Free Arizona Lease Renewal Agreement

A lease renewal is an agreement to carry an existing tenancy into a further term. It is not a new lease unless the parties sign one, and in Arizona whether you may renew at all is a matter of contract — neither of the two sections captured for this page gives a tenant a right to renew, so the lease decides. What state law does supply is the consequence of doing nothing, and that consequence is unusually sharp in Arizona, because it turns on a single written act.

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This document records that an existing tenancy is continuing, on what terms, and for how long. It amends the lease rather than replacing it: every term the parties do not change carries forward unchanged. That matters more than it sounds, because the commonest renewal dispute is not about the rent but about a term one side assumed had lapsed. In Arizona it does a second job as well. Where the parties are not agreeing a new fixed term but the tenant is staying on, a signed document is the clearest possible evidence of the written consent that the holdover limb of § 33-1375 makes the dividing line between an ordinary periodic tenancy and an action for possession.

• The parties, exactly as they are named on the lease being renewed.
• The property, including the unit number.
• The date the original lease was signed and the date its term ends.
• Whether the parties are agreeing a new fixed term or a periodic tenancy – and if a fixed term, say so plainly, because section 33-1314(D) applies only where the rental agreement does not fix a definite term.
• If the tenant is staying on without a new fixed term, the landlord’s written consent to that.
• The new term – its start date, and its end date if it is a fixed term.
• The rent for the new term, and whether it has changed.
• Every other term that is changing, and a statement that the rest continue unchanged.
• What happens to the deposit already held.
• The date, and a signature from the landlord and from every tenant named on the lease.

• Letting the term expire with nothing signed. That is the precise moment the holdover limb of § 33-1375 starts to operate, and it is entirely avoidable.
• Treating the two months’ rent as an entitlement. The statute makes it an amount the landlord may recover, of not more than two months’ periodic rent or twice the actual damages, whichever is greater — the ceiling sits on the two-months limb — and it is available only where the holdover is willful and not in good faith.
• Assuming an oral go-ahead is consent. Section 33-1375 makes the trigger for § 33-1314(D) a consent in writing.
• Assuming subsection (D) always makes the tenancy periodic. It opens unless the rental agreement fixes a definite term. If what the parties signed fixes one, the periodic default in (D) does not arrive.
• Counting the 30 days from the wrong date. The month-to-month notice limb measures the period to the periodic rental date specified in the notice, not thirty days from the day the notice is written.
• Changing the rent without changing the document. A renewal that carries forward the old rent figure while the parties have agreed a new one is an invitation to a dispute nobody needs.

Not by force of the sections captured for this page. Neither A.R.S. § 33-1314 nor § 33-1375 gives a residential tenant a right to renew a lease, so the starting point is always the lease itself. If the lease contains a renewal or extension clause, that clause governs, and its deadlines are real deadlines. If it does not, a renewal happens when both sides agree one and not before. Whether a renewal is available therefore depends on what the lease says before it depends on anything in the statute.

The practical consequence is that the end of an Arizona fixed term is a decision point, not a formality. Somebody has to do something. What the statute supplies is not a way of renewing but a set of consequences for the situation where nobody did, and those consequences are worth understanding before the date arrives rather than after.

A.R.S. § 33-1375, in its holdover limb, divides that situation in two, and the divider is consent. Where the tenant “remains in possession without the landlord’s consent after expiration of the term of the rental agreement or its termination”, the landlord “may bring an action for possession”. That is the ordinary route, and it is available whatever the tenant’s reason for staying.

The same sentence then adds a second remedy, and this is the one most often misquoted. Where “the tenant’s holdover is willful and not in good faith”, the landlord “in addition, may recover an amount equal to not more than two months’ periodic rent or twice the actual damages sustained by the landlord, whichever is greater.”

Read that slowly, because three separate limits sit inside one sentence.

The first is the double condition. The holdover must be willful and not in good faith, and those are two requirements rather than a single idea expressed twice. A tenant who stayed three days past the end of a term because a moving truck failed has not obviously satisfied both.

The second is the verb. The statute says the landlord may recover the amount. It does not name a court, it does not describe a discretion exercised by anybody, and it does not create a sum that accrues by itself while the tenant remains. What it does is give the landlord something the landlord may seek, in addition to possession. Nothing in either captured section says more than that about how the amount is obtained, and this page does not fill the gap in.

The third is the phrase not more than. It is a ceiling, and it sits on the two-months limb of the disjunction. The statute reads “not more than two months’ periodic rent or twice the actual damages sustained by the landlord, whichever is greater”: the cap qualifies the periodic-rent measure, and the actual-damages measure is expressed without one. A page that reports this provision as Arizona holdover tenants owe two months’ rent has dropped all three limits at once.

The closing sentence of § 33-1375 carries a cross-reference that changes the whole picture: “If the landlord consents in writing to the tenant’s continued occupancy, section 33-1314, subsection D applies.”

And § 33-1314(D) says: “Unless the rental agreement fixes a definite term, the tenancy shall be week-to-week in case of a roomer who pays weekly rent, and in all other cases month-to-month.”

The opening words are the gate on the whole subsection, and they are easy to lose in a summary. Unless the rental agreement fixes a definite term. If what the parties signed does fix one, subsection (D) does not make the tenancy periodic at all, and the question of what the tenancy has become goes back to the agreement. Where the agreement does not fix a definite term, (D) supplies the default: week-to-week for a roomer who pays weekly rent, and month-to-month in every other case, which for an ordinary residential tenant paying monthly means a month-to-month tenancy with the notice protection that comes with it.

So a single signature does a great deal of work in Arizona. Without it the tenant is holding over and exposed to an action for possession; with it, and subject to the condition just described, the tenant is an ordinary periodic tenant. Both sides therefore have a strong reason to make the position explicit rather than leaving it to be argued about later — the landlord because unconsidered consent gives up the possession route, the tenant because a handshake is not what the statute asks for. The statute’s word is writing, and the captured sections do not offer any substitute for it.

Where the answer is not to renew, the periods are short and they are the same for both sides. The week-to-week notice limb provides that “The landlord or the tenant may terminate a week-to-week tenancy by a written notice given to the other at least ten days prior to the termination date specified in the notice.” The month-to-month notice limb provides that “The landlord or the tenant may terminate a month-to-month tenancy by a written notice given to the other at least thirty days prior to the periodic rental date specified in the notice.”

Two details in the month-to-month limb repay attention. The period runs to the periodic rental date specified in the notice, not simply to thirty days after the notice is written, so a notice sent in the middle of a month generally reaches forward past the next rent day rather than landing thirty days later on whatever date that happens to be. And the obligation is mutual: the limb names the landlord or the tenant, so a tenant who wants to leave at the end of a month-to-month tenancy owes the same thirty days on the same measure.

Both limbs require a written notice given to the other. Neither is satisfied by a conversation, and neither states a form of service, so the captured sections leave the method of delivery to be established some other way.

None of the above is a reason to rely on the statute rather than on a document. The holdover route is litigation; the § 33-1314(D) route is a periodic tenancy that neither side may have wanted, and one that only arrives if the rental agreement does not fix a definite term. A signed renewal replaces both with something the parties actually chose.

A renewal amends the existing lease, so the discipline is to name what changes and say plainly that everything else continues. The three things worth being explicit about are the term (a fixed term with a start and an end date, or an express month-to-month arrangement), the rent, and the deposit already held — which is normally carried forward rather than returned and re-paid, but which should say so rather than be assumed. If the parties are not agreeing a new fixed term and the tenant is simply staying on, the same document is the cleanest available record of the landlord’s written consent.

The source consulted for this page prints § 33-1314 with its subsections lettered, running “A.” through to “G.”, and this page uses that lettering where it cites that section — the reference to subsection (D) is the source’s own, and § 33-1375 itself names “section 33-1314, subsection D” in terms.

The same source prints § 33-1375 as one continuous run of prose with no subsection letters anywhere in it. So this page does not pin any part of § 33-1375 to a letter. It identifies the parts by what they do instead — the week-to-week notice limb, the month-to-month notice limb, the holdover limb, and the closing sentence — and you will find no “(A)”, “(B)” or “(C)” attached to that section anywhere above or below. If you need to cite a subsection of § 33-1375 precisely, check the lettering in a current print of the section rather than taking it from here.

One further point about the quotations on this page: statutory passages are quoted plain. Where a phrase is stressed anywhere above, the stress is this page’s and it sits outside the quotation marks, never inside them, so nothing between an opening and closing quotation mark on this page has been emphasised by us.

The captured Arizona material for this page is two sections of the Residential Landlord and Tenant Act: § 33-1314 and § 33-1375. It is not the chapter. No provision on automatic-renewal clauses was located in those two sections, and that is a statement about what was read rather than a finding about Arizona law — the absence of an answer here is not evidence that Arizona has no such rule.

The same goes for two subjects a renewal often raises. Neither captured section deals with security deposits, so what happens to a deposit on renewal is treated on this page as a matter for the parties and the existing lease, which is a description of what was read and not a statement that Arizona law is silent. And neither captured section deals with rent increases or the notice one requires.

Neither of two further questions was pursued beyond those two sections: whether an Arizona landlord needs a reason to decline a renewal, and what notice a rent increase requires. The page says nothing about either, and its silence should not be read as a negative. Local ordinances were not searched and no case law was consulted. Check all of it before relying on anything this page does not say.

A renewal is mostly a matter of contract, so what it can do is decided by the existing lease before it is decided by statute. The place state law bites hardest is the rent, because continuing a tenancy is when it usually changes. Our guide to Arizona rent increase laws sets out the notice that has to come first, which is often the real deadline in that negotiation.

The second place is what happens when the parties do not agree. An expiring term does not resolve itself, and Arizona eviction notice laws explain the notices and timelines that follow if a tenant stays on without a new agreement.

For the obligations that run between a landlord and a tenant throughout the tenancy, and the rules that apply to both sides, see Arizona landlord tenant laws.

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