enter in order to:

• inspect the property;
• make necessary or agreed repairs, decorations, alterations or improvements;
• supply necessary or agreed services; or
• show the unit to prospective or actual purchasers, mortgagees, tenants, workmen or contractors.

The word doing the work there is unreasonably, and Arizona leaves it to be judged on the circumstances rather than defining it.

A tenant who asks you to come Thursday instead of Tuesday, or after work instead of nine in the morning, has not necessarily withheld consent unreasonably. A tenant who simply refuses to admit a plumber for a worsening leak, offering no alternative, is in a much harder position. Between those two lies a range of situations that depend on what was asked, how often, and what was offered instead.

That standard cuts both ways, which is why a landlord who is flexible about timing ends up in a stronger position. If it has to be explained to a judge, a tenant who offered three alternative times looks very different from one who offered none.

Showings Are Where This Usually Goes Wrong

Repairs are the examples everyone reaches for, but the access dispute that actually fills the calendar is the one on a property being sold or re-leased near the end of a tenancy.

Showings are on the list, so they are a lawful reason to enter, and the notice rule applies to each of them the same as anything else. The difficulty is not any single showing. It is the pattern. A tenant living through several viewings a week, each properly notified, each individually lawful, is the exact situation the harassment limb of the remedies section is written for.

An agreed schedule is worth more here than a stack of notices. The permitted purposes include agreed repairs and services, so the Act plainly contemplates arrangements the two of you settle between yourselves. A tenant who has agreed to Saturday afternoons is not a tenant building a harassment case.

Where the Notice Rule Gives Way

Three provisions do different jobs here, and they are worth keeping apart.

An Emergency

You may enter without the tenant’s consent in an emergency, and the notice requirement does not apply. Arizona does not define the word, so this is not a category to stretch. Water coming through a ceiling is one. A tenant who has stopped answering messages is not obviously one.

Where Notice Is Impracticable

The notice requirement also gives way where giving notice is impracticable. This is the narrower and less discussed of the two, and it is not a second word for inconvenient.

It is doing a different job from the emergency exception. An emergency is about the situation at the property. Impracticability is about whether notice could realistically be given at all — which is a question about circumstances rather than urgency. Arizona defines neither, so both are decided after the fact, on what a judge makes of what happened. Treat this one as the exception you have to be able to explain, not the one you reach for first.

The Tenant Asked for the Repair

This exception is widely misunderstood, and the detail that gets dropped is the one that matters.

Where a tenant notifies you of a service or maintenance request, that notice is itself permission to enter. It covers the sole purpose of acting on the request, and the tenant waives the separate access notice that would otherwise be required. Sensible enough: nobody wants to report a broken water heater and then wait two days to have it looked at.

But the section does not point at any request a tenant happens to make. It points at the tenant’s duty to notify you of a maintenance problem, and that duty is a duty to notify in writing. Whether a request made in passing, in a phone call or at the mailbox, carries the same waiver is not something the section answers.

The practical course does not depend on resolving that. If the request came in writing, you have your permission and it is on the record. If it did not, either send the two days’ notice anyway or reply in writing confirming what they asked for and when you are coming. Both take a minute, and both leave you holding the same thing: something you can show.

And the permission is narrow whichever way it arrived. It is permission to fix the water heater. It is not a general pass, and it does not carry over to the following week.

When You Cannot Reach the Tenant at All

The silent tenant is the situation this page’s rules handle worst, because none of them is really built for it. It is worth knowing which question you are actually asking.

If you are worried about the person, that is not a landlord access question. A welfare check by the police is the route, and it does not depend on anything in the Act.

If what you suspect is that the tenancy is over and nobody told you, Arizona has a separate procedure with its own definitions and its own steps, set out on ending a tenancy. Do not shortcut it by treating a quiet property as abandoned.

And there is a provision most landlords have never used. You may ask a tenant, at the start, for the name and contact details of somebody authorized to enter and deal with their property if they die or become incapacitated. It costs nothing to ask for and it is the only thing on this page that helps in advance rather than afterward. What a lease must say covers it.

There Is No General Right of Entry Beyond the Statute

Beyond the above, a landlord has no right of access at all except in three cases. By court order. Under the sections dealing with a tenant’s failure to maintain the property and with abandonment. Or where the tenant has abandoned or surrendered it.

That list is short and deliberately closed. Owning the building is not on it. Neither is a suspicion about what is going on inside, nor an unpaid month’s rent.

Nor is a clause in your own lease claiming a wider right. Arizona will not enforce a provision asking a tenant to give up rights the Act gives them, and the right to refuse entry outside the listed purposes is one of those. What a lease cannot say covers that rule and what it costs a landlord who uses one knowingly.

There is a real line here rather than a blanket ban, and the purpose list draws it. A lease can arrange access — a landscaping service every other Tuesday, agreed and written down, is an agreed service. What a lease cannot do is take away the protections themselves.

When Access Goes Wrong

Arizona gives each side a remedy, and they are deliberately not symmetrical.

If the Tenant Refuses Lawful Access

You may obtain injunctive relief to compel access, or terminate the rental agreement. Either way you may recover actual damages.

If You Abuse Access

Three things are covered: an unlawful entry, a lawful entry made in an unreasonable manner, and repeated demands for entry that are otherwise lawful but have the effect of unreasonably harassing the tenant. Any of them allows the tenant to obtain injunctive relief to stop it recurring, or to terminate the rental agreement. Either way the tenant may recover actual damages of not less than one month’s rent.

Two things are worth pulling out of that. The tenant’s remedy has a floor and yours does not, so the same argument is worth more to them than to you. And the third limb catches a landlord who thinks the notice period is the whole rule. Entries can each be lawful and still add up to harassment. That is what the no-abuse sentence at the top of the section is for.

One thing this section does not do is award attorney fees to anybody. It gives injunctive relief, termination and actual damages, and stops there. Whether fees are available at all turns on your lease and on general law outside the Act. A lease clause about fees also has its own limits, covered on what a lease cannot say.

In Practice

Put the notice in writing, even though the section does not require it, and say what you are coming for and roughly when. A landlord who can produce what was sent and when has answered the question before it is asked. A landlord relying on having mentioned it is arguing about memory.

Give more than two days where you reasonably can. The statute sets a minimum rather than a target, extra notice makes scheduling easier, and it takes the counting question off the table entirely. What it does not do is cure an unreasonable time, an improper purpose or a pattern of visits, so it buys you room rather than cover.

Keep the entries to what you came for. The clearest way to end up on the wrong side of the harassment limb is a series of short, well-notified visits with no obvious purpose.

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. 33-1343 is access, and it is short enough to read in a minute. Subsection A is the list of purposes and the rule that consent must not be unreasonably withheld. B is the service request waiver, and it carries the cross-reference discussed above. C allows entry without consent in an emergency. D holds both halves of the main rule: no abuse or harassment, and the two days’ notice at reasonable times, with the emergency and impracticability exceptions attached to the notice requirement. E is the closed list of everything else.
• A.R.S. 33-1341 is the tenant’s obligations. Paragraph 8 is the one subsection B points to, and it is a duty to notify the landlord in writing of anything requiring maintenance or repair. The duty that request triggers on your side is on repairs and habitability. That is why this page treats a written request differently from a passing mention.
• A.R.S. 33-1376 is the remedies on both sides. Subsection A is the landlord’s, for a refusal of lawful access. B is the tenant’s, covering unlawful entry, lawful entry in an unreasonable manner and harassment by repeated demands, and it carries the floor of one month’s rent. Neither subsection provides for attorney fees.
• A.R.S. 33-1315 is prohibited provisions, and paragraph 1 of subsection A is the one that stops a lease widening the right of entry by asking the tenant to waive rights under the Act.
• A.R.S. 1-243 sits outside the Act entirely and is the general rule for computing time: exclude the first day, include the last, and exclude the last as well if it is a holiday.
• A.R.S. 33-1314, subsections E and F, are the authorized contact person a landlord may ask for, and what may be done if the tenant dies or is incapacitated.
• A.R.S. 33-1369 and A.R.S. 33-1370 are the two sections named in the closed list: failure to maintain, and abandonment.