Leasing for a season does not put the arrangement outside Arizona’s Residential Landlord and Tenant Act. A four-month winter tenancy is a tenancy. The deposit cap applies, the disclosures apply, the entry rules apply, and ending it takes the notice the Act requires.
Arizona’s winter visitor season shapes the rental market here in a way it does nowhere else. Communities in Yuma, Mesa, the Verde Valley and along the Colorado River fill up between October and April and empty again, and a great deal of that housing is leased out by ordinary owners for part of the year.
This page is written for the landlord. If you are the tenant, the guide for tenants covers the same ground from your side.
Where the Act Stops Applying
There is a real line here, and it is not drawn where most people assume. It has nothing to do with how the booking was made.
Arizona lists the arrangements its Act does not cover, and the one that matters here is transient occupancy in a hotel, motel or recreational lodging. That describes the kind of accommodation rather than the website somebody booked it through. A private house does not become a hotel, a motel or recreational lodging merely because the stay was short.
The reason the short end of the season is still uncertain is that Arizona defines none of those three terms, and recreational lodging is the loose one. A house leased for a season is plainly not it. A property run the way lodging is run is a harder question, and the section gives no test for telling them apart.
In front of that list sits a condition that is easy to skim past. Every exclusion on it is withheld from an arrangement created to avoid the Act. You cannot structure your way out. Something dressed up to look excluded, so that it is not a tenancy, remains a tenancy.
So the honest position is this. A season-long lease of several months: work on the basis that the Act applies. A genuinely transient stay in the kind of lodging the exclusion describes: it does not. Between those two the answer turns on the character of the arrangement, and the statute supplies no measure for it — not a number of nights, not a definition of the term it rests on.
Treat a tenancy as a vacation booking and you lose the Act’s protections, which is the expensive direction. If your arrangement sits between the two, that is a question worth putting to a lawyer rather than deciding for yourself.
Short stays can also fall under Arizona’s separate short-term and vacation rental rules, and under local ordinances that vary from city to city. Those answer different questions from the Act, and being inside one says nothing about the other.
One more thing about the short end, because another page on this site could mislead you about it. Arizona repealed the residential rental tax that landlords used to pass on to tenants, and that repeal is real. The transient lodging tax is a different tax and it still exists, and short stays are its territory. Whether a particular seasonal arrangement falls under it is an accountant’s question, not one this site answers.
A Fixed Term Is Usually the Right Answer
Seasonal leasing is the clearest case for a fixed term anywhere on this site. You know when the season starts and when it ends. So does your tenant.
A definite term ordinarily expires on the date the agreement names, without the thirty days a month-to-month tenancy needs. Read your own agreement before relying on that, because a lease can require notice the Act does not. Ending a tenancy works through how a fixed term ends.
The alternative is worse than it looks. Fix no term and Arizona makes the tenancy month to month. Your tenant can then end it on thirty days’ notice in January, when re-leasing for the rest of the season is close to impossible. The two are compared side by side on month-to-month or fixed term.
What Happens Between Seasons
This is the part seasonal landlords most often have wrong, and the folk version has it backwards.
A fixed term does not quietly turn into a month-to-month tenancy when April arrives. Stay on without your consent and your tenant is a holdover, which opens an action for possession — and more besides where the staying was willful and not in good faith. What converts the arrangement into a periodic tenancy on the statutory default terms is your consent, in writing, to their staying.
The statute draws the line clearly. Remaining without the landlord’s consent is a holdover. The landlord’s written consent to continued occupancy is what brings the periodic-tenancy default into play instead.
That matters in this market because the property is often empty for months and nobody is watching, so the question of which arrangement you have can go unasked for a season. Ending a tenancy covers the holdover rules in full.
Furnished Places and the Deposit Cap
Seasonal leases are usually furnished, and furnishings tempt owners into extra charges. A furniture deposit. A linens charge. Something toward breakages.
Giving security a different name creates no room above the ceiling, because the cap covers security however denominated, prepaid rent included.
A nonrefundable fee sits in a different part of the section. Arizona allows one, and asks that its purpose be stated in writing — and a charge that never says so is refundable whatever was intended. What the section does not say is whether a properly designated nonrefundable fee counts toward the ceiling that applies to security.
So on a furnished property the safe course is to keep the total of everything you hold inside the cap, and to write down the purpose of anything you mean to keep. Security deposits has the detail.
Record What Is in the Property, Not Just Its Condition
The move-in form matters more in a furnished place than an empty one, because there is simply more to disagree about.
What Arizona requires is a form for writing down damage that was there on arrival. For a furnished seasonal property the sensible version is an inventory: what is in each room, and what state it is in. With a different tenant every winter, the year-on-year record is the only thing that can show which season a chair was broken in.
Photographs dated at each changeover cost nothing and answer the question that always arrives in April.
Where the Deposit Paperwork Goes in April
This is the seasonal landlord’s own trap, and it comes from a rule that reads harmlessly anywhere else.
When the tenancy ends, the itemized list and any money owed go out by first-class mail to whatever the landlord holds as the tenant’s last known residence — unless the tenant has arranged something else in writing.
For most tenancies that is unremarkable. For this one it often is not, because the last address you hold for your tenant is the property they have just left, and they are in Minnesota until October. Mail sent there follows somebody two thousand miles in the wrong direction, and the sixty-day clock on the tenant’s right to dispute your figures runs from that mailing.
The fix is a line in the lease. Ask for a home-state address for anything sent after the tenancy ends, and have your tenant put it in writing, which is what the statute asks for. It costs nothing in October and saves the argument in May.
The same thinking applies to the contact-person provision on what a lease must say. A landlord may ask a tenant to name somebody with authority over their belongings should they die or be incapacitated, and this market — older tenants, living alone, a long way from family — is where that line earns its keep more than anywhere else.
Utilities Over a Short Season
Cooling costs make utilities a live issue in Arizona even in a winter lease, and owners of several units often bill them separately.
If you do, the method has to be in the agreement, and you may recover the provider’s charges plus actual administrative costs and nothing beyond that. Charging tenants for utilities sets out what the agreement and each bill have to show.
For a single seasonal property it is often simpler to leave the utilities in your own name and set the rent with those costs in mind, rather than allocating them to the tenant. The submetering and ratio-billing requirements above are the ones that apply when a landlord charges separately.
The Season After
Returning tenants are the norm in this market. Be deliberate about it rather than allowing it to happen by default.
A fresh fixed-term agreement each season keeps the arrangement clean, keeps the rent reviewable, and settles the between-seasons question above before it can become a disagreement. If this is your first tenancy, the order to do things in is on leasing out a home for the first time.
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. 33-1308 sets out what the Act does not reach, and paragraph 4 is the relevant one: transient occupancy in a hotel, motel or recreational lodging, none of which it defines. Its first words put every exclusion out of reach of an arrangement set up to dodge the chapter.
- A.R.S. 33-1314, subsection D, is what you get instead of a season if you fix no term.
- A.R.S. 33-1375 is periodic tenancies. Subsection B is the thirty days. Subsection C is the between-seasons rule: a tenant staying without the landlord’s consent is a holdover, and it is the landlord’s consent in writing that brings subsection D of 33-1314 into play instead.
- A.R.S. 33-1321 is security deposits. Subsection A is the ceiling, covering security however denominated and including prepaid rent. B is the separate treatment of nonrefundable fees and the rule that anything not designated nonrefundable is refundable. C is the move-in paperwork. Subsection D is the one this market has to watch: the itemized list goes by first-class mail to the tenant’s last known place of residence, unless the tenant has made other arrangements in writing.
- A.R.S. 42-5070 sits in the tax title rather than the landlord and tenant one. It is the transient lodging classification, and it is the reason the repeal of the residential rental tax says nothing about the short end of a season.
- A.R.S. 33-1314.01 is the utility billing section, if you bill separately rather than folding the cost into the rent.
Common Questions
Does Arizona landlord-tenant law apply to a winter seasonal lease?
For a season-long lease of several months, work on the basis that it does. The deposit cap, the disclosures, the entry rules and the notice requirements all apply.
Is a short vacation stay the same as a tenancy?
Not necessarily. Arizona's exclusions cover transient occupancy in a hotel, motel or recreational lodging, which describes the kind of accommodation rather than how it was booked. A stay of a few weeks in a private house sits in a middle ground the statute does not draw a line through, and it is worth advice rather than assumption.
Can I structure a seasonal lease so the Act does not apply?
No. The exclusions come with a condition attached: they apply unless the arrangement was created to avoid the application of the Act. An arrangement dressed up as something on the list, so that it is not a tenancy, is still a tenancy.
Should a seasonal lease be fixed term or month-to-month?
Usually fixed term, because it ends on its date without either side giving notice. A month-to-month winter tenancy can instead be ended by the tenant on thirty days' notice in January, when re-leasing for the rest of the season is close to impossible.
Can I charge an extra deposit for furniture?
Not above the ceiling. The cap covers everything held as security however it is denominated, so naming a payment after the furniture or the linens buys no extra room.
What happens if a seasonal tenant stays on after the term ends?
They are a holdover. A fixed term does not turn itself into a month-to-month tenancy: where the tenant stays without your consent you may bring an action for possession, and a willful holdover carries additional damages. What converts the arrangement into a periodic tenancy on the statutory default terms is your consent, in writing, to their staying.
Where does the deposit itemization get mailed if my tenant has gone home?
By first-class mail to whatever address the landlord holds as the tenant's last known residence, unless the tenant has arranged something else in writing. In this market that default often points at the property they just left, so ask for a home-state address in the lease and have the tenant put it in writing.
Does the repealed rental tax mean no tax applies to a short winter stay?
No. What Arizona repealed is the residential rental tax a landlord could pass to a tenant. The transient lodging tax is a separate tax and it still exists, and short stays are its territory. Whether a particular arrangement falls under it is a question for an accountant.